Looking at my review history on Paizo.com I noticed that I very rarely go under three stars in my reviews. I think only 4 enter the 1-2 star range with a pretty good chunk being within 4 or 5 stars. So what gives? Am I pandering? Am I an overly generous GM or reviewer? Why don't I review things that suck? Well the answer to that is complicated but summed up its because I tend to not buy crappy products. But I can't leave you with an explanation like that so I'm going to elaborate. In list form, here are the reasons why I don't write many reviews on crappy products.
1) I buy popular things.
I'm not made of money. Sure I'll get a review copy of something here and there but for the most part third party material gets funded by my beer money, so I have to pre-evaluate material before I buy it just like everyone else. I rely on buzz, threads about the product and reviews. Because I like large books and hard copies I hate it when I get a useless product. Its paper that didn't need ink and money wasted that I could have spent elsewhere so I at least try to make sure that what I'm getting is something that I want. I also will very often stick to big names in the field. When you start picking up a few things you'll noticed that some companies get talked about more and some have a higher rate of positive reviews. Eventually there are heavy hitters that you just trust to push out a solid product. But the fact remains that knowing whats inside before you buy is the lifeblood of Pathfinder 3pp. If there are no reviews, no discussion, no proper description that gives me confidence that it will be a smart purchase then it's dead to me and I won't pick it up.
2) I buy based on my needs.
When you involve third party products there can be a lot of redundancy among themes, options and classes. Sometimes when there's obvious overlap you don't want to overwhelm your players with different versions of the same thing, so when I find a good product that handles what I need, I'll very often forget about the product before it. Sometimes I'll even ignore a new product that's probably superior because I already have the ability to do whatever it offers. This makes my purchasing habits a bit more selective but it gets more selective because I don't exactly purchase what I think is good but what I feel that I need. For example; I'll run a game where I want a construct race to fill out some of the fluff that i want for the campaign setting, so I seek that out. Once I have it and it's adequate enough for my needs I won't go looking for another. If I wasn't looking for that kind of product to begin with then I probably wouldn't actually read any product on the subject. That combined with #1 means that my rate of exposure to actually bad products is rather low. I go out of my interests for review copies of things I'm requested to review but more often than not those people are giving review copies because they have confidence in their product and want to get some word of mouth so I don't get many review copies from Randy's Crappy PDF Shack and they're mostly from passionate publishers that put a lot of work into their products.
3) I review good products first.
When I get something good, I buy a hard copy, throw it on my table, use it and sing it's praises. It makes sense. If it's good then I want the company that made it to succeed. I want people to know how good it is and accept it in their games. I want the company to make enough money to make more. When something is bad, I forget it even exists. I am already a pretty lazy person so when I'm presented with a book that sucks every sentence feels like a millstone around my neck and I want to move on to something else. A terrible book is a chore to analyze so I put it off forever. Its like performing an autopsy when you're afraid of zombie movies, you just don't want to do it so it feels like the slowest event in the universe. You don't even really want to talk about it. This sounds bad as a reviewer but when I started reviewing products I already had amassed a large collection so naturally the first things I went to were the products that were good enough for me to pick up a hard copy of. These are products that I take to the table and use and am familiar with. I'm able to dive right in and pump some reviews out.
4) I don't rate low unless it doesn't work.
If you read my reviews carefully enough you'll notice that sometimes I'll have some harsh words with something I rate highly. That's because its okay to not like a good book. Sometimes I'm disappointed because I wanted something else or it's not useful for the things I wanted and is useful for some other reason. I try to be unbiased in my star rating but will describe what I wanted and what I did and didn't, because a good book is still a good book, its just that sometimes its not good for me. Also one or two bad options in an otherwise good book aren't going to stop me either. Really the only way to get a one or two star review with me is if I think that a significant chunk of the product doesn't work. Whether its difficult to read, has balance thrown out the window, has rules language that makes no sense or otherwise impossible to use as written. Usually if I don't like a product I'll try to see it in another light based on whether or not I can see someone else using it. Two stars is when I just won't recommend it to anyone ever and one star is outright garbage that you can't even scavenge ideas from.
5) Some products are just not good enough to try.
Okay so I have a ton of pdfs and even though I don't use everything at once those things have to compete with other products and Paizo material for the spotlight. Some products are less popular so I have to run them through oneshots to get a gist of how it works. The rest just kind of fall into the deep cracks of my computer, never to be seen again. Usually this includes the worst of what I have where I'm ashamed to even admit that I payed money for it and instead blocked it from my memory. And if you're thinking that's just hyperbole, one of those things in question has a feat called Zooamourous Breeder and it does exactly what you think it does. Sometimes I promise myself I'll look through such products to dig out some gems but really I just forget about them until I wonder about what some mystery pdf is in my badly organized Pathfinder folders and stupidly unearth it like some kind of eldritch horror movie monster.
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