Hi everyone! Thanks for the advise over the last few months. It's been very helpful.

So, I've got my rulebook and character sheet. The rulebook is badly written so I'll have to explain much of it at the table, but it has all the charts and tables you.need: character creation, combat, spell lists, monsters, magic items.

My brother volunteered to run a game. (He's creative and wants to GM.) So Sunday we'll be playing. I figure this session I'll be explaining mechanics and get everyone to the point where they can look at the right charts and tables themselves when needed. My brother can't really design a scenario for a system he doesn't know how to run, so I asked him to think of some interesting places / personalities / situations, and we'll see how it goes.

So I'm asking for general advice on how to playtest a new game. The only thing I can say now is I need to be patient and persistant, and not expect much out of this first session. We might do no more than roll up characters and do some combats. But hopefully we do some exploration and investigation. We'll see.

So I'm looking for general advice. I recognize it's weird to have someone else GM your homebrew. We'll see how that works out. Right now there's so many issues: the rulebook is incomplete, the rules are badly written and need to be explained, some of the rules may be stupid, the book isn't layed out very well, the players have the learn the rules, then we have to play and find out what's not working.

And on top of this, it has to be fun. So even though I've put in a lot of work making my badly written rulebook, I have to accept that no one is going to instantly grok my game. And why should they? I'm going to have to learn, brutally, just how bad a writer I am.

So.... general advice, stories, riffs, admonishments... What do you think?

First, you should really be running the game.  You can co-GM with your brother but you really need to be there in the mix as GM, not player.

Second, have some pre-gen characters just in case; don't let the first session get bogged down in character creation.  Do not worry about giving the players horses for example if you want to illustrate mounted combat.  Make it clear players can change their minds on character choices after they play a bit, or let them decide certain things during play.  They have no idea the value of certain choices in your system, better to take off any pressure in that regard.

Third, add in a simple, very simple, encounter(s) that demonstrate the rules for basic actions taken in an RPG (for example melee combat, spell casting) and then also ones that showcase things your systems does well (e.g. maybe grappling, mounted combat, etc.).  This Third point is something you should do on your own first, running test combats and such and timing how long it takes.

Fourth, for an adventure take one that pre-exists (such as Keep On the Borderlands, assuming a fantasy RPG) and convert it into your system.  Mix up the backstory and rooms a bit if you have a player that has gone through this dungeon.  It's actually good if they have as it gives them a touch point to compare and comment on your system.  You can also use the outside the dungeon part to showcase non-combat actions, overland travel, parley, barter, etc.

Fifth, unless the setting is part of the sell, try not to make the setting too hard to grasp.  One thing at a time.

This is how I test my own homebrew and my various versions and revisions of it over the decades.  The Third point is key, especially if you haven't worked out the probabilities under your mechanics and don't have a good feel for statistics and probability.  Even then, you get a good idea of speed of play and find areas where you can streamline or explain better.  On the Fourth point I did this mainly because I love certain modules but found it gives a great way to tell people how it plays compared to D&D which almost everyone has played.  Also you are going to be "competing" against D&D no matter what (whether it be your players love it, hate it, or don't care) as its tropes inform so much of gaming.   Using a D&D module allows you to show what your system does better, the same, or just different.

There are two kinds of playtesting--I'll call them "internal" and "external" with somewhat different goals.

Internal

Internal playtest starts out with you running the game. The thing you are looking for here are: does the game "work" when played the way you think the rules are written and do the player facing rules make sense? You should also be tweaking/rewriting the rules to make your intended meaning and the written meaning match. I have a bad memory, so after a week, this is relatively easy for me, since I have to use the rules as a reference. Talk to your players before and after each session. I've modified a lot of things based on player and observational feedback. (I've tweak some big things like: how "magic" is organized and allocated and how many experience points are needed to level up [it is a level-based classes system] and discovered things like I forgot to include armor in the equipment list.)

Since I'm not in any rush, we're just working through the different levels as part of a long-term campaign.

Second part of internal playtesting is to let someone else GM while you play as a player. If it is someone that wasn't in the campaign where you were GM, so much the better. Here, this is to see if someone else can understand the GM portion of the game, in particular without your input--in other words, do the GM facing rules make sense and "work"?

External

Then you have external playtesting. This is rough. You need GMs and players who have not participated in a game with you. The goal here is to blind-test the player and GM facing rules to see if they are understandable, work, and are fun, for people that you don't know. People will come up with things they hate and a lot of the feedback will be contradictory. The important thing here is to have a real reason for how the rules work the way they do, so you have something to use as a comparison yardstick.

Quote from: Tod13;953350I'm going to say the opposite of Xanther, to a degree.

There are two kinds of playtesting--I'll call them "internal" and "external" with somewhat different goals.

Maybe he is further along but this sounds like the first play test, even still building the game.  Therefore clearly alpha or internal.
Having someone else GM with you there I'd call a test of a beta version with a experienced tester.
You don't get to external ever unless you want to sell it, and that is after this alpha stage.  

QuoteInternal

Internal playtest starts out with you running the game. The thing you are looking for here are: does the game "work" when played the way you think the rules are written and do the player facing rules make sense? You should also be tweaking/rewriting the rules to make your intended meaning and the written meaning match. I have a bad memory, so after a week, this is relatively easy for me, since I have to use the rules as a reference. Talk to your players before and after each session. I've modified a lot of things based on player and observational feedback. (I've tweak some big things like: how "magic" is organized and allocated and how many experience points are needed to level up [it is a level-based classes system] and discovered things like I forgot to include armor in the equipment list.)

Since I'm not in any rush, we're just working through the different levels as part of a long-term campaign.

Second part of internal playtesting is to let someone else GM while you play as a player. If it is someone that wasn't in the campaign where you were GM, so much the better. Here, this is to see if someone else can understand the GM portion of the game, in particular without your input--in other words, do the GM facing rules make sense and "work"?

Going to be a bit of an ass here, as in that kind of mood today, but duh!  You've just gone over why you internal test, not any actual suggestions on how to do it.  If the OP doesn't get that testing is to see if the rules work the way he thinks, fails to talk to the participants and doesn't get that the results of the testing are to be used to tweak or rework the rules he is lost already.

QuoteExternal

Then you have external playtesting. This is rough. You need GMs and players who have not participated in a game with you. The goal here is to blind-test the player and GM facing rules to see if they are understandable, work, and are fun, for people that you don't know. People will come up with things they hate and a lot of the feedback will be contradictory. The important thing here is to have a real reason for how the rules work the way they do, so you have something to use as a comparison yardstick.

Again, Duh!  But from the original post he is no where near this stage.  He just has tables and such, not even a draft rules document.

Quote from: Xanther;953356Going to be a bit of an ass here, as in that kind of mood today, but duh!  You've just gone over why you internal test, not any actual suggestions on how to do it.  If the OP doesn't get that testing is to see if the rules work the way he thinks, fails to talk to the participants and doesn't get that the results of the testing are to be used to tweak or rework the rules he is lost already.

I'll write it off to you being in that kind of mood today.

But there is only a "duh" after you've been taught it. I see this all the time in science, statistics, and software development. People aren't born inherently knowing this stuff.

I did go ahead and remove the part of disagreeing with you, since I don't think we disagree--particularly since, other than pre-gens, what you describe is how I play test. I was thinking about pre-gens when I wrote the first sentence, and never went back to it. Sorry.

To be clear, other than using pre-gens, I agree with Xanther. Pre-gens may or may not be useful depending on your game. Since character creation is important to the playability of my system, I needed player-created characters, to see if they would "break" the system.

Quote from: Xanther;953356Again, Duh! But from the original post he is no where near this stage. He just has tables and such, not even a draft rules document.

I do agree with you that he is way to early for external playtesting or even playtesting with a different GM. That's why I gave the longish description with reasons for each step, to help him understand why each step is different and done in roughly that order.

The two responses compliment each other rather nicely, actually. I'll be starting with more of Xanther's advice, but Tod13's giving me a long term plan. Both helpful.

Actually I have draft rules... but my brother can't make any sense of them, yet. Effectively, therefore, I only have tables. Yeah, I should make a model quest... it wouldn't even take that long because the system is so simple (for me)... and I've made so many tables for random monsters and items I don't have to stock anything. That said... I'm pretty confident about combat difficulties and results. (But I have chase rules if I want them... which is actually more interesting than tailored encounters to me.) But it wouldn't hurt to test things on my own in advance (beyond what I do when designing.)

For the most part I'm not even testing balance or fun, just... bare bones playability. I'll run a game, and show my brother how a game looks.

Another issue... what's the dividing line between me the designer (rules) and me the GM (rulings)? That might be... a way's off.

I just want to hear everything people have to say... try whatever seems tryable and report the results in a few days.

Quote from: Ashakyre;953364Another issue... what's the dividing line between me the designer (rules) and me the GM (rulings)? That might be... a way's off.

The paper. What's on the paper is the rules. How the game ends up running is the rulings.

Involving skills:

In my game, I use careers, kind of like Barbarians of Lemuria. The rules say careers give bonuses to appropriate actions. That is the rule. Me deciding a diplomat spy can pick locks and understand the bureaucracies' filing system is a ruling. Someone else saying a diplomat spy wouldn't be picking locks is another ruling. Saying you hate spies and they're useless so you never get any sort of bonus under any situation is against the rules.

Involving lethality:

The game I'm writing I run much more forgiving than a lot of people here. (By forgiving, I mean less chance of character death.) My players don't care about wargaming type tactics and care more about role-playing, but still want to kill things. But there is nothing in the rules that prevents the game being run with lots of character death and even total party wipes. I even mention in the rules how to increase the difficulty/danger. As part of that, deciding to hand-wave distances and movement within certain limits is a ruling.

Involving supplies and language:

I'm not interested in tracking supplies and languages and for the most part neither are my players. My rules don't even cover it--I talked with my players and explained I would use those as plot points if at all. So anything involving those is a ruling. Following game rules, any resolution should be linked to the base game mechanic of opposed dice rolls.

Quote from: Tod13;953367The paper. What's on the paper is the rules. How the game ends up running is the rulings.

Involving skills:

In my game, I use careers, kind of like Barbarians of Lemuria. The rules say careers give bonuses to appropriate actions. That is the rule. Me deciding a diplomat spy can pick locks and understand the bureaucracies' filing system is a ruling. Someone else saying a diplomat spy wouldn't be picking locks is another ruling. Saying you hate spies and they're useless so you never get any sort of bonus under any situation is against the rules.

Involving lethality:

The game I'm writing I run much more forgiving than a lot of people here. (By forgiving, I mean less chance of character death.) My players don't care about wargaming type tactics and care more about role-playing, but still want to kill things. But there is nothing in the rules that prevents the game being run with lots of character death and even total party wipes. I even mention in the rules how to increase the difficulty/danger. As part of that, deciding to hand-wave distances and movement within certain limits is a ruling.

Involving supplies and language:

I'm not interested in tracking supplies and languages and for the most part neither are my players. My rules don't even cover it--I talked with my players and explained I would use those as plot points if at all. So anything involving those is a ruling. Following game rules, any resolution should be linked to the base game mechanic of opposed dice rolls.

Let me clarify the issue.

Everything I do at the table might end up in the rules. It would be gradual. And I'd get rule bloat - bad. So I need to have a way to decide what stays at the table and what gets written down. Capisce?

Quote from: Ashakyre;953370Let me clarify the issue.

Everything I do at the table might end up in the rules. It would be gradual. And I'd get rule bloat - bad. So I need to have a way to decide what stays at the table and what gets written down. Capisce?

Yes. Thanks!

I'll say, it depends. Sorry. :rolleyes: It really depends on what sort of game you want to write. There is nothing wrong-bad about rule bloat, if that is what you want. A consistent set of results for many circumstances across different DMs can be important for things like tournament rules.

In general, your rules should give enough background to let people make their own decisions, within the boundary of the reasons the rules are there. This is what I meant when I said earlier "The important thing here is to have a real reason for how the rules work the way they do, so you have something to use as a comparison yardstick."

So, first decide what sort of rules you are writing, light, medium, crunchy, tournament, etc and if there is an inherent setting to the game.

Second, ask why is a rule there? A rule should be there to either make the game flow better/clearly (increase fun) or support setting conceits.

If you already stated a GM can assign up to a +3 or down to a -3 to an attack or skill attempt based on circumstance, is it important to the game that you include rules for attacking in darkness, underwater, in a snow storm, in zero-G, or while skydiving? Or would one GM assigning a -1 and another a -3 break the game? (By break a mean make unplayable, by which I mean make it "not fun".)

Sometimes, if the setting has certain conceits (the supernatural are unbeatable in the darkness which has been a source of horror for humans for thousands of years), saying darkness is a -3 to hit might be worth mentioning, otherwise, do you really care? Sometimes, as above, you do care. Most of the time, I don't.

Quote from: Xanther;953344Second, have some pre-gen characters just in case; don't let the first session get bogged down in character creation.  Do not worry about giving the players horses for example if you want to illustrate mounted combat.  Make it clear players can change their minds on character choices after they play a bit, or let them decide certain things during play.  They have no idea the value of certain choices in your system, better to take off any pressure in that regard.

Chargen is rather random in the current version of my game so I want everybody to try it out because (1) there's very little choice, so it takes 10 minutes and (2) to see if people enjoy it.

But there might be value in having pregen character's just in case. It depends how long folks will dither spending their 4 skill points on 14 available skills. We did, in fact, make character last summer, and it wasn't too painful. So I think we can do it now that I've got beautiful character sheets and an even easier system.

I also want to make a tiny sandbox adventure. Maybe... 8 hexes to explore in a big island. (each hex might have 2-3 locations in it.) I could design that in an afternoon. And then I'd be selling the open worldenss of it too.

Too much? I could do a linear adventure as well, but then my skills don't make as much sense.

Have at least one mechanics-nerd in your group (a guy who likes to figure out rules, how they work, and how they can go wrong).  Have at least one guy who tends to be a powergamer, and/or a rules-lawyer; people that will try to find loopholes in the rules you never intended for their to be, to abuse the system. This gives you a kind of 'devil's advocate' that you can try to proof a bit against.

Mainly, TAKE CRITICISM.  Your first instinct might be to try to defend your current rules. If people tell you they're broken, or that they suck, and can either explain why or show you how by fucking up the game, you need to accept that and work through it. Your job is not to try to defend your 'baby' here, or justify your choices.  If you aren't willing to improve stuff, there's no point doing a playtest.

Quote from: RPGPundit;953590Have at least one mechanics-nerd in your group (a guy who likes to figure out rules, how they work, and how they can go wrong).  Have at least one guy who tends to be a powergamer, and/or a rules-lawyer; people that will try to find loopholes in the rules you never intended for their to be, to abuse the system. This gives you a kind of 'devil's advocate' that you can try to proof a bit against.

Mainly, TAKE CRITICISM.  Your first instinct might be to try to defend your current rules. If people tell you they're broken, or that they suck, and can either explain why or show you how by fucking up the game, you need to accept that and work through it. Your job is not to try to defend your 'baby' here, or justify your choices.  If you aren't willing to improve stuff, there's no point doing a playtest.

I do this in music very easily. The only thing that's tricky is... first the other person has to know what you're trying to achieve, right? I always say I can't give you advice if I don't know what you're aspiration is. So... someone could say "combat is too hard" and I might say "you didn't even try to run away."

But what I just said easily becomes an excuse to not take criticism. Very easily. So what I've learned form music is... listen to the problem but take the other person's idea for a solution very skeptically... but try everything you can within your concept to address the problem they brought up.... If that still doesn't work either your concept is self-defeating or the other person isn't your audience.

Quote from: Xanther;953344First, you should really be running the game.  You can co-GM with your brother but you really need to be there in the mix as GM, not player.

Second, have some pre-gen characters just in case; don't let the first session get bogged down in character creation.  Do not worry about giving the players horses for example if you want to illustrate mounted combat.  Make it clear players can change their minds on character choices after they play a bit, or let them decide certain things during play.  They have no idea the value of certain choices in your system, better to take off any pressure in that regard.

Third, add in a simple, very simple, encounter(s) that demonstrate the rules for basic actions taken in an RPG (for example melee combat, spell casting) and then also ones that showcase things your systems does well (e.g. maybe grappling, mounted combat, etc.).  This Third point is something you should do on your own first, running test combats and such and timing how long it takes.

Fourth, for an adventure take one that pre-exists (such as Keep On the Borderlands, assuming a fantasy RPG) and convert it into your system.  Mix up the backstory and rooms a bit if you have a player that has gone through this dungeon.  It's actually good if they have as it gives them a touch point to compare and comment on your system.  You can also use the outside the dungeon part to showcase non-combat actions, overland travel, parley, barter, etc.

Fifth, unless the setting is part of the sell, try not to make the setting too hard to grasp.  One thing at a time.

This is how I test my own homebrew and my various versions and revisions of it over the decades.  The Third point is key, especially if you haven't worked out the probabilities under your mechanics and don't have a good feel for statistics and probability.  Even then, you get a good idea of speed of play and find areas where you can streamline or explain better.  On the Fourth point I did this mainly because I love certain modules but found it gives a great way to tell people how it plays compared to D&D which almost everyone has played.  Also you are going to be "competing" against D&D no matter what (whether it be your players love it, hate it, or don't care) as its tropes inform so much of gaming.   Using a D&D module allows you to show what your system does better, the same, or just different.

So how did it go?

Well, everybody had fun, and explaining the rules wasn't that hard. (It helps that everyone played over the summer once or twice.)

I made a campaign, but my brother was pretty gung ho about running his, so we basically co-GMed. I just made sure my brothers GM decisions were within the framework of the game's rules, and he made them.

The first group roll illustrated an absurd edge case, so I'm back at the drawing board for that mechanic. It also the starkest example of that so....It was very instructive.

Combat was easy but I'm initiative rules need to be better explained. People were confused which dice to roll. (1d20 or 2d6? I said that all combat rolls are 1d20 and all non combat rolls are 2d6. But initiative is 2d6, it's an exception, and I should be about that.)

I have a few adjustments I want to make to the random item charts so types of equipment are grouped, like with like. And I need better guidelines for setting challenge levels for non-combat rolls.

Character creation went well..It's random so goes quickly. The party lost a character in the first encounter.....And without breaking pace a second character was ready to go by the second. And the second character was rolled up by a first time player largely.unassisted. So, cool!

The game certainly has a scrappy feeling to it. I find myself looking for ways to avoid fights, keep ways to run away, and try to get some decent items.

So I'll focus on making more GM resources for random encounter / dungeon creation.

Make a checklist of the 'sub-systems' you've written into your game. Even complicated games usually can be thought of as having ~5-10 sub-systems that come into play under certain situations (combat usually has 2-3 to itself - attack and defense rolls; damage and injury; etc.. Make sure you use each of them each two or three times, with different sorts of play balance involved (well matched, highly asymmetric opponents, etc.).

Buy the way, quite a few games - even well known ones - contain a lot of stuff that was never play tested. In some cases the designers have admitted this after the fact, but I suspect these instances are the tip of the iceberg. So, you are in good company. Just try to avoid making mistakes with the really important things that dictate play balance outcomes during things that happen at the table commonly.

Quote from: Larsdangly;953840Make a checklist of the 'sub-systems' you've written into your game. Even complicated games usually can be thought of as having ~5-10 sub-systems that come into play under certain situations (combat usually has 2-3 to itself - attack and defense rolls; damage and injury; etc.. Make sure you use each of them each two or three times, with different sorts of play balance involved (well matched, highly asymmetric opponents, etc.).

Buy the way, quite a few games - even well known ones - contain a lot of stuff that was never play tested. In some cases the designers have admitted this after the fact, but I suspect these instances are the tip of the iceberg. So, you are in good company. Just try to avoid making mistakes with the really important things that dictate play balance outcomes during things that happen at the table commonly.

I could run a second game and be the GM. And I could create a checklist of all the games subsystems to see how they were functioning in play, or at least know what hasn't been tested..