The Hissing Chef: 2 1/2 stars. Quaint, elf-run establishment, but turned off by the perpetual orc attacks.
Prancing Pony: 3 stars. Great beer, good entertainment. High pitched screaming by nazgul made it impossible to sleep.
So I woke up this morning with the weirdest thought – what if fantasy worlds had Yelp reviews?
Of course, it’s a silly idea – you don’t have the Internet in a D&D universe – but there are enough magical equivalents that could have a virtual bulletin board. However, once you leave the main cities, it’s not like the village of Broomfondle is going to have to many choices. You can go to the Boiling Leopard or you can sleep in the street. Gee.
So you only bother to have reviews when you have choices to make. The first restaurant reviews – Michelin – is a tire company. They made maps and reviews so that people would drive their fancy new cars and put more wear on their tires (so they could buy more tires). So you could drive from Paris to Caen and check out this “rustic interpretation of Norman cooking” without having to stay there.
Your intrepid band of adventurers doesn’t have this option. It took two days to get to Broomfondle. They’re hungry, they’re tired, they want a roof over their heads. So the Boiling Leopard is the place to go… the ONLY place to go.
Of course, I could extend this goofy metaphor to include dungeons, ruins, et al… but the point of these abandoned places is that “no one has journeyed there in a hundred years,” “No one ever returns from the Mines of Moria!” Well, then they’re not about to post: “Moria used to be a nice dwarven family establishment. Then they changed management. Goblins not friendly, rude service, had to run out of there. Will not go back.”
What you had instead was the wise woman of the village spreading rumors that she may have heard third hand from a passing bard. You know, what Facebook is today. 🙂 Actually, this shift in research really bit me in the butt once. One gets so used to Google searches that the time I played in a Call of Cthulhu game set in the 30’s, I forgot how to research! Thankfully, the game master took pity on me and suggested, “You remember reading something in this book…”
Have I beaten this metaphor enough? Have you been thinking we need to have more reviews or less reviews of things? Let me know in the comments below!
Albigensia Press 
INN OF BONNE JOUISSANCE (Averoigne, France) – 2 Stars. Cozy atmosphere, spacious rooms, excellent food, but the wine is sometimes known to contain time-travel potions. Also, star-demons occasionally kill and eat customers.