adventures in playtesting

[Stake A Vamp]

So, awhile back i befriended a boy. For legal reasons, we'll call him S. S and I became friend when we both found out that the other played RPG's. after a while of gaming at lunch (thank the Gods we sat in the corner, our classmates would, unfortunately, not have been tolerant of such behavior) I was invited over to his house to game. When I arrived, I found his whole family, sans toddler sibling, at the table. It turns out his parents are small-print game designers. S, his brother E, and I tested out a game called "Storming the Wizards Tower". I did well and his family decided they liked me, so I have been one of thier go-to playtesters ever since.

a list of games I have playtested
Definitely: "Storming the Wizards Tower" "Dogs in the Vineyard" "Blasters for hire" "Apocalypse World" "Murderous Ghosts"A few unnamed games who, tragically, died in beta.
Possibly: "Monster of the week" "Monster-hearts" "Street Smart and Sword Savvy"

anyone else got stories of being a playtester?

[TheWombatOfDoom]

I don't but I've always wanted to. What's it like? Is it fun?

The only amounts of playtesting I do are for my own creations, or for people's homebrews on the forums.

[Totally Guy]

Wow, you are one lucky dude! Those are some of my favourite games.

Did your friend go to Burning Con in New York back in October? If so I may have met him.

[Karoht]

Most of my playtesting has been in video games. I have a few industry contacts, so I've been in on the friends and family betas and even a few alpha builds. I absolutely love the process, watching it go from those early stages and iterating forward, all the way up to ship date. It is also miserable watching a bad feature stay in a game, laden with bugs, from alpha through beta all the way to launch, no matter how many bug reports one files.
*sigh*
I would totally work in game testing for a living if the pay and the hours didn't suck so much.

For tabletop stuff, a friend of mine has been making his own card game (art, design, the whole thing) for the last two years. We keep seeing bits and piece of it, and he plans on throwing a pretty big tester party in the next month or two.

I have a friend who is making a ship combat game, involving a hex grid. He really wants the facing of the ship to matter as a tactical consideration, hence why he picked the hex. Two front locations, two side, two back. We were talking about armor allocation and how an automatic distribution might prove more play friendly than an individual location system. For example, if I can allocate all my armor to side armor, and since a broadside volley brings the most guns to bear, chances are players will do this and become broadside boats. But if the distribution is automatic (say, strong front, medium side, weak back) generally most ships are going to have a standardized weakness. Which is fine, possibly even more realistic, but he wants ship to ship combat to involve probing those defenses for weaknesses and then striking them, rather than simply going straight for known weakpoints. And he doesn't want armor to be generic because then it largely won't matter what section someone targets.
We talked about it at length just the other day, chances are I'll be coming to playtest his early build next week.

Fun times all around.

[Teddy]

A friend at the gaming club does some part time game developing, and while it mostly has been dad who has been playtesting his games, I once parttook in playtesting a very early concept for a game about exploring Africa. We more or less came to the conclusion that it needed a lot more work to turn it into a playable game (it felt a bit like playing Afrikan Tähti (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikan_t%C3%A4hti) with three fourths of all locations being robbers), but the concept itself was interesting. I sadly haven't heard any more of it since, so I guess it may've been put on hold for now...

[Stake A Vamp]

I don't but I've always wanted to. What's it like? Is it fun?

The only amounts of playtesting I do are for my own creations, or for people's homebrews on the forums.
What's it like?: well we sit around the table, M or V (His mum and Dad, respectively) gm, and we play , sometimes the games creator guest GM's, sometimes V or M GM in Proxy for the games designer. then we rate it on a peice of paper or verbally, and give suggestions to improve it's weak points. it is usually fun. there are times when a game is so poorly designed that is is painful to play, but those are few and far between, and we often do not get past twenty minutes in such tests before it is decided it needs more work before beta.

Wow, you are one lucky dude! Those are some of my favourite games.

Did your friend go to Burning Con in New York back in October? If so I may have met him.
yes, yes I am. also, which games do you like, I'm curios? and V&M may well have been there, but I do not remember if S (who is 16 if this helps at all) went or not.

Most of my playtesting has been in video games. I have a few industry contacts, so I've been in on the friends and family betas and even a few alpha builds. I absolutely love the process, watching it go from those early stages and iterating forward, all the way up to ship date. It is also miserable watching a bad feature stay in a game, laden with bugs, from alpha through beta all the way to launch, no matter how many bug reports one files.
*sigh*
I would totally work in game testing for a living if the pay and the hours didn't suck so much.

For tabletop stuff, a friend of mine has been making his own card game (art, design, the whole thing) for the last two years. We keep seeing bits and piece of it, and he plans on throwing a pretty big tester party in the next month or two.

I have a friend who is making a ship combat game, involving a hex grid. He really wants the facing of the ship to matter as a tactical consideration, hence why he picked the hex. Two front locations, two side, two back. We were talking about armor allocation and how an automatic distribution might prove more play friendly than an individual location system. For example, if I can allocate all my armor to side armor, and since a broadside volley brings the most guns to bear, chances are players will do this and become broadside boats. But if the distribution is automatic (say, strong front, medium side, weak back) generally most ships are going to have a standardized weakness. Which is fine, possibly even more realistic, but he wants ship to ship combat to involve probing those defenses for weaknesses and then striking them, rather than simply going straight for known weakpoints. And he doesn't want armor to be generic because then it largely won't matter what section someone targets.
We talked about it at length just the other day, chances are I'll be coming to playtest his early build next week.

Fun times all around.
This ship game seems cool, help him make it good, them make sure he publishes, because I want copy!

A friend at the gaming club does some part time game developing, and while it mostly has been dad who has been playtesting his games, I once parttook in playtesting a very early concept for a game about exploring Africa. We more or less came to the conclusion that it needed a lot more work to turn it into a playable game (it felt a bit like playing Afrikan Tähti (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikan_t%C3%A4hti) with three fourths of all locations being robbers), but the concept itself was interesting. I sadly haven't heard any more of it since, so I guess it may've been put on hold for now...
well, encourage huim to continue, the world can never have enough games, I promise you

[Totally Guy]

yes, yes I am. also, which games do you like, I'm curios? and V&M may well have been there, but I do not remember if S (who is 16 if this helps at all) went or not.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I met your friend. We played in a game of Mouse Guard. V was a guest of honour but M didn't go.

Apocalypse World is pretty great, I want to try Dogs and Poison'd but I haven't done so yet. I tried In a Wicked Age but I didn't really get it. I struggled with a couple of things...

I still need to find 1001 Nights because the premise appeals to me.


As far as actual playtesting is concerned I played in a playtest session of Torchbearer at Burning Con. I struggled a bit to get into that.

I try to read the credits at the front of RPG books now because I can usually find someone I've met somewhere on the list.

[Stake A Vamp]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I met your friend. We played in a game of Mouse Guard. V was a guest of honour but M didn't go.

Apocalypse World is pretty great, I want to try Dogs and Poison'd but I haven't done so yet. I tried In a Wicked Age but I didn't really get it. I struggled with a couple of things...

I still need to find 1001 Nights because the premise appeals to me.


As far as actual playtesting is concerned I played in a playtest session of Torchbearer at Burning Con. I struggled a bit to get into that.

I try to read the credits at the front of RPG books now because I can usually find someone I've met somewhere on the list.

S, E, and I played a very cool mouse guard campaign, it is a fun RPG, I played a tender-paw, he played a veteran. apocalypse world was cool, but I preferred MOTW, good to know their distribution has gone that far (well, not very, but still)

[Tebryn]

I'm playing Delvers Drop which is just about to go into Alpha, hopefully today, and recording it on my youtube page and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=292245). That's the first game I've play tested. I'll be doing Stonehearth and Chasm here soon as well.

[Teddy]

well, encourage huim to continue, the world can never have enough games, I promise you

He's caught up in designing a game about Dien Bien Phu right now, so I'm not sure he'll have time. In fact, while I wrote that last point, dad was away playtesting it, so I think it has come quite far...

[Aotrs Commander]

I wrtie my own rules, so I'm continuously playtesting in that regard...

(I've been working on my starship set for about.... yeah...ten years now, though a fair chunk of that is niche-case polishing...)

Someday it might even be pubished (albiet as a pdf...)

[Tyndmyr]

I playtest my own stuff...for instance, right now, I'm workin' on a tower defense themed board game, and I did some playtesting of that last weekend. Went better than expected, most of the mechanics produced results more or less like hoped, and the game was pretty close.

Still, there was a LOT of feedback, and thus, lots of improvements to make. I'll probably finish printing off the pieces at some point next week, and try to squeeze another round of playtesting in a week or two.

Hell, if one or two of ya'll are interested in playtesting, I could send out a copy once the rules get at least someone stable.

[Atelm]

Playtested The Monolith from Beyond Space and Time, a Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure, with a couple of friends in Tracon a couple of years back. Great fun. :smallamused:

Monolith was also playtested in a con in Sweden, Gothcon I think.