{"id":155,"date":"2017-07-15T20:57:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-15T20:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2017\/07\/15\/turn-playtesting-is-hard-yall\/"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:39:43","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:39:43","slug":"turn-playtesting-is-hard-yall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2017\/07\/turn-playtesting-is-hard-yall\/","title":{"rendered":"Turn – Playtesting is Hard, Y’all"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is going to be a little more colloquial than normal, so bear with me. On playtesting in general, I’ve got some Feels\u2122, but later on in the post there’s some more about my recent work on Turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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I took this of a bison at a local park. \ud83d\ude00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

On playtesting while designing in general: <\/b><\/p>\n

Monkeys on pogo sticks, playtesting is hard. While it is somewhat easier being a player in a playtest for Turn, being a Storyteller is exhausting<\/i>. Now, it’s not the game. It’s not the players! I’m just an amateur GM and I struggle a lot with it. In both cases (player & storyteller) in playtests, I’m doing double-or-more duty of storytelling\/playing and analyzing the ruleset and how it interacts with the players and itself and how the game functions as a whole oh and also I have to worry about how to fix things and where to clarify wording in the main document and ohmYGOD!<\/p>\n

BUT. This is really an important part of the design and development process. Not all<\/i> games need playtested, but many truly benefit from it, and Turn needs<\/i> this a lot because it is a complicated game with many interlocking pieces and concepts, and for me, it must be perfect<\/i>.<\/p>\n

And like, here’s the deal. I have three major documents in which I maintain Turn’s text – two public facing for players (one for internal playtests, one for external playtests), and one private. When I make an update (which I typically do live), I update all of them. I use comments in the private document if I can’t make immediate documents, and add identical text when I can to each document.<\/p>\n

This is essential for my process. I have memory issues that make even taking brief notes difficult because they may be meaningless to me later, so if it’s simple stuff, I change it as soon as possible. I design in-process, on the fly. I can’t rely on future Brie. I need to make the game now<\/i>, not later. So when I say running and playing these playtests are challenging, it is not simply the act of those things, it is those things and actively designing and critiquing my own work<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I have tried to make games without doing this. I can’t. When I playtest face to face, if I don’t have my tablet at hand, I struggle to fix the things that need updated at a later date. I can play and even storytell, to a degree, while I am making edits. I let players have some chatter while I make notes, or take a quick break. I can roleplay sometimes while I’m trying to determine how a mechanic might impact play, and can sometimes start using it while playing or running instead of waiting to try it later.<\/p>\n

I don’t know what I will do if I ever do an even bigger, more complicated game than Turn, but this is my reality right now. I wonder if other people experience this. Do you take notes? Do you edit and change rules on the fly? Can you put off changes until later? I don’t know how weird this is.<\/p>\n

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Beast archetype: Otter<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

In playtesting Turn specifically, I’ve made some minor changes<\/a>. The core mechanic has not been adjusted. The secondary and tertiary mechanics and structures, some text and interaction, have been fiddled with. I wanted to just go over some basic stuff.<\/p>\n

Firstly, in combat, which I talked about on Twitter this week<\/a>, I’ve finalized the basics. Shifters vs. small groups of humans is simple – shifters call the shots entirely. Any degree of violence, any amount of harm – but there are other consequences. For shifters vs. groups of humans (4+), it gets more complicated. Shifters can flee, if they want. They could sacrifice themselves for the good of others. Or… they can kill everyone. Everyone. <\/i>But, that’s all the options they get.<\/p>\n

For shifter-to-shifter combat, I’ve added an assortment of options based on the beast archetype that the player has. If they have specifically chosen powers on the beast archetype, they may impact the combat. Then, they pick from a Consequences list to apply to their opponent. It worked alright in my first experience with it, though I did end up clarifying some wording.<\/p>\n

Second, I had to clarify some elements of the core nature of Turn. Here is an excerpt from the current Turn document explaining the nature of shapeshifters in game and the stories that have freedom to be told:<\/p>\n

How Shapeshifters Work<\/b>
While there are some details players will fine-tune in their game, there are a few items of note for how shifters work in Turn. The most important things to note are that:<\/p>\n