Reviews of the webpages of people who frequent the Ex Libris Nocturnis White Wolf Forums

White Wolf is a company that makes some of my favorite roleplaying games.Ex Libris Nocturnis is one of the best places on the internet to find thoughtful commentary on the White Wolf games. One of my favorite things to do is browse the forums. When I was brainstorming things I'd do reviews about, I thought it would be fun to review the webpages of fellow forumites (what with the links so conveniently provided in the signatures and all). Since these webpages could be about almost anything (though most will probably have to do with the world of darkness), that's all I can really say right now.

If, after reading that intro, you want to go back to my homepage click here.

Review Criteria

Content

As I said in my mission statement, content is important to me. That being the case, it makes sense that content would be a major rating category. Good content is useful, insightful, original, and plentiful. Those subcriteria depend wholly on the subject of the site, and it's not really relevant, in the context of this category, whether I like it or not.

Navigation

This is a big issue with me. I have to be able to find my way around a website. It might be best to think of this as negative category. Confusing menus, dead links, and too many "layers" of navigation will earn a website a low score. The absence of those things will earn the website a high score.

Presentation

This is a catchall category for the various types of eyecandy that adorn a website. Anything that's neat, but not strictly functional will be rated here. As per my website philosophy, this will not be highly weighted in the overall score (let him without sin and all that).

Overall

This is a measure of how much I enjoyed visiting the sight, and how likely I am to visit it again. Since it is more of a measure of something ephemeral, it is not strictly based on the scores of the above categories.

The Reviews

The Realm of GreeneThorne WolfFang

greenethorne.tripod.com
Introduction:
Okay, technically GreeneThorne doesn't frequent the ELN forums, but he's a friend of mine in real life, and I wanted to review his website, but I didn't want to create a whole new category just for him. Besides, he has posted to the forums in the past, so the categorization isn't totally off the wall. Anyway, GreeneThorne's site is mostly gaming related and a member of White Wolf's Dark Spiral.

Content: 8/10
GreeneThorne's site has a greater than average amount of content. Things you can find there include: Transcripts of his online games, custom character sheets, a variety of dice rollers for TI calculators, some mad-libs and surveys, an online dice roller, and stories, essays, and humor, mostly gaming related. The math related content (especially the humor) is not for everyone, but if you enjoy roleplaying, there might be something on this site that will interest you. The online programs are a nice touch, and very well done. My biggest gripe (and it's really more of a comment) is that while there is a relatively large amount of gaming content, there are relatively few gaming resources. This site would have gotten a higher score in this category if it had included things like custom splats, roleplaying advice or campaign settings.

Navigation: 9/10
There's not really much I can say against the layout of this site. The frame on the left with links to all the major areas makes navigation a breeze. I might question the necessity of the little introduction page before the main page, but even if it were annoying, as opposed to merely unnecessary, my complaint would be minor.

Presentation: 7/10
The purple text against the dark background of the page can make it a little hard to read, especially if there's a glare on the computer screen. The game transcripts use different color text for each participant, which does make the action easy to follow, but tends to be hard on the eyes after a while. There's dungeons and dragons art on the intro page and the main page, but otherwise the site is devoid of graphics (I for one love the fast load times, but I'm weird like that).

Overall: 7/10
There needs to be more on this site of interest to those who don't know GreeneThorne personally. Still, what's there is pretty good and all of it is well organized and easy to find. I'd say it's worth a visit if you like roleplaying games and are looking for some insight into a fellow fan of the hobby.
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