"Play testing hints" Topic

I'm about to release a set of rules to arms-length play-testers.

What tips and guidance can people who have been down this track suggest?

Any pits to avoid or ideas to get the best out of the process.

Any comments welcome.

Regards

David F Brown

Too lazy to find the links…
There were two articles/ interviews for you
One of Richard Clarke of two fat lardies Fame
And one of Buck Surdu.
Both linger on herer, you can ask them.
There is on tmp a board on game design, do spend an hour ferretting on it too.

Chose ones that will be able to check your text carefully for errors as well. A proof reader often does not see the text in context so can miss things that would confuse or confound gamers.

Encourage testers to push the rules and find edge cases. If you don't push your rules to break, you will miss problems that real players find quickly.

Try to document test games as they happen, including questions and disputes that arise. Compile post game reports.

Ask non gamers to read your rules and then see if they make sense.

DO NOT PROMPT THE PLAYERS DURING THE SESSION. If you do, you're testing your game-mastering skill, not the rules. Remember, only a very few of your end customers will have you present when they play the game.

And, as stated above, have independent people read through the rules. Gamers certainly, but also non-gamers if you can manage it.

DO NOT DO YOUR OWN PROOF READING. You WILL see what ought to be there rather than what is.

Top-notch playtesters keep tallies of dice-rolls throughout the game, so at the end they can fairly assess if the overall results of that game were skewed by being far at the end of the bell curve for one or both sides.

Sounds like I could make up a survey-style sheet and ask for feedback and comments on specific topics. If nothing else it makes the tester's job a bit easier.

Many thanks on the comments so far.

David F Brown

Avoid group think – you need a varied group of players, preferably all with different styles of play. They really need to run some tests where they try their hardest to break the game.

They must ignore the history and the period your rules are written for. By that I mean they should play the game by the words of the rules, looking to find victory by whatever means the rule book allows. Having done that they should then review the narrative and outcome of the game and see how well that relates to the period the rules are attempting to recreate. If you tell testers they are testing a Napoleonic period game, they can have a tendency to play the period, what they need to try to do is not play the period and see if the rules reward them for that. If they do then there's an issue somewhere.

To reinforce what other people have already reinforced: find someone who has never read your rules or heard you talk about it and have them proofread it.

Unless you know your playtesters very well, I know from experience that most of them will talk a good line to get the freebies after which you will never hear from them again. They're just Wimpies who will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

Be prepared to only get back about 3 out of 10 surveys and as far as notes, little more than a sentence or two. Detailed battle reports? Forget about it.

Real Playtesting is HARD! It is playing the game not for fun but to break the game, to wreck it, to find out where it can be broken or wrecked and where the weak parts and the problem parts are. It also means you have to have people who want to give of their time and treasure to help YOU. This means not playing a game for fun but for playing a game like you test pilot a new design of an airplane, where you want to find out how it is likely to crash. It means in a playtest when something is found to be cheesy you don't "Leave it this way and we'll change it next time." No, you take the move back now and redo it now.

You also have to have a large amount of fortitude to put up with the times when people are going to say that your little darling creation is Jo-Jo the rat faced boy. Your rules may indeed by the incarnation of Jo-Jo, but they are just as likely not, it's just that your playtester isn't doing his job. The key there is when they say "You should do this like they did in Umpires, Egos and Liars" or "On to Kukkamonga." It means they want to play those and not your game and they don't understand, usually, what your vision is. Hint. If they didn't fill out your survey and say the above then that's a dead giveaway they probably haven't even read your rules.

I've found the best way to run playtest of rules is to let the players have them in a game and sit back and say NOTHING, but watch them very carefully. Watch their motions, listen to their tone of voice, watch what they do, how the game goes and if you have the skills, IE (industrial Engineer) the game, noting down carefully how much time they spend on productive things (moving figures, talking, discussing options, laughing, joking, even gossiping about non war game stuff. The non-productive is when they are arguing, reading rules, looking up modifiers and charts and just sitting there staring off into space. (Means they are bored). Ignore almost completely what they say. They'll lie and tell you things are great because they want you to invite them back. Remember there are two games going on. There is the game on the table which is what you are interested in, and the game going on in their heads, which can have NO relationship to the game on the table.