So no one except Andy does believe his little fairy tale?
Venom neutralized!

Mission accomplished.
We now return to your regularly scheduled Bitter non-designers thread.

QuoteSo, what does this change the fact that Andy K was injecting his poison in the debate.

POISON.  Wow.

Is this like dioxin? Or Dune-style kill-you-instantly "Gom Jabbar"?

Looking up in the "debate", I see that I equated some bitter critics to the Finding Forrester professor, and the Comic Book Guy (if anything, that's the more dastardly statement). Then, backing up someone else's side-observation, I said, "there is this one guy who writes for WOTC that hasn't played D&D".

I didn't say shit about "WOTC not playtesting thier stuff". And I didn't say that to deceptively leave it out or anything, it just didn't strike me to append every discussion of WOTC with my personal beliefs, listed off like the side effects on a drug commercial ("So this one dude who wrote some stuf for WOTC hasn't played D&D... Oh but I'm not saying that they don't playtest their stuff, they are well known for providing their materials to "tiger teams" of D&D core play groups for solid review, thorough playtesting and feedback. In fact, three of my friends including one of the authors of the material ('Stan!') were in the original intense playtest groups and their stories of vigorous playtesting and the intense feedback process really made me feel that they were 'doing it right' as it were. And I'm only appending this extra explanatory paragraph to each and every one of my sentences in case some bitter little fuck with a chip on their shoulder happens to come across my post and think that I'm saying 'WOTC doesn't playtest their stuff", cause I sure as shit don't believe it, and I'd actually be sorry if that impression came across simply because I was commenting on this one dude. Do not read my post before operating heavy machinery or if pregnant. If erection persists for more than four hours send Jeff Rients a private message.").

I've got a lot of friends who playtested the original D&D3E (and presumably 3.5, tho I don't know for sure), and having followed EnWorld religiously in 99, I could see that they playtested the fuck out of their stuff. I've got no argument against that, cause it's true. I'd never disagree with that.

So I have no idea where the "poison" is coming from. You say that you are the immune system, but you're acting like lupus.

Quoteyou tacitly acknowledge that Andy was guerilla marketing.

Marketing? ...for what? My roleplaying game? (pssst: I haven't produced jack shit). I don't make a dime for anything in the RPG world. I don't get kickbacks for plugging games that I've played that I find fun. Maybe if (when?) I do, your comments will be true. Maybe if I start selling something, I'll be more careful about "my public voice".

Ciao.

-Andy

Quote from: David RNope my defense is that at the end of the day, honest gamers who love rpgs don't buy the shit you , me or anyone else is peddling. They enjoy their games and leave all this internet bullshit, to folks who have to much time on their hands.

Regards,
David R

You nailed that one to the cathedral door, David. Agreed 100 percent.

-clash

So we all agree.

All is well, all is well.:cool:

Quote from: Andy KLooking up in the "debate", I see that I equated some bitter critics to the Finding Forrester professor, and the Comic Book Guy (if anything, that's the more dastardly statement). Then, backing up someone else's side-observation, I said, "there is this one guy who writes for WOTC that hasn't played D&D".

FWIW - I think I've been pretty neutral in this debate. I've tried to stay away from accusations of "POISON!!!" and "CYBER STALKER!!!" But I have to be honest about how I took your posts. Because you didn't just say "there is this one guy who writes for WOTC that hasn't played D&D."  I mean, that might be how you heard it in your head, and I take you at your word that you didn't mean to imply anything.  I'm just letting you know what I, personally, inferred. I might be way off base, but I thought I'd point it out in the interest of peace and harmony.

What you actually said was:

Quote from: Andy KInteresting note on that. There's this guy in EDIT:"The Next Town Over" who freelances for WotC, writing official games and supplements for D&D. IIRC, he wrote parts of Eberron, various game background stuff, etc. If I'm getting my info correctly, he's probably written a good few hundred pages throughout various D&D 3e/3.5 supplements, even today.

Quoth a friend:
"One of these days, I should really sit down any play this game."

The dude's never played a session of post-AD&D 2E D&D, and yet he's writing official material for it for years. :blink:

I took this as you implying the quality of the work was crappy.  As I've said in previous posts, this would not be a stretch considering the odds of someone who doesn't play a game creating something good for it – not impossible, but improbable. A reasonable extension of this is that the final product is schlock.

You then followed it up with your next post to clarify that it wasn't another forum, it was another town.  But look at what you added on the end.

Quote from: Andy KNot at another forum, in the next town over from me. Friend of someone in my gaming group. I dunno if he's online in some forum or not. I suspect that he isn't. It just sounds like he is contacted from time to time:

"Want to write more? We need a couple dozen pages on sorcerers in a jungle."
"Sure"
"Here you go, thanks!"

Now you might not have meant it, but I sure took it as confirmation you meant to imply that, essentially, WOTC didn't give a shit about the quality of the work; it was all this wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am transaction.

Like I said, you might not have meant to imply it, but it was not a stretch to infer it.

Now I'm not suggesting you post it after every line about WOTC, but it probably would have been helpful to avoid the accusations that came later (not that they were true, but it sure resulted in an ugly little set of posts and us having to endure Sett's never-ending search for Truth, Justice, and the Prussian way!) to post, at some point, exactly what you said here:

Quote from: Andy KOh but I'm not saying that they don't playtest their stuff, they are well known for providing their materials to "tiger teams" of D&D core play groups for solid review, thorough playtesting and feedback. In fact, three of my friends including one of the authors of the material ('Stan!') were in the original intense playtest groups and their stories of vigorous playtesting and the intense feedback process really made me feel that they were 'doing it right' as it were. And I'm only appending this extra explanatory paragraph to each and every one of my sentences in case some bitter little fuck with a chip on their shoulder happens to come across my post and think that I'm saying 'WOTC doesn't playtest their stuff", cause I sure as shit don't believe it, and I'd actually be sorry if that impression came across simply because I was commenting on this one dude.

I don't mean to say you should have anticipated responses and preemptively posted this.  But this would have gone a long way, for me personally, in explaining that you weren't implying substandard WOTC final product by your anecdotal knowledge of this one guy.

I'm just saying...

Quote from: James J SkachI don’t mean to say you should have anticipated responses and preemptively posted this.  But this would have gone a long way, for me personally, in explaining that you weren’t implying substandard WOTC final product by your anecdotal knowledge of this one guy.

Ahhh, I see. Yeah, I can see how folks could have read all that stuff into my posts (and that's totally my fault for dropping a bomb that I thought was merely a pebble, without thinking of how others might take it or react), and probably explains Sett's hair-trigger reaction as well. I'll try to be a little clearer in future discussions on that sort of thing. More than likely, though, I'll just sit out those kinds of discussions in the future.  It's not worth getting Lupus over.

Thanks for your perspective, that shed a lot of light on things. I honestly do appreciate it.

-Andy

Quote from: SettembriniPlaytesting is definitely something that seperates the layers of quality in our hobby.

It´s not all about professionality, but it´s about what can you trust in a given product.

Example: The fact-checking at GDW was quite good, but their playtesting...left a lot to be desired.

And there´s a lot of niche products and adventures that saw a lot of playtest, but wouldn´t earn anybody anything.

It´s the mid-tier publishers  who continue to chafe under playtesting demands. Too small to do in-house, schedules too professional to wait for external playtests in a meaningful way.

Spot on in every way.

Except that the lower-than-mid tier are struggling even harder--well, at least those who produce complex rules for games that aren't one-shot lovechilds but which could potentially be played for decades.

The latest trend here seems to be to publish a "beta" pdf of the rules, for which you actually pay money, which earns you the right to critique those rules, and to a discount on the final version. This is what ICE are planning for HARP sci-fi, and it's what Marc is planning for T5.

That could turn out to be a real PR disaster, though. Giving people a test drive of a crappy prototype may turn them off a product they may otherwise have bought.

Flying Mice does two rounds of playtest. The first one is in house alpha testing, with me as the GM. Here we knock the rough edges off the rules, and pick the low-hanging fruit. By the time we've finished alpha testing, the game is about 90-95% finished, and the game is playable. Then we put it out to a small circle of playtesters, the beta testers. It's their job to see if the rules are expressed well and the rules clear and complete. They are supposed to run the game and give feedback - though some are upfront saying they can't run it  but they want to give feedback anyways, which is cool.

About 10-20% of the playtesters disappear and never give feedback, and about the same percentage actually run the game, based on their questions and criticism. The rest read the game and give their opinions and suggestions, all of which makes the games much better. Dependant as we are on volunteers, we can't force the betatesters run the games, but the critiques of those who only read the rules are valuable in another way, so it all tends to work out. Having more playtesters who actually run the games would be wonderful, but this is, I think, about the most we can hope for, given our size and audience.

-clash

And that's a wise strategy, clash, because it's all happening behind the curtain. Why people would inflict beta pdfs on the paying public OTOH escapes me. I guess because they're trying to cough up money for the artwork and the print run.

Quote from: flyingmiceFlying Mice does two rounds of playtest. The first one is in house alpha testing, with me as the GM. Here we knock the rough edges off the rules, and pick the low-hanging fruit. By the time we've finished alpha testing, the game is about 90-95% finished, and the game is playable. Then we put it out to a small circle of playtesters, the beta testers. It's their job to see if the rules are expressed well and the rules clear and complete. They are supposed to run the game and give feedback - though some are upfront saying they can't run it  but they want to give feedback anyways, which is cool.

About 10-20% of the playtesters disappear and never give feedback, and about the same percentage actually run the game, based on their questions and criticism. The rest read the game and give their opinions and suggestions, all of which makes the games much better. Dependant as we are on volunteers, we can't force the betatesters run the games, but the critiques of those who only read the rules are valuable in another way, so it all tends to work out. Having more playtesters who actually run the games would be wonderful, but this is, I think, about the most we can hope for, given our size and audience.

-clash

As my sig says. This is almost 1 for 1 how HinterWelt handles it. I will add that I have play testers from around the world including Egypt, India and China.

Bill

Quote from: HinterWeltAs my sig says. This is almost 1 for 1 how HinterWelt handles it. I will add that I have play testers from around the world including Egypt, India and China.

Bill

Most excellent!

-clash

Pretty much how I handle it as well. Albeit I work like so: Test it myself with critical friends. Test it with more critical friends. Rewrite, recruit testers and send it to them. Get responses and rewrite as best to continue the feel and fix any problems.

Quote from: J ArcaneYawn.  I've heard this one a million times before.  It was stupid then, and it's stupid now.  

I've even heard it regarding every concieveable type of entertainment.  I've heard it about RPGs, video games, books, movies, TV series, cross-stitching, and on and on and on.

"You can't criticize because you didn't/don't write/perform/sing/etc. yourself!"  This version's just as laced with amatuer psychology and idiotic implications of jealousy as the rest of them.

Fuck you.  I like what I like, and don't like what I don't like.  That's all the "credentials" I need, thank you very much, now take your silly fallacies elsewhere.

Well said. Conversely, just because you publish a game yourself doesn't mean that you knwo dick about game design. Let's be honest, the "indie" label is a reinvention of "vanity press" publishing. These people could have wiped their ass with a napkin and photocopied it -- Lulu would still bind it and sell it as a book for their standard fee.

That said, I'm not saying that all "indie" games are crap (my shelf of several speaks to the contrary). But many of them are, IME. Or, if they aren't crap, they certainly aren't anything special. Point is, just because you have a published game, it doesn't mean that you know any more about gaming than people who don't. That kind of thinking is bullshit, mang.

Quote from: jdrakehPoint is, just because you have a published game, it doesn't mean that you know any more about gaming than people who don't. That kind of thinking is bullshit, mang.

I couldn't agree more. I just love it how people suddenly become experts after they make a few games. Experience means a lot, but there is not one way of doing things.

Quote from: HinterWeltAs my sig says. This is almost 1 for 1 how HinterWelt handles it. I will add that I have play testers from around the world including Egypt, India and China.

Bill

ESL playtesters?  Cool.