"Seeking Playtesters" Topic

Howdy Gents,

I and Dennis Bishop (ex KPG, WDG, and a host of other companies) are working on several board wargames of his design and are at the point where we need playtesters.

The topics for our first efforts are Battles For a Continent (French and Indian War), Togo (WWI Africa), and soon I will have playtest kits for Ctesiphon (WWI Iraq). We will have several more games to work on as we work through our stack of games.

Please contact us via either of my e-mail addresses:

tdcgsl@yahoo.com
tdcgunslinger@nwcable.net

Thanks Much,
Tom Cundiff

We've had a few responses, but more are encouraged. We have two scenarios in our Battle For a Continent (French and Indian War) game to playtest. I will have Togoland ready to playtest by Monday, and about 10-14 days later Ctesiphon will be ready for playtesting. I've also had a designer submit his playtest counters for Trenton and Princeton to add to our Battles For a Continent series. So, the need for playtesters is rather acute.

So, if you like board wargames, we could certainly use the help.

Thanks Much,
Tom Cundiff

Mr. Cundiff

What exactly will the playtest entail?

With Respect
KTravlos

Howdy Gents,

We'll begin with (BFC) Battles for a Continent (St. Foy and Abraham). It's our hope to develop the rules from these into a set of encompassing general rules set that we can use to cover all combat from the time of Marlborough (roughly 1700) to the Crimea (1855). We intend to use game (or scenario if you like) specific rules to indicate differences necessary to the time and place for each game, or battle.

What we wish to do is flesh these rules out. Get them to work well, playtest them, then release these two games and prepare for further expansion games. I am the artist and Dennis Bishop designed the games. After we produce these two games as boxed versions (not DTP) we intend designing follow on games to the system. I'm already in negotiation with designers for more games for the system (Trenton, Princeton, Tippecanoe, Thames, Fallen Timbers).

IF you have friends who come over for game night, we hope you can talk them into playing these games with them. As you play, take note of any rules that conflict with another, or a rule that doesn't make sense the way its written, or if you know of OOB errors, let us know, ANYTHING that you find that is an error, write it down and let us know. That's the purpose to play testing, finding the errors and correcting them before the game sees publication.

Oh, and my name is Tom :)

great Tom. I have a friend who is not on TMP who has designed a game in the past. Is it cool if I pass this on to him in case he wants to help?

With Respect
K.Travlos

Howdy,

Sure thing. And if he's interested in designing games on the period we may be able to help that way too. The purpose to our designing the BFC series is to develop a game system that provides the feel of linear combat, but doesn't have the painstaking (almost exhausting) level of detail and difficulty of the BAR (Battles of the Age of Reason – made by Clash of Arms) or that of the LaBataille series (again by Clash of Arms). Both those series of games are venerated in the board wargame world as the best of the best for their periods 7YW and Napoleonic. BUT the single drawback for both of them is their level of difficulty and the fact that even the smallest of battles using their systems takes not hours, but DAYS to complete.

That extensive amount of time is what we seek to reduce making a simpler game play instead in about 3 hours.

So, yes, feel free to tell anyone you think can help or wishes to see their own games developed within the framework of a game series like this.

Thanks Much,
Tom

Sounds great Tom, good luck with your projects!

Howdy Gents,

Have rounded up 8 playtesters. That's good, but I've also released to them 4 games, so they're a bit overwhelmed at the moment.

Presently We're working on the following games to put them into the same they should have been from the beginning.

Battles For a Continent (St. Foy and Plains of Abraham)
Togo 1914
Ctesiphon 1915
Maiwand 1880

We have three more games that were completed and published in DTP form, but that never had the proper amount of playtesting accomplished, and two other games that did get good playtesting accomplished, but were never published as anything more than DTP games. Those two games need setting up for formal production values (professional maps, laser cut counters, card stock CRT cards, and the like).

In short, 8 playtesters is good, but I suspect they will become a bit "war weary" after a time. Don't want to wear them out. So, the more people working on this these the better.

Thanks Much,
Tom