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30 juin 2016

Next, on playtesting...

Next, on playtesting...

Originally shared by Rob Donoghue

Ok, yesterday I floated something from twitter about Playtesting, and it got some good talk - https://plus.google.com/+RobDonoghue/posts/hVLeQivNEJR- enough that I want to unpack further.

First, I want to call out the implicit 4th bullet point, one I consider obvious but maybe needs to be stated outright:

- This is not because your testers are dumb. They are not. But they are (and should be) serving their own agenda.

That "and should be" is important. You want them to be focused on their problems, wants and needs. If they are thinking too much about testing your game, then that's going to skew the result in a way that may lose you valuable insights. It also means that if you assume they're smart, then you want to gather feedback in a way that takes advantage of that, which is not just a matter of listening.

The other implicit point, and one that probably requires a lot more talking is the "ok, therefore....?"

See, that list of the limitation of playtesters is not a summary, it's a starting point. It is the list of challenges you'll want to overcome in crafting your own playtest. If you think they're untrue, that's fine, and you can craft strategies according to the truth that you see. But if you think there's something to them, they serve as a starting point.

Which maybe demands that we step back and ask what we mean when we're talking about playtesting.

I don't want to step it back too much. There's no one right answer, and if there were one, it would depend on a lot of assumptions about resources that won't be true. The perfect test will have independent testers, lots of test subjects, copious tools for data gathering and analysis, and all the time necessary to do things like robust A/B testing.

Nobody has that. It's not just a limitation of gaming. Even big companies (who face similar challenges in testing software, media and so on) have to work within limitations. No one can ever test as much as would be ideal.

Despite that, there's a big gap between "We can't test perfectly" and "no testing" and you can make decisions and use tools that allow you to get more out of the tests you're performing.

There is a lot of knowledge out there about this. As noted, testing is not only the domain of gaming, and we're well served to learn the techniques, tips and tricks that let us maximize our bang for the buck. There have been some great suggestions in the previous discussion, but I suspect we've just scratched the surface of the lore out there.

So rather than leap into answering that, I want to ask you all - given that playtesting is almost always constrained (in resources, time and availability). what specific, concrete and actionable tips or suggestions for people running playtests that might help them maximize the return.

I'll take my own thoughts to comments as well.

More thoughts on playtesting.

More thoughts on playtesting.

Originally shared by Rob Donoghue

Ok, so on Twitter I made an observation:

Playtesting teaches that people are:
- great at spotting problems & feeling pain
- poor at explaining why
- terrible at proposing solutions

I stand by it, but it is also far from the whole picture.

So, first, a little unpacking: This was mostly thrown up as an extension on the truism that when you are taking feedback from playtesters, listen very closely to what problems they encountered, but don't worry so much about the solutions they suggest. Not that all the suggestions will be bad, but many of them will be. Even if your playtesters are smart and capable, they lack context. Or, if they have context, their value as playtesters may be dubious.

But this assumes a few defaults about how playtesting is handled, notably that it is distributed broadly and lacks the resources to really support it deeply or well. Those are important qualifiers because playtesting is not that much different than other forms of feedback gathering, and there is a lot of really useful knowledge, lore, practice and experience that feedback can learn from.

A knowledgeable facilitator[1] can get a lot more out of a playtest than someone with an impromptu questionnaire. Well chosen playtesters can alter the results of the test (for good or ill). There are ways to do playtests better.

but

This is gaming, and we can barely pay our artists and editors. We are lucky to be playtesting at all, and if we manage to get a playtest by someone who is not the game's designer, we are over the moon. It is hard to talk about refining something that is barely there.

but

We should. There's a lot of knowledge and experience out there. Some of it translates. Some of it doesn't. It's almost certainly worth talking about.

pinging Kira Magrann and Stras Acimovic  because reasons.

1- And even that word is chosen carefully. The discipline of facilitating meetings - rather than leading them - is one that is super interesting and useful to playtesting and, frankly, play in general.

25 juin 2016

I like this.


I like this.

Originally shared by Paul Beakley

How To Learn Games
Part X: Reading Tea Leaves

I have this unformed notion in my head of eventually documenting all my various methods of learning RPGs. One of those steps, I think, will have to be how I deal with the fundamental incompleteness of RPG rules.

In my last Derpening of Mirkwood thread, there was a minor kerfuffle (which I really don't feel like re-litigating so please don't) regarding whether you can treat RPG rules like boardgame rules. So let me say a couple things about that:

1) Of course not, duh, they're different things.

2) I don't do that, and if you think I do, you're misreading my approach.

It's a truism that the basic transaction of roleplaying -- folks talking about and agreeing to what is established truth within a collaborative fiction -- makes it hard, maybe impossible, to write rules that cover every contingency.

One way this has been addressed -- the most terrible way -- is when you see traddy physics-type games that create tiny little special case rules for every tiny special-case thing: rules for being poisoned while on fire in zero gravity, rules for feeding your livestock during downtime broken down by seasons, whatever.

Another way it's been addressed is through consistent approaches that treat all uncertainty as basically the same: Fate's roll + aspects vs target, Burning Wheel's versus tests.

And yet another way is by constraining the kinds of uncertainty that can exist in the game: Apocalypse World's moves.

I mean, I think it's great when a game solves the problem in a more consistently applied way! The downside is that it means the players need to use a lot of discretion in deciding just what is being rolled for and why. It also means, for some players, they have to stop being immersed in their characters and think more like an author, or an impartial observer.

I'm not actually advocating for any particular approach, just pointing out that it's a standing challenge with many solutions. There are entirely legitimate and functional reasons why a game works how it does. There are also lots of unexamined assumptions, even by major writers, designers and developers.

So moving on to part two: Once you understand that rules are necessarily imperfect, how do you fill in the gaps?

1) Play lots of different games. Pay attention to the gaps that tend to repeat themselves: that's where you know the designers are working with an unexploded view of game design. Common gaps: When to roll dice, how to interpret failure, explicit orders of operations. If you see those in your game, you're dealing with designers with deep assumptions about how RPGs work. So the best you can do is roll with those assumptions.

2) Look for cues in the design as to what the intention of the design is. This one is tough! I'm the first to acknowledge that. And it requires you do lots of #1 up there above. And since everyone's experiences will be different, that means everyone's going to bring different interpretations. But for heaven's sake, arm yourself with knowledge so you can make informed guesses.

I look for:
* The kinds of uncertainty the game wants to address (Will you succeed or fail? What does failure cost? How will the fiction change if you express this or that? Can you ensure success? Can you mitigate risk? Can you fail forward or be stopped?)

* Economies that encourage particular behavior cycles (do this > earn that > spend on blah)

* Assertions the designer has made about a game's themes or source material. This one is huge! It also means you understand what a "theme" is, and how to critically evaluate source material. Is The Hobbit about sneaking past dragons, or is it about working through hardship with friends? Is Dogs in the Vineyard about smoking demons, or is it about dealing with the fallout from violence? And so on. You don't even have to agree as to what any given "theme" is! But by golly you'd better acknowledge it exists at all. This gets you in the designer's groove, hopefully.

2a) Ask the designers. Yay internet. But hey, be ready to deal with the fact that their intentions might not have been well expressed through their own rules. It happens.

3) Use whatever method has worked for you in the past. This is not my personal preferred method, because I think it's really, really easy to trammel all over the designer's intent, which very well may require you deal with uncomfortable stuff.

4) Be okay with the deliberate gaps (if your best informed guess is that a gap is deliberate). For example: All the rules dealing with social interactions in The One Ring are written with NPCs in mind -- it's not unusual. Mutant: Year Zero is another notable example. In fact it's one of the great assumed gaps in trad design!

In the case of The One Ring, I settled on that being a deliberate gap. What I look at is the company rules (the company must agree to a goal every session) and the experience point rules (you only earn if the company is pursuing the agreed-upon goal). The game feels like it's about cooperation, not personal striving. Compare to say Burning Wheel, which is very much about personal striving (as expressed through its advancement and Artha rules).

But in MYZ I decided it wasn't at all deliberate (cues: relationship map questions during character creation aim adversity both outward and inward), and had to come up with ways for the system to work fairly with everyone.

The tl;dr of this whole ridiculous post probably comes down to this:

* Be sensitive to what the game is trying to accomplish
* Be educated as to the scope of things that RPGs generally have tried to accomplish
* Be open to what's actually on the page and pay attention to what's not on the page
* Always question what you're bringing to your interpretation.

Just my take. YMMV, the artist is dead, etc etc.

17 juin 2016

Nice trend.


Nice trend.

Originally shared by Curt Thompson

And on the topic of inclusion in gaming:

Whenever I think about this one, I come back to the idea of a fun tax.

I honestly don't care that a historically or genre accurate setting would marginalize everybody except cis, straight, white guys (usually rich ones). Those descriptors don't cover all the gamers setting at my table.

So why should queer gamers, female gamers, minority gamers, trans gamers, etc. have to put up with either playing a cis-het white dude to avoid 'realistic' prejudice or put up with their character being harassed?

In essence, this adds an extra burden those gamers must bear to enjoy the game. It's a levy on fun that is only leveled on people who are not the 'typical' gamer. And that's not fair, to me.

So I tend to make settings (and this is why I use my own settings, 99% of the time) where those problems are either non-existent or the people who have them are considered strange and distasteful, rarely heard from and always assumed to be wrong. Even in my historic settings.

Because sexism, racism and homophobia aren't required to enjoy steampunk or ancient Rome or high fantasy. We're just conditioned by the media from which those settings spring and game designers' own assumptions to accept that.

Let's not.

We're gamers. We accept FTL, strong AI, magic, vampires, dragons and superpowers as part and parcel of the gaming experience. As givens, even in 'historic' games, a lot of time. If we can accept those, we can damned well accept that prejudices can be overcome. Even erased.

At the end of the day, I game with my friends. And I am not going to add to my friend's social burdens by not allowing them to forget, for a minute, that the real world has those problems.

If they want to assume that burden, as a group, we'll talk about it. (Though as a queer gamer myself, I usually only want those elements in my game if they are doing something, not just there because they are there.)

But for me it always comes back to that concept: the fun tax. Should there be a extra burden for gamers like us? And at my table, the default answer to that is no.

Explaining (part of) the problem.

Explaining (part of) the problem.

Originally shared by Steve Kenson

The Bad Ol' Good Ol' Days: Inclusion and "Accuracy" in Historical Settings

I was delighted yesterday to read Fat Goblin Games announcement of renewed support for Castle Falkenstein, a long-time favorite of mine. I still fondly recall purchasing it at GenCon and sitting, ensconced, in one of the side halls of the convention…
http://stevekenson.com/2016/06/17/the-bad-ol-good-ol-days

15 juin 2016

Le radio-rôliste de juin est sorti :) Un excellent dossier de Guylène Le Mignot : Pourquoi le jeu de rôle sans...

Le radio-rôliste de juin est sorti :) Un excellent dossier de Guylène Le Mignot : Pourquoi le jeu de rôle sans surnaturel est-il aussi mal aimé ?   Je ne suis pas sûr que malgré tout le travail de Guylène nous soyons arrivé une réponse (à vous de nous dire ?), mais c'est très intéressant. Et deux critiques : Une de Mener des parties de jeu de rôle et une autre du jeu Primetime Adventures. Bonne écoute !

PS : j'avais oublié notre animateur et monteur du jour : Thomas. C'est vrai quoi, on ne cite jamais celui ou celle qui fait le montage, et pourtant, sans montage...
http://www.radio-roliste.net/?p=1400

11 juin 2016

Petit rappel à l'attention de tous les clients de l'Auberge : nous avons le soucis de limiter le bruit à un strict...

Petit rappel à l'attention de tous les clients de l'Auberge : nous avons le soucis de limiter le bruit à un strict minimum. Le but de l'Auberge est d'aider à l'organisation de parties virtuelles et nous essayons de rester centrés là-dessus. Les sujets immédiatement associés sont les bienvenus : questions techniques, rapports de partie, pratiques voisines, ... Et nous vous demandons de limiter tout le reste à un strict minimum.

Ces derniers temps, il y a un accroissement de messages qui n'ont pas exactement leur place ici : gags, bd, pub pour des jeux ou des sites, ... Il y a d'autres lieux où ces messages sont bien plus appropriés.

Oui, il y a des catégories dans la communauté, mais ceux qui y sont abonnés reçoivent les notifications pour tous les messages, indifféremment, et il n'y a pas moyen de faire autrement. Limitation technique dont nous devons tenir compte et qui explique en partie notre rigueur.

Ceci dit je voudrais m'excuser auprès de Thomas Picard qui a juste suivi le mouvement qui fut malheureusement la goutte qui fit déborder le vase. Pardon Thomas, tu as raison : au vu du passé immédiat nous t'avons traité injustement.

Pour rétablir l'équité, me voilà obligé de taper sur tout le monde, donc : s'il-vous-plait, tournez votre doigt 7 fois autour du bouton send avant d'appuyer si ce n'est pas directement lié au jeu virtuel.

Merci pour votre coopération, citoyens. Google est votre ami.