Playtesting forum and Actual Play forum
M. J. Young:
I hesitate to enter a discussion that is becoming heated, but frankly this,
Quote from: David C on September 21, 2009, 12:16:43 AM
Narr games benefit from being short with few mechanics. That's why you can write out your entire game idea, go play test and be done without having to go back to square one. It's super easy to finish a narr game. Hell, you guys make games that fit in pamphlets! In marathon contests! When writing a game, I've had to play test, go back and revise or add mechanics (First thoughts, new ideas, which are unplaytested!) I've been working on it for years. And as I've said, the game it is now has nothing in common with the game I started on.
...is simply not true. Narrativist games can be rather long--Legends of Alyria is an excellent example--and gamist and simulationist games can be very short and very quickly constructed, as Gareth Michael Skarka's Fifty-two Pickup article series demonstrated.
Further, I know Ron has designed gamist and simulationist games. He prefers playing and designing narrativist games, but he understands the others. Clinton Nixon, formerly the site administrator, has also dabbled in multiple agenda, and while most of what I've seen of Vincent Baker's games are narrativist, I've sat on a game design panel with him and know that his grasp of agenda and game design is not limited to that area.
I'm inclined to think that the "prejudice" you sense has more to do with market forces than with any influence the Forge leadership (if I can abuse that word) brings to the table. Most people who like simulationist and gamist games find what they're seeking in the big press games; most people who design games begin because they don't like the games that are popularly available. Even then, a significant chunk of those driven to design "better" games in simulationism and gamism begin with a "heartbreaker", a slight modification of an established game that in their view "fixes" the "problems" they had with the original. Thus there are far more narrativists in independent game design than simulationists or gamists, simply because more narrativists are dissatisfied with what's out there.
That means if you're bringing a gamist or simulationist design to this board, the majority of the designers here are going to look at it and say, "It looks like it might be a good game, but it's not something that would interest me." There are people with broader backgrounds--Mike Holmes, Ralph Mazza, Eero Tuovinen, I'll stop there so I don't embarrass myself by omission--people who can design and have designed in a variety of forms and who can give good advice. They're spread a bit thin, though.
On the other hand, there is as far as I know no rule that says you can'tfamiliarize yourself with the names of people who do seem to have that kind of insight into the kinds of games you're trying to create,post your ideas in the proper forum, anddrop private messages or e-mails to those select people to ask them if they might be able to give it a look and make a comment or two.
As is often said, it is usually more effective if you have specific questions than if you want informal game reviews of the totality. And indeed, DWeird (what's your name?) is not the only person whose eyes glaze at huge blocks of text, so smaller chunks are generally better.
Also, there are probably a lot of people out there who would like to discuss your game, who would certainly be willing to do so here at the Forge if you invited them to do so. If there aren't enough gamists or simulationists here, and you think there are people interested in game design in those areas, bring them here. No one has ever been turned away because he didn't care for a particular style of game, as long as he was polite about it.
I hope this helps.
--M. J. Young
Ron Edwards:
Finally I can get to this.
First, Mark, I always appreciate your input, and I agree with your points. However, in this case, I think your effort is misplaced. David hasn't shown any interest in reasoned discussion and his post merits no attention.
Second, Dweird, I'm going to abstract a particular question from your post - let me know if I'm not representing you fairly in doing so.
"Ron, what do you mean by fewer viewers and fewer replies being better, once I post in Playtesting?"
This is an excellent question. The answer is that people who read and reply to a thread in Playtesting are serious. They are not socializing, not hanging out, not seeing-and-being-seen. They have absolutely no reason to post in your thread except for genuine interest in your game, and in helping you specifically at this precise stage. There is literally no comparison to replies in First Thoughts, which is intended to be (and is easily observed as) the kiddie pool, despite its utility when used seriously.
Your recommendation is extremely reasonable:
Quote
Maybe some sort of criteria and/or guides to what playtesting is about? What you should do during it, what should you write (and NOT write) in the report, and how you should go around looking for problems, stuff like that. Nothing formal, but rather a sort of a community best practises thing?
I called for dialogue about this myself in Standards for playtesting, one of the very first threads at the Forge. I hope you post either about playtesting yourself, or in serious participation in playtesting threads, in order to promote that dialogue. Raising, addressing, and with any luck establishing some institutional memory about these questions won't happen unless people like yourself actually do it.
Best, Ron
jburneko:
As a singular anecdotal data point I thought I'd mention that the last time I posted in Playtesting about my game Silent Sound, I received exactly ONE reply. However, that reply was exactly what I needed to start moving again on the game. So, the fact that there was only one, was a complete non-issue.
Jesse
JoyWriter:
I don't know how to give that kind of input very well yet. Specifically, I often find the information load to great:
A certain kind of first thoughts thread, where the first draft "game text" is up, shares a lot of similarity with this problem. They suggest something is broken, and give a link to the whole text! Learning someone's entire game takes time, and we need to cut it into bits.
Now this produces different problems; you suggest a mechanic, and they go "oh well I've already got this bit to do that". There are a lot of explicit misses with criticism, whereas the "aesthetic" mode of a lot of first thoughts dialog allows people to just go "x+y might be cool, as might x+z".
Hang on, in fact the similarity of those two things from two forums "whole game plus niggling fault" and "I tried this out and it's not quite meshing" suggest that there is a split that is just not being used.
What if the two forums should be "first thoughts" and "putting it all together"?
My naming change is there because playtesting is the first place where the emergent effects of the rules surface, and have to be dealt with. It's where cute mechanics get shelved and replaced by less snazy ones that produce more awesome interactions.
What is more, the moment someone unveils a game text, they presumably want it to be playtested! It is at that point ready to go, and people can start talking about how they misunderstood the text or whatever else.
Explicitly linking that to playtesting is a step up. It means you take the pointless squirrel-like activity of making a game text for no-one and link it in to getting feedback from actual people playing your game.
Is there a danger that people will neglect playtesting? Yes, just like people come to the first thoughts forum with adverts every now and again, but this can be solved by community.
Consider the different types of playtesting that people do too; for first thoughts, you might be just rolling through a dice mechanic to see what it's probabilities are, getting a feel for how the bonuses work or how easy it is to do the physical actions the game requires.
For my new "putting it all together" forum, you would playtest with other people, checking how the group mechanics actually work in the field.
Both of those happen away from the forum, but people then come back and suggest changes based on what has been said. They may post the results of their trials, "ok I found out that you don't roll 20s that often" vs "two of the players really started going for each other to the exclusion of anyone else", and then people chat about what to do about it.
We could actually make playtesting more central, not less, by distinguishing between mechanics/concepts in isolation and actual games.
This also makes clear the difference between the actual play forums and the playtest ones, because if the playtest forum is renamed "putting it all together", hopefully it is obvious that this is about the construction of a new game, wheras actual play can suggest changes for the next version (these things can always get more polished), when it is done with the "putting it all together" forum, it's a substantial peice of game text, and you should probably go to "connections or "publishing" to get the last stage done. (Then off to rpgnet and the review blogs, and hopefully back here in actual play)
See! No artificial craming of all kinds of playtesting into one box, but a clear underlining of the significance of a certain type of playtesting, and when it should be done. The name connotes the objective that the person should have, and then the stickys remain the same, telling them to start with playtesting.
Catelf:
I feel like i'm in a similar position as Dave: when i entered this forum, just this summer, i was still new to almost everything web-wise, but i figured, "I have an Rpg, or more likely, the basics of an Rpg, and want to make it into a Complete Game, and this is said to be a good place to get help with that.".
So, i went into First Thoughts, and i think i made quite a.... ruckus?.... there. This was not my intention, just pure inexperience.
I ended up in Connections by split thread, and i assume it was my clumsy comment on "needing playtesters" that made Ron put me there.
So, feeling that i was placed in the wrong place, i made some ... ruckus there as well. Childish? Possibly, but i want simply to find the right place for my ideas, and get suggestions to "where to go from here"!
Hm, i do think Ron somewhere has mentioned a thread in Actual play as well, but i haven't found it yet...
(side note: i now have my own PC & webconnection, so i now have far more time to look.)
I'm still unsure of where to go, but i think that Playtesting may be the correct place: I have a not entirely finished Game( sure, the Core Rules are finished, and some more, but the Game itself is far from finished and "Put together".
My point is: I would have really liked, or even needed, more descriptive Titles for the Forums.
Sincerely,
Catelf.
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