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sc4rs posted:So a few of us ran ThU/D Deathrow Live! and some Retrocausality this afternoon. Logs are up there in Ulta's post. Thanks so much for this! It looks like you all had a good time, and the game definitely went smoother than my (abbreviated) playtest. I agree with pretty much all of your criticisms. Certainly, four players might be too few without some change to the voting structure. A sideways vote is probably warranted. And the incentive for not always voting Thumbs Up is supposed to be that the game is a little bit competitive, pushing players to tell better stories and to level up more than your opponents to win, but I think it might not be a strong enough incentive in practice. Despite these issues, I'm really glad that you seemed to enjoy the game. I had a blast just reading the transcript.
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Aug 30, 2012 22:35
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ThU/D Deathrow Live! GM: Sc4rs Players: Error 404 Ulta Flaky Biscuit This game was hilarious, I'm pretty sure most of us were cracking up pretty constantly through this. I would totally play this game again, but I don't think I'd recommend it for folks who haven't either done improv or played RPGs before. This game is simple and rules-lite, but I could see it dragging a bit for someone who was shy or lacked confidence to just go for the insane poo poo. Another thing we came across during play was that in order to have the full range of options, you really can't play this with less than 4 people, unless the GM flips a coin or something as a tie breaker. with 3 players that left only two of us able to vote on any given action which meant the only outcomes were critical success, critical failure, or tie. I would suggest having the GM flip a coin in those kind of circumstances to provide more outcomes with >4 players. Summary: Well written, easy to learn and play, loving hilarious. There was an issue with resolving actions with a low number of players. Would not recommend as someone's first RPG, but a solid choice for anyone else. 8/10 Retrocausality GM: Ulta Players: Error 404 Sc4rs This game is a ton of fun, and I think I'm going to try running it for my IRL group soon. The rules were easy to grasp on a first read-through, and it was really easy to jump right into. We played the Fan:Fiction module, and even though IRL stuff had us finishing early, we managed to finish a timeloop, and try at least one of nearly every kind of action. Retrocausality lends itself to a slower and more conversational game, we found ourselves cracking dumb time travel jokes and it just flowed right into the game, instead of being distracting. The skills operate very similar to PDQ (which is very much a compliment) and once we got the hang of it, the matching suits/time maneuvers made a lot of sense and were a lot of fun to mess with. Summary: I think Retrocausality is a solid game that very much achieves what it sets out to do (make an off-the-rails time travel adventure) I loved how this game rewarded you for either trying to fix the timeline, or purposely loving it up, in the case of our game, we had one of each kind of character. It just made the game that much better that we could both achieve what we wanted in character without loving over the other person, or putting the GM in a corner he couldn't talk out of. 9/10
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Aug 30, 2012 22:52
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I was also in the playtest of Deathrow Live, playing Ol' Asner the infernal old inmate. For a rules light system, ThU/D is pretty decent. One of the problems that I had, though was that, though 'thumbs down' was supposed to be used when someone does something that you thought wasn't good or was uninteresting, it only punishes the player instead of helping them to make a more interesting story. I like the concept of the voting system, I just think there needs to be a more compelling reason to compete, and more tied-in mechanics that make the story better.
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Aug 30, 2012 23:59
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Intersector playtest time, hit me up in #tradgamesdesign
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Aug 31, 2012 00:11
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Gonna try another go at running FYEW playtest tonight at about 12:30am GMT. Will be in #tradgamesdesign desperately hoping someone turns up. Anyone. At all! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
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Aug 31, 2012 06:37
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Here's the report for the in-person test I ran of Deathrow LIVE! As I previously mentioned, this playtest was extremely rushed. No one really knew the rules outside of a 2 minute overview, and we were just trying to get something recorded because the shop was about to close. The actual game went okay, for a two round rush-through. People seemed to have fun, but no one really knew what they were doing. I think that may have made people a little overly hesitant, because they weren't sure of how to play. Our characters included three of the pre-constructeds (firebug James Jett, crazy former military man Lt. Arn Maarkson, and stabby thief "Slick" Rick McDick), as well as a cat burglar (who was actually a cat) and an insane pirate who thought his pond was the sea. Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1bt7euJe_8 And here are thoughts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTgLfEzkpp0 Again, I don't know how much you can take from this playtest. But from watching, here are my thoughts (note: I wrote these prior to sc4rs' playtest, but waited for my video uploads to finish before posting): Good:
Bad:
I think that's about it. People had fun, but it was just so rushed there's not much to be gained. Everyone wants to play again, though, so I'm still enthusiastic. The post for Dis?unity is forthcoming, as soon as the last video finishes uploading
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Aug 31, 2012 19:13
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Run Amp2Amp
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Aug 31, 2012 20:33
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Here's my  trip report for Dis?Unity!We played an as-reccomended four-player game at The Arcane Lab in Merced, Calif. We used the suggested list of challenges, and designed our own characters without using the card-based alternate generation system. I was Hieronymus Bush, a religious fundamentalist representing American interests and the treasury. We had a mafioso representing labor and defense, a bomb smuggler who was obsessed with death as the Soviets and agriculture, and an octopus-loving pirate representing the military and foreign affairs. Our story was a ridiculous, wide-ranging affair, obsessed with sausages, sea lettuce, and octopus-shaped submarines. In one word, it was a blast. We would most definitely play again, though we had a few issues with the resolution mechanic which you can read on about. You can watch our gameplay here: Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owiib6OBSqs Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QpHG-F_rc8 (Sorry if the volume is a little low. If you turn it up a bit, you should be able to understand us. Let me know if you had any other issues; I had to transcode it to get YouTube to recognize it.) And here's a little video of the other players talking about the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akYlxvsszx4 I didn't tape myself talking about Dis?Unity, because I wanted to type up my thoughts. Sorry for the length! The Good:
The Bad:
Thanks to UberJew for coming up with a game that was a ton of fun to play! We really did enjoy our time with Dis?Unity, and I think with some tweaks to the resolution mechanic it could be outstanding.
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Aug 31, 2012 21:39
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This is a huge help in what I need to write to be more clear! Here's a few of my thoughts on the biggest problems based on your post (since I can't watch the youtubes at work) to get them written down and out there, in case anyone else wants to play this before I get a new version written. 1) The intention of resolution is whether the course of action you settled on succeeds. I'm thinking the best solution here is to make it explicit that the outcome of the event needs to be described and come up with a way to determine who has the final say in that. 2) Consequences are intended to represent how no matter whether what all political decisions piss someone off. The meters going up means the associated faction is getting more and more pissed off. It is also to counterbalance that a Flush is very easy to get with the Fudge mechanic and will pass all events, but doing so will spike one category high very fast. I'm wondering whether you counted every single card for consequences or just the five picked for resolution? The former is intended, and if you did it that way the threshold may just be too high. 3) I'll make the Minister mechanic clearer, the mechanic is not that the Minister gets to take credit for somebody else's idea, but they get to pick any idea and that idea is what counts as 'The Consensus'. They don't get to take credit for somebody else's proposal; that's what sabotaging is for. 4) In our in-house playtest Sabotage worked out occassionally, so I don't know if this is a game issue or just bad luck, I'll look into it and run some tests. 5) If you mash up ideas Credit goes to the first person who brought up any of those ideas. I thought I'd made that clear enough with the section on it in the playtest guide but I can probably add more bolding and underlines, because there should be no uncertainty about it. 6) If people are just arguing past each other the intention is that they declare no consensus, but I think I need to add a mechanic for that, letting anyone call for a vote at any time or maybe a time limit. Thank you very much for the feedback.
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Aug 31, 2012 22:00
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While we all await with baited breath various results, let me point you toward the October design contest, which you can actually get a head start on right now. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3504522
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Aug 31, 2012 23:00
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While I wait to hear back from Gau about whether or not he still plans to run a test of Arenaball, if there's anyone who has the time and energy to attempt to run what is essentially a retardedly long game of WarhammerSports (it's real fun if you're into that sort of thing!), that'd be super great! Otherwise, I'll see what I can do with my group at home.
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Aug 31, 2012 23:08
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Here's an updated list of how playtests are going. Struckthrough games have been playtested, with feedback posted. • Druggeddwarf's The Last Days of the Meek • Flaky Biscuit’s Intersector • Glasgerion's Disarmament • Kwyndig's Emperor Mittens • Lemon Curdistan's gently caress You Erick Wujcik • Red_Mage’s Amp 2 Amp • sc4rs’ Arenaball Looks like we've gotten through 7 (6 if you don't count Jurassic Central Park) out of 14, which isn't bad!
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Aug 31, 2012 23:47
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Since I'm not elfgaming, I could try running Last Days, Disarmament, or FYEW today.
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Aug 31, 2012 23:56
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MadRhetoric posted:Since I'm not elfgaming, I could try running Last Days, Disarmament, or FYEW today.
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Sep 1, 2012 00:05
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If anyone'd like to help playtest Emperor Mittens, I'll be holding it sometime between now (about 9:30 PM CST) and like, 1:00 AM CST. Just drop into #tradgamesdesign or #alldayplay on SynIRC, and we can get this ball rolling.
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Sep 2, 2012 03:25
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I should be home in an hour or so, I can hop on and help playtest then.
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Sep 2, 2012 03:27
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 Obviously the playtest is going well.
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Sep 2, 2012 06:10
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 Going into this, I expected to finish more than one round. Welp
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Sep 2, 2012 06:34
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This playtest was physically painful, and combat is way too effective and large of a subsystem. It took us an hour AFTER character creation to just get through one round. The document is really shittily set up, and a lot of the mechanics are unnecessarily obtuse. The concept is cool, but just not well done. There's way too much temptation to get into combat, because it's so effective. What's supposed to be a game of politics and persuasion and resource management turns into basically risk.
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Sep 2, 2012 07:01
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The only rules I really understood were these: 1. When you read or try to implement a rule, subtract one from your patience score. 2. When your patience equals zero, stop playing the game.
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Sep 2, 2012 08:00
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So, did anyone actually get around to running FYEW?
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Sep 2, 2012 11:59
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Emperor Mittens Playtest Log - http://app.roll20.net/campaigns/chatarchive/33800/ (this link doesn't have anything at it, though it is where the log is supposed to be. I think Roll20 just takes time to upload maybe?) I think a real problem with Emperor Mittens as it stands is that it has so many things that you have to derive from other things - there are 4 stats which require derivation, each in a different way, plus the nightmare equation that is finding out how much damage you do in combat. All of these values are set up such that they would be perfectly easy to find out if we had been given a board, like if this was a real board game, but we weren't - we had to remember that one stat gives you a trade value of 6-stat/5-stat (min 1) while another gives you half its value in Luxury, and so on. Because of all this math we had to do, and because of the fact that the document is nigh impossible to navigate, it took us a lot longer than it really should have to get playing and then do a round. The worst thing is, I can see the system beneath all of this clutter and math, and I want to play it, but there's just so many things getting in my way.
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Sep 2, 2012 14:17
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Emperor Mittens Alright, I've cooled down now, so I'll actually post what I think about it and how I think it could be fixed. To start this off, the concept is HELLA cool. You're Ministers for different parts of the galaxy, who report back to have have to get the favor of the Emperor. To do this, you need to tribute resources to the emperor - Energy to ultimately win the game, and the other resources to advance and get stat ups. Problem number 1: On the fly derived stats. At the start of each turn, you get your regions resources. The problem is, all of these are derived in different ways, and have different effects. There is no effective way to tell what stat is going to do what. Suggested solutions: One way you can solve this is Tables. Yes, Tables. I hate them personally, but when your math is as complicated as this, it actually speeds things up, and gives you an idea of what you should get. Another way to solve it is to have a Character reference Sheet of some kind that tells you all the formulas and what everything does in an organized way. That brings us to Problem number 2: The game document is scattered and unorganized. If you want to find something in it because you want to do something with it, you have to search the entire document (which is mercifully not too long), figure out that you're actually looking at the wrong time that it's mentioned, look over the document again- oh, crap, people are waiting on you. Okay, gently caress it, let's go to war. Suggested Solutions: You could use hyperlinks in the google document, but really, that's a stop-gap measure, and not a permanent one. The only thing I can suggest here is to lay out everything better. Figure out what the layout with the least content overlap is and use it. As it is, the wordcount could be cut down a lot. Another thing that would help amazingly - A Table of Contents and Index. Not having those means you have to search through the document. Even if it's only 10 pages or so, that would help a lot. Problem number 3: As I let on in #2, combat is way too attractive of an option. It appears to be the only way to take regions from what I was able to see, and it is a large portion of the rules, so it ultimately seems encouraged. This might cause it to be disqualified, but I think it actually sneaks in under the required word limit. Regardless, it seems like the game is trying to be about politics, resource management and intrigue when the combat rules say it's about being the last man standing. Solution: Create obvious reasons you don't want to be at war. Make it so that if you go to war, you can't do anything else that turn, or if you go to war, the emperor loses favor from you. I don't really know how you would deal with this one effectively. I could go on for about 2 more points, but I'm running out of time. I really hope that you make this game better and more accessible.
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Sep 2, 2012 14:43
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I want to apologize to sc4rs for not getting around to playtesting Arenaball. Someone should do that, it seems like a really neat game.
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Sep 2, 2012 15:04
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 These games still need to be playtested: • Amp 2 Amp • Arenaball • Disarmament • gently caress You Erick Wujcik • Intersector • Last Days of the Meek
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Sep 2, 2012 15:10
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Apparently, making people run elfgames in their spare time in the last week of august/first week of september causes scheduling problems. This is unfortunate, even if warning was given that this was coming just over a month ago and that plans should be made. It has also proven difficult finding people willing to playtest all of the games, and even reviewing them has become something of a commitment. Also, the opinion has been advanced that the playtest should not determine the victor and that I should simply declare a winner based on my personal opinion alone. As pleasing as this stroke to my ego is, that would be somewhat akin to me masturbating in front of an audience and then leaving the stage with fingers in the air. By comparison, a playtest is more like throwing a game to the lions; ultimately painful and harsh, but educational and most certainly about as fair as this is going to get without a panel of judges to score it afterwards. So. What is a contest overlord to do? First of all, I will finish reviewing every game still currently in the contest by midnight GMT tomorrow. I want everyone to understand how serious I am about this. I have been entirely too remiss and lax in this duty to those who have stuck with this contest to the end and this will be amended now. Second, in light of this, the deadline - final deadline - is extended to September 7th. Seven days to review and decide the victor leaves the final score to be decided on September 14th. Finally. The scoring system being based entirely on the playtest is immutable. However, in light of authors having trouble getting their games tested, here is a final amendment. You may playtest your own game. However, any game that gets playtested by someone other than its author gets a +1 bonus to its final score. You should already know how important a simple +1 can be in this contest. Oh, and LemonCurdistan has been Disqualified for whining about rules that have been posted for a month. An image will follow later. (Playtesting gently caress You Erick Wujcik will still count for having playtested another contestant's game. It amuses me.)
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Sep 2, 2012 15:56
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Oh, and LemonCurdistan has been Disqualified for whining about rules that have been posted for a month. An image will follow later. I bear the burden of martyrdom gladly.
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Sep 2, 2012 16:19
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Because I felt a little bad about being so negative, I designed an example character sheet for Emperor Mittens. This is just the three Resources and their stats, but it illustrates how much easier it could be to keep track of how much resource you get each turn. The numbered rows are the stats, and at the start of each turn the player shunts off any pre-existing resource to the big hold boxes to the right and fills any box that connects to a filled stat space with a cube representing a resource of that type.
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Sep 2, 2012 16:20
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It is a joke about France, you see.
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Sep 2, 2012 16:25
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Rulebook Heavily posted:Finally. The scoring system being based entirely on the playtest is immutable. However, in light of authors having trouble getting their games tested, here is a final amendment. You may playtest your own game. However, any game that gets playtested by someone other than its author gets a +1 bonus to its final score. You should already know how important a simple +1 can be in this contest. Dear denizens of TGD, I would very, very much like this +1 bonus. I know that Arenaball may be frightening on the surface, as it does involve rules and boards and sports, any or all of which alone might be enough to send some of you running for the hills. That said, I truly believe that in this time of great turmoil, Arenaball represents what is best about humanity - the ability for a few individuals at a time to set a little bit of their hectic, crazy, stressful lives aside in order to do an activity simultaneously so fruitless and yet so fulfilling as playing a game. (Especially a game set in the future, when there's no more financial crisis! Go go escapism!) And it's based on American Football, which is starting again, and what better way to celebrate America's national I ask kindly, for all of those, whether I have playtested your game or not (but seriously I playtested two! c'mon y'all), who participated, read, or otherwise enjoyed this thread to play a game. My game. Give me that +1 bonus and I will use it for the greater good, nay, the greatest good; my own personal gain. For that is what it truly means to be American.    (If you aren't American that's OK too, please feel free to playtest my game anyway!)
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Sep 2, 2012 18:09
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YESSSSSS! Extensions are KEY! In light of Lemon's sactifice, I will do the very best to playtest FYEW tomorrow, and will be availible pretty much all day. And, if I can, I will play in any playtest that's going on. The plan is to get each and every game playtested by the 7th. Give me a time that people are free, and if I have to stay up all night for it, I will.
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Sep 2, 2012 20:01
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I said I'd do Disarmament or Last Days, so I'll do Disarmament or Last Days if people show up.
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Sep 2, 2012 20:16
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These are all the reviews for the August 24th deadline. Oh, and remember when I said not to fail this phase‘s bonus objective? I wasn‘t kidding. I‘m going to be mocking you. Kwyndig‘s Emperor Mittens Now this is squeaking by on a technicality. This is practically a paragraph, and not the most perfectly formatted one at that. It‘s advice, but not rules. If I write any more, my review will be longer than the document itself. Final Score: 3 +1 Traditional Game bonus = 4. It‘s relevant to the game, and it‘s... there, I guess? This score more or less reflects the effort I see put into this. There are ways it could have scored lower, but at that point I‘d resort to the Wall of Shame. Druggeddwarf‘s Last Days of the Meek This document is a considerable leap upwards from previous efforts! A table of contents, an introduction, a glossary of terms and all those little but important things can really spruce up a document, not to mention the graphics. There‘s not much in terms of new content, but it‘s more or less something that makes the entire previous effort better. Final score: 9 +1 game = 10. A Bonus is yours. UberJew‘s Dis?unity Here‘s another minimalistic advice shorty. It has more content, some event rules for the base setting, a little bit of general useful advice, but ultimately it‘s two pages and there‘s not a lot to say or do. It does bring in some new organizational techniques compared to previous efforts, but it doesn‘t exactly seem like effort! It‘s pretty obvious that quite a few contestants didn‘t plan their modules out in advance. Final score: 6. At this stage, it‘s clear that many people were in it to stay in the contest. Commendable, but it doesn‘t bring rewards. Also, UberJew did not manage to play a traditional game with anyone because he was too busy discussing and making them on the internet. I just want all of you to know that. Know, and in your heart of hearts, possibly mock. Flaky Biscuit‘s Intersector (with benefits) Still this contest‘s least comprehensible entry, and still the one with the most detailed play aids! A month into the contest, the game decided to explain how it works and what you do in it. The biggest problem the game has remains that there is no frame of reference to attach yourself to and put the rules into some kind of context in your head, meaning it all tends to run together and it‘s hard to maintain your interest- if you don‘t understand anything, everything you do feels meaningless, arbitrary and disconnected. I hear tell that having no context we can relate to is a deliberate decision, but when making a document meant to be read and comprehended it‘s kind of unhelpful. But, give the game its due, it eases you in as smoothly as it can given its self-imposed limitations. It‘s still somewhat disappointing to me personally, though! The outline opened up a lot of interesting questions, but it chooses to remain a big question mark. Final Score: 7 +1 tradgames = 8. Intersector earns a bonus for its effort, but will it get to use them? alakath‘s Thu/D: Deathrow LIVE! (plus) All cards, all the time, all of them with their own relevant mechanical widgets and descriptions to help make your Deathrow LIVE game interesting. These are some pretty crazy arenas, and the whole format and layout is nice and easy on the eyes. Yep. Well, what can I say? It‘s a bunch of cards. Final Score: 7 +1 Kittygame = 8. It‘s a good effort and it gets a Bonus. MadRhetoric‘s Nothing Amazing Happens Here Here‘s a way to make a detailed advice document: Provide examples. Ever read a passage in a game go “Don’t put too much treasure, but also not too little” and then provide no context for what the hell that means? That’s an advice chapter without examples. This isn’t an advice chapter like that. This is the better kind. It also provides a lot of detail (and far too much talk of tropes and tropers but that’s beside the point). Final Score: 7. And to quote the author’s own words: “Not gonna make the bonus because I don't have any (elfgaming) friends”. I’ll let you all meditate on that particular bit of insight on your own. Ettin’s Retrocausality And here’s another way to make the advice section interesting: Make it interesting. Funny. Clever. With great insights. Easily read on its own! Examples of actual play (or at least good guidelines). In a game where linear time is largely optional, it helps. And any document that lays out the consequences of every single time traveler wanting to take the opportunity to kill Hitler (and thus spawning a million Beta-Hitler timelines) in the general advice section has no problems being entertaining. Top it off with some setting bits and a big helping of potential allies and antagonists and you’ve got a good supplement. Final Score: +1 I guess pbp effortposts involving aphagia and an octopus count = 10. Bonus! Now go time-kill Hitler to celebrate. Comrade Gorbash’s Ministry of Heaven I don’t have any beef with the content itself, but… simple paragraphs in word default layout for five pages? Well it doesn’t inspire, and it’s the minimal effort required for functionality. It presents alternate ways to play the game, so it doesn’t seem to add much relevance to what is needed to playtest it, but it’s content and it’s there. I’m predisposed towards liking dungeon managing games because Peter Molyneux did strange things to my mind when I was young, but there’s not a lot more for me to say. Final Score: 6 +1 game log = 7. Another “I’m still in the contest” effort. gnome7’s Dungeon Manager: A King’s Reward And then the game about dungeon management has alternate settings too. Huh. Well they’re nicely formatted! and the alternate card effects are interesting bits of fun and games. The cheat sheet is definitely a handy thing to keep around during a game, or at least should be. All in all, a clear improvement on what came before and useful play additions which should assist any playtests. Final Score: 8 +1 Funhaving (but do fix that link) = 9. A Bonus for the king! Ulta’s Jurassic Central Park (Yes) Those page borders are adorable. They’re like a miniature summary of what the game’s about! They’re so good that you added an entire empty page with them on so people can take notes, I guess! The GM advice doesn’t have them, which displays this game’s clear player-empowerment bias. Aside from that, it’s a cheat sheet and advice on using Jack Horner, Famous Paleontologist. (Who is, without fail, introduced using the full title.) My big worry would be that these sheets would get spattered with bits of food all the time. Final Score: 7 +1 magic missile gun thing = 8. homf homf bonus, rar. Glasgerion’s Disarmament (+1) A sample adventure! It’s odd how many of the games don’t include one, but Disarmament does now! Even if the actual events in it only fill one and a half page of space, it includes a Rude Dude Rampage and that will never go amiss. Interestingly, it also includes an alternate setting, meaning that there are officially more alternate campaign settings than there are adventures to run in this contest. All that said, the formatting and content pass muster but don’t really rise to the occasion. Servicable, but not amazing. Final Score: 7. No traditional game played at all, just simple posts and design work done about them on the internet. It’s the closest thing to blogging about how your dream campaign would go. sc4rs’ Arenaball Um. Wow! That sure is a lot of pages for sample characters and social contacts. Normally I wouldn’t expect a pregenerated character section to need its own index, but this one kind of does. And the things that worked in the game’s favor in previous modules (stark, clear sports-manual style formatting)… doesn’t here. This is a lot to take in, and a lot of it runs together when I read it. I’ll recognize that there was some tremendous effort put into this, but it all needs that little bit of extra organization. Final Score: 6 +1 playtest funhaving = 7. Didn’t score on this drive. LemonCurdistan’s gently caress You Erick Wujcik This game’s problem is its author whining to me on IRC how unfair I am being to Europeans (what? I’m Icelandic, speak up I obviously can’t hear you from way over here in totallyunfairland). But I’ll review it anyway, because that’s what I do. This document is… an example of play! I guess! It’s pretty much one of the things which would improve the previous document, but since examples of play are pretty much an author writing an imaginary version of how they imagine their game going (seriously, writing these is a weird drat thing to do and experience) I can somewhat understand leaving it off for people to ignore it in its own document. It does continue the usual standard set by the simple and functional previous documents. But it adds nothing new! Final Score: 6 +1 I swear I had fun it’s just these technical difficulties = 7. So why was this week's bonus objective so “easy” (relatively speaking)? As with all other things, it satisfied my own selfish desires. When I have problems designing games, I go out and play games and have fun and usually arrive, if not at fresh insights, at least at some new source of inspiration. It’s thus absolutely hilarious to me that people would fail to play games while posting about and making games on this forum. Let’s hope you don’t equally fail to playtest games (and if you have playtested a game but haven’t posted about it, you will not count as having played – you have to post. Post goddamnit.)
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Sep 3, 2012 23:01
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Wait, we could've counted PBP as playing games? Well gently caress me.
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Sep 3, 2012 23:42
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Jesus... I'll be honest, I want expecting to be doing well being my first ever contest entry and all, but i'm not complaining! In other news, I am about ready to give up running my own actual play test, so it's time for a new tactic: I will be available in #tradgamesdesign tomorrow from 7pm GMT to play in anyone's play test. I will stay on as long as I can and will play as many as I can, so just stop me a line!
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Sep 4, 2012 17:50
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You guys need to step up! What's left to playtest? Also I went ahead and had some RL pals playtest this because that is how I roll. (links probably don't work yet) quote:Ben: (also, I ran retrocausality and have audio files of it, but that's secondary to the above)
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Sep 5, 2012 15:01
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And here I was beginning to regret extending the deadline due to lack of posting.
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Sep 5, 2012 15:09
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Ettin posted:You guys need to step up! What's left to playtest? It's the same list as last time you posted, though I updated the list to reflect if these game designers had playtested anything based on posts in this thread. • Amp 2 Amp (has not playtested any other games) • Arenaball (playtested ThU/D, Jurassic Central Park) • Disarmament (has not playtested any other games) • gently caress You Erick Wujcik ("DQed", hasn't playtested other games) • Intersector (playtested Dungeon Manager, Emperor Mittens, and ThU/D) • Last Days of the Meek (No playtests, but has tried several times to do FYEW) Arenaball, Disarmament, and Amp 2 Amp are going to be really difficult to do online. It looks like Arenaball and Intersector should be our priorities, though, based on their creators' contributions to playtesting I'll be in IRC tonight (around 5 p.m. PST, 12 midnight GMT) to help out with whatever playtest people want to do.
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Sep 5, 2012 19:00
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i loving hate it when people credit dungeons and dragons and e. motherfucking gary gygax for creating roleplaying games. rpgs were a natural outgrowth of the wargaming hobby and it was pretty much just a matter of time before someone starting sitting down and playing an individual little dude from advanced squad leader or something. hell, the first rpg might have been hey you are a starship crew (traveller/star fleet battles), go have adventures that blow the poo poo out of killing monsters underneath a castle with a lovely name. even if we accept that it had to be D&D, seriously, gently caress D&D, it has destroyed the hobby it tried to create. i think if you compare these two contests to each other (that is, this one and mine where you had to make a retroclone) you're going to see such a stark difference. a few gems came out of my contest (the most notable of which, at this point, is sacred BBQ and it's still under dev. congrats to jimbozig for that.). this contest, every finisher is something new, something fresh, something loving awesome to see. i was going to sit down and try to rank them or something, but gently caress that. this isn't really about first place. i know when i sat down to write traceuse, it wasn't to win. i didn't want to win with it. i wanted to do something different. i was standing on the edge of a canyon, watching a bunch of people wander and slip down the sides, climb all the way down and all the way up, brave the rushing river at the bottom, and i thought (and still think) that was loving dumb. really loving dumb. we go through all these motions in this hobby that we can't even see. seriously. i had someone try to justify hero system as a real thing that should exist. gently caress those people. so i set to work. i looked at the birds. birds don't climb unless they want to. i built a skeleton, it looked like some bat wings, and then i built a harness. it was starting to look like a real thing. i never got to cover the wings, never got to test it out, see if it flew, but that's what I have in my garage right now: a framework and a harness. it's ready to fly, it just needs a little more work. and really, it was worth it just to think differently about crossing that loving canyon. to bother myself with all of the considerations of balance and wing loading and updrafts and how the poo poo am i going to land this damned thing. to all of the finishers, i want to say, congratulations on building your wings, on testing them out, taking the risk and trying to fly. flying isn't easy, i know better than most. a few of the gliders soared - one even on an unfinished prototype. most of your wings flew, but just barely, making the other side of the canyon in a narrow spot or just barely. a few fell short or crashed and burned. that's okay. you tried. you took the leap. that's what is important. i really think we all fell into a trap, though. it's not a bad trap, it's just a trap that we can't see. that we don't see. we really need to start asking ourselves why we're crossing the canyon. i'm not saying we shouldn't be - i mean, we're all here, doing this aren't we? we all enjoy these games. but we need to stop acting like everything comes with it. why is four to six people the optimal group. why is there a game master. why do we have a rule book. why is it so loving heavy. why is the session a thing. we need to start looking at all of these elements and tearing them down, taking them apart, keeping what's good. i miss going to pax. i think one of the biggest things i take away from pax is how big video games are. we shouldn't be like video games. it is about time we started letting proper design philosophies inform our games, though. fun should be the goal, and good methods should be standard. there are objective criteria upon which we can judge games and we need to start using them. 8-bit games were hella fun back in the day, but no one wants to play those any more. half of the roleplaying world is stuck playing final fantasy nine on the damned playstation. how lovely is that? we really do live in a golden age of tabletop games. that means it's time to turn it around and give back. here we have a dozen or so attempts to do just that. in flying there's a half-humorous aphorism: "any landing you walk away from is a good one." it's true. you guys flew, you made it across the crevasse, and while rulebook is gonna come along in a few days and critique your technique and the construction of your gliders, gently caress 'im. you all get awards. landing at all is first place. although i do have it on good authority that the winner of this contest is going to be very, very, very happy.
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Sep 5, 2012 19:32
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 04:39 |
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As a forward, I'd like to thank Rulebook for extending this deadline. I did my playtest a full week ago, but the recording I did was corrupted and the notes I took got lost. I was a bit too dejected to write up the whole thing and, frankly, gave up on the contest right then and there! But then we had a deadline extension, and in those couple of days I calmed down, grabbed the photos I took with my phone, and threw them into a word document with descriptions of roughly how the game went. I playtested Nothing Amazing Happens Here, although I really should've done Intersector or Arenaball, given the group of friends I played with and the fact those haven't been playtested yet. The long and short of it is, the playtest did not go the greatest, but we had fun anyway. Also, the game needs a bit of work. Nothing Amazing Happens In This Playtest.
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Sep 5, 2012 22:20
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