Playtesting 101.2

I wrote a version of this post on playtesting nearly 5 years ago... since then, I've had some more experience in this area. Thus, the rewriting & the re-posting.

So, somebody has asked you to playtest their board game... is this a honor of the highest order or a clear clue to what a creampuff/pushover/Weeble you are?

I guess I fall into the "creampuff" category, as I've done a decent amount of playtesting & have volunteered to do more.

Why, you ask? Well, I think there's probably a healthy dose of "I got to play it first" along with the whole "I helped build that" thing that happens when you walk into a game store & see something you had a hand in making better. In most cases, I playtest for friends - people I genuinely like & respect as designers - and so there's an element of "get by with a little help from my friends" vibe going on as well. (Yes, everyone may now spend the rest of the day humming various selections from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" - but you get negative victory points for using any cover versions from the late 70's movie except Earth Wind & Fire's cover of "Gotta Get You Into My Life".)

I've been involved in a three different types of playtesting:

• the "let's see if this will work" phase

If you don't like the game designer, avoid this at all costs. This is the moment where their precious baby - the design they've dreamed about & sketched & worked the math & thought about while they were in standing in the shower (hey, some of my best sermon illustrations happen in there!) - is pushed from the protective nest of the designers' bosom to see if it will fly - or drop like a stone. Most of the time, these experiments end in a giant thud & usually without a satisfactory conclusion to the game. Personal examples: this was the stage at which I first playtested Ty Doud's Victory & Honor or Jeff Myers' as-yet-unpublished "Roach Coach" (which were both a lot of fun) and with some other games (which weren't).

• the "try to break the game" phase

Most of the playtesting I've done in the last 5-6 years falls into this category... this is where the rules & components of the game are pretty well-established and your job is to find the holes through blind playtesting.

For the uninitiated, "blind playtesting" is where the designer gives or sends you a copy of the prototype & the rules and lets you try to learn the game on your own. It is, btw, an ESSENTIAL part of good game design that is too often neglected. (Hint: when many of the playtesters have the same last name as the designer and/or publisher, it probably hasn't been blind playtested.)

We had a lot of fun sending Ray Mulford bizarre e-mails about his "Everybody Limbo" when we discovered that our playing style was completely different than his original playtest group. (It, btw, is a neat card game - I wish someone would pick it up.)

More recently, I've been part of the early playtest waves for Rob Daviau's SeaFall... which I signed a NDA for (that's "Non-Disclosure Agreement"... and it's kind of unusual for board game playtesting, except in cases where secret-y things are happening.) In other words, I can't tell you any more about this soon-to-be-published game - but it's really, really awesome.

• the "tweak the little things" phase

I like this stage - whether it's helping test special powers for Frank Branham's Battle Beyond Space (which finally got published - yeah!) or checking game balance for Joe Huber's Scream Machine, it's nice to play nearly finished games. (I also got to do a bit of this for Hasbro, but if I tell you what games, they'll come to my house & burn it to the ground... at least I _think_ that's what the NDA that I signed said. It may be worse than that. But the initials of the game is H*r*sc*p*.) My most recent "tweaking" was for Suburbia and the Suburbia expansion.

As a final note, I will say that having your name printed in the rules is really cool. What's humorous is that while I've tested a number of games for Frank Branham, the only published game of his that has my name in the credits is Dia de los Muertos, which I only played once and that VERY late in the development. OTOH, I did a lot more work & play on the "Evil Geniuses" prototype (which became Nodwick: The Card Game) and my name's not anywhere on that one. I figure we can call it even.