Man, designing a Blades In the Hark hack can be a heckin’ lot of work! I’m so close to having the elements I want assembled for the public playtest version of Age of Blood, but every unturned stone hides another mess of unfinished placeholder text or un-interrogated draft design work. Running a roll20 playtest for some new players has helped out a lot though, particularly in making me throw together much nicer player-facing handouts and creation guidelines.
Anyway, enough about that. There’s a question that’s been nagging at me that I wanted to ask the group about, and it relates to what you like to see as a reader when looking at a playtest alpha. Do you prefer more of a Quick-Start kind of material with only polished content and handouts, dense with just the rules and maybe a few chunky pieces of setting to get you started? Or do you want to see the full state of the in-progress rulebook, including warty philosophy-of-play chapters, unfinished or experimental mechanics, setting descriptions and rambling faction lists waiting for editing, in-setting fluff content that may or may not end up in the final, etc.?
#AgeOfBlood
Curious to hear from the designers/hackers as well: which approach did you feel suited your playtest versions best?
Unedited Qucikstart, because easier to implement possible suggestions.
Matthijs Krijger that makes a lot of sense. I think I’m going to try to make a decent first impression with formatting and editing but that’s partially because I put off the Public Playtest for a little while (and thus have had time to spit-polish the current version). I’ve probably made more work for myself in the long run this way, alas.
You’ll also probably generate more interest imho.
Thanks for all the advice everyone! My playtest version is up now, and I tried to make it as streamlined as possible based on your feedback:
plus.google.com – Age of Blood – Playtest version 0.6 It’s a real thing! Check out the Drive …
As a hacker, I love seeing the full product, warts and all. Perhaps especially with the warts. As a GM, I love seeing that sort of thing.
However, as someone potentially testing your product and giving you feedback on the core experience, the polished and laser focused quickstart is the way to go. It is an easier sell to a potential playtest group. Any feedback is also likely to reflect how effectively your core mechanics and touchstones function at the table.
Kronos Wyrm yeah that’s what I eventually figured on. I made this post right around the time I started digging in to stuff like the Office Hours Playtest stream that Adam Koebel did with the GbM designer A. Gillis, trying to learn from the folks ahead of me about what works for a playtest beta.