Playtest brainstorming

I thought during the last week how a playtest should be managed, being a complete neophyte on this topic. I made the usual error: I started searching the web… then I got to the point that I do not need to worry if and what are the standards. I only have to keep in mind these golden rules to be constantly applied to every phase of the playtest:

  • Any activity should be useful, if not enjoyable, to the eyes of the GM who actively participate to the playtest
  • I need to make any experience of the playtesters somehow interesting so that they can join the playtest
  • I want to keep a KISS approach and not invent any complicate solution which could bring to a complicate failure

In this sense, the first question is the effort required to any playtester. Then, the way to communicate and to let any other playtester to be aware of these inputs. Lastly the ‘reason why’ a GM should have in order to join the playtesters group.


The answer to the first question is as few as possible with a minimum of a monthly touch point: I plan to send a request via email for any feedback from the playtest. Needless to say that there could be more frequent interactions: whenever a GM has a doubt or needs a clarification about a rule application, then he can freely write me so that he has not to wait till the next monthly touch point. I will send the reply to the request and any relevant result or outcome will be posted on the dedicated page of this website so that any other playtester can have it available. In addition to that, for the sake of completeness, I will add in the monthly touch point also a summary of these points.


The second point is already embedded in the first one: trying to demonstrate that there will not be a huge effort on the shoulders of playtesters, I have already explained the communication channels. An email to whom purposely joins the playtest on a monthly basis and an update of the page “Playtest” (which is not on a monthly basis but a summary every month of the updates will be added in the monthly mail). Full stop. I have set up a Telegram channel for overall updates on the VI·VIII·X game and I do not plan to use this for playtest as well. Of course for any urgent topic, I can be reached over there (I wonder what could be an urgent matter but nevertheless I am open even to these kind of events).


The last point is the hardest to define… I am aware that this world works only on returns and being my plan a zero-budget plan, the situation is contradictory. I know that I can always find a small number or playtesters among old friends but what I am aiming is to let this game be played by the most possible heterogeneous audience. The less the audience knows about me or the game, the better is the feedback to me. For this reason I am in the position to offer a kind of ‘premium’ to the playtesters. The first one I have in mind is a duly credit in the final book (very Kickstarterish, but absolutely due). Then, biased by Kickstarter, I have in mind a ‘special edition’ of the final rulebook limited to those who attended the playtest. Or even a discount on the next books. Or a free of charge copy of the ‘expanded rules’ (I have already told about it and now it is its turn: I am currently revising the notes of this book and thinking about its contents). The final decision depends of course on the number of participants. Maybe I could run a survey among them to define their reward for the playtest…


What is sure is that I have already started to write the most important part of the ‘expanded rules’: the chapter entitled “How to run a VI·VIII·X game”. In that sense this part will be shared in advance (likely not everything) on posts here so that GMs can be supported even during the playtest with these previews.

Well, if you consider that I started with the goal to describe a precise and concise scope and rules for the playtest and the outcome is the current post, this means that I need to earn a lot of experience … and, of course, this also means that I will write scope and rules more clearly in the next future!

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