The Playtest Challenge

[blankshield]

To these judges and those waiting with bated breath on their results, I say Bah!.

And in case that was not clear enough:

BAH!

Pfughy! I have playtested and revised Blood and Bronze twice in the time it has taken you to read and review your paltry 39 entries. I have a minimum of two more playtests and one more revision scheduled before Gencon. And I say to all of the other chefs out there:

Join me in my saying of Pfughy! Pay no attention to the judges. Sneer at the silence of the judgebot!


This is my challenge to you:

Playtest your game at least once between now and when the judges set down their verdict.

Playtest your game at least once after the judges set down their verdict and before Gencon.

Go! Playtest! Stop sitting on your hands waiting for these masked ninja freaky dudes, grab random people off the street, and playtest.

James

[M. Paul Buja]

James,

Playtest your game at least once between now and when the judges set down their verdict.

It has been done! (With a group of five players, including myself.)

And more importantly, the game totally passed the test. So I've made four or five very minor clarifications to the text, word changes really. I've changed the specified number of Wine dice in the materials list from "eight times the number of players" to "five times the number of players, plus an additional five." And I've written 369 words of player advice:

Succeed the Proscenium

In Bacchanal, you are thrust by dice to the fore of the stage to fabricate and describe scenes of erotic transgression. If this doesn't induce anxiety, and the game isn't with your lover alone, then you aren't doing it right.

Know also that the other players are an initially interested audience to the scenes you'll describe, but that you'll need to work creatively and take risks to maintain that interest. In the heat of play it's easy to focus your efforts on the creative demands of the dice. But you'll lose your audience if you do. Playing Bacchanal well is a matter of preserving and developing the interest of your audience despite the dice.

And so, some tips:

· Don't begin your story with an elaborate, wine- and blood-drenched cannibalistic orgy. It's too difficult to repeatedly escalate the debauchery if that's what the dice demand. Give yourself circumstances on which you can build.

· Don't wholly craft your narrations as reactions to the demands of the dice, without a higher concern for story arc. As humans, our interest is more strongly held by the unfolding of a story than by a series of disparate and wildly reactive events. The trick here is in your handling of continuity and suspense. A mysterious erotic act, or vision, in a scene, can be explained, or surreally aped in a later scene. Hallucinatory events can have their shocking truths revealed in subsequent scenes.

· Mix action with internal monologue in your narrations.

· Consider, before narrating a scene, how you feel about what you're preparing to describe. If you're not feeling vulnerable, not nervous, consider what you might describe instead that would feel vulnerable. In a live game like Bacchanal, the interest of the audience is more powerfully captured by how you feel about what you narrate, than by the details.

· On a related note, recognize that over-reliance on pornography and graphic violence in your scenes is a way of defending against exposure and vulnerability.

· Control your anxiety by playing with people you trust not to hurt you, and with the knowledge that the emotion you bring to your play is what commands the interest of the audience.

Playing is a more powerful experience than the examples in the text might suggest. (And I couldn't be more thrilled.)

M. Paul Buja

[blankshield]

James,

Playtest your game at least once between now and when the judges set down their verdict.

It has been done! (With a group of five players, including myself.)

Really? Since I posted? Damn, you're good!

More seriously, WOOT!

This makes two games, including mine, that I know to have been playtested. Where are the other 37, hunh?

Bring it, chefs!

James

[MikeSands]

I playtested mine during the contest and before submission. So there!

[blankshield]

I playtested mine during the contest and before submission. So there!

Bah! I care nothing for playtests that have gone before! Not even my own! Have you touched it since? Does your game haunt you in your sleep or has it become yesterday's fad already?

Again, I challenge: Playtest your game BETWEEN now and when the judges render their verdict, and the AGAIN after it!

It's all about the momentum, baby!

Next year, I'll challenge people to playtest during the contest.

James

[Rossum]

Have you touched it since?

Yes. I'm shooting for a real live "Limited Edition" in-print version of 1984 Prime available for sale at Gen Con this year. I'm *very* optimistic. So far, I've re-done my mechanics and roughly doubled my word count. I have an artist doing cover art for me, and I know what I'm doing about printing.

If anyone wants to talk ads, give me a shout soon. I'm also inclined to take discounted pre-sale orders from my fellow chefs. Any takes?

Does your game haunt you in your sleep or has it become yesterday's fad already?

Does "having dreams about the game world" count?

Again, I challenge: Playtest your game BETWEEN now and when the judges render their verdict, and the AGAIN after it!

I know I can meet at least half the challenge. Who's with me?

MDK

[Anomaly]

Well, next Tuesday night (Australian time), there'll probably be a playtest of PlotDevice's Myrmidon run by the man himself. It hasn't brokem my brain, but it will be a type of game I am unused to. The same night may also see a playtest or char-gen-fest for SAVEgame v1.1beta. I've introduced a lot of new gameplay options for different genres of videogame...but then felt compelled to write about them for the benefit of players and GMs. Unfortunately I've found the research for the genres to be very time-consuming.

[PlotDevice]

Argh!

"how can you expect to be thought of as a miracle worker if you actually say how long you think it will take to do?"

[PlotDevice]

Just finished a play test of Myrmidon and SAVEgame chargen.

It was fun!

SAVEgame does come over quite 'old skool meets new kewl' with some rather neat things going on as an underlay for the quite Gurps-esque chargen rules in terms of structure. I made up a 16 bit spaceship with time travel powers (well, time freezing anyhow) and my my compainion is the Red Ninja, a 16 bit platform and ninja shuriken. We will be interested to see how it pans our.

In Myrmidon, with so few numbers and limited time we used only myself as narrator, and used the other players as adversries for eahother. The card configuration worked rather well, though I have some suggestions for a 'player's sheet' that seems like a very good idea. The short play rules that we improvised willl now get incorporated into a basic short play ruleset I think... maybe.

The historical period we chose was the Persian war with the Greek citys states. We managed the narrative flow quite well, in quite broad strokes. I am quite encouraged by how it all panned out,

ANyhoo it is late now. Playtest challenge mostly complete!

Warm regards,
Evan

[Anomaly]

Yeah, what he said!

Myrmidon was fun. We managed to create an untold story of the Persian Wars, where the Greek forces were vastly outnumbered by the Persians. What followed was a plot with epic twists and turns, including a surprise attack by the Greeks under cover of a god-storm, which was turned against them such that in the mud they slew their own troops. There was a quest by the Persians to retrieve an obsidian dagger of destiny from the foot of Mt Olympus, but the dagger was cursed by the Greeks, and the Persian hero was exiled.

With SAVEgame, character generation was pretty quick, all done in 45 minutes with a good chunk of that time being discussion of what characters to play from the selected generation of videogames. If all goes according to plan, I'll post a playtest report around this time next week.

Michael.