Jussi Ahlroth has a brilliant article about the problems of writing criticism of roleplaying games in the Solmukohta book Playground Worlds (to which I also contributed), edited by Markus Montola and Jaakko Stenros.

Let’s think of an orchestra. Would we accept it that a violinist wrote a review of a concert she played in? I think everyone would say no. It would have to be someone in the audience. But what if there was no audience? What if the concert was performed only for the orchestra itself? Then the question would shift. What could the violinist write about? The composition, yes. The conductor, certainly. But not her own playing.

This is relevant because somehow, we have to admit the fact that when it comes to roleplaying games, the violinist will always be writing the review.

Buy Playground Worlds here.