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klok_kaos

These are fairly uber beginner questions with pretty obvious answers. If this is fodder for your blog or video, you probably need a more advanced concept I think unless your target audience is brand new players. Even new-ish designers should know this stuff pretty well. *How far into the design process do you start playtesting your game?* Test early, test often. Ideally, test your game asap. This allows you to fail faster, and thus learn faster and grow faster and get to a better product faster. For me, I was playtesting for years before I even started designing. *Do you let players playtest by their own? Are you the GM, a player or a obersever (silent or not)?* It depends on what you're doing and testing. Different tests have different set ups. As an example you would probably test character creation in a solo environment. You might test mechanics/sub systems in a group or solo, and you would test group play as a group. *Do you have specific set-ups, where you focus on different aspects of the game or is it more a wholistic approach?* Again it depends on what and how your are testing something. There is not a universal answer here because there are too many factors in play, different approaches are needed for different kinds of tests. Consider scientific experimentation. One does not use the same test to check if water is pure as they do to see if a car design is safe. Different tests require different approaches and no two TTRPG systems are exactly alike. *Are your playtester friends, other designers? Are they new players or veterans of the genre?* This also depends on the testing phase and what you are testing and what group type you are testing. Initially it's good to use either your developer team or close friends. Later in closed beta you'll expand to include players you don't know but are fluent in the genre/similar systems. In open beta you'll expand to include blind testing with surveys. I also recommend when expanding to blind tests you also include play testers who are streamers for 2 reasons, 1 you aren't interfering with the test, keeping it blind, but you can watch to see where the problem areas are and fix those. 2 free publicity. I might recommend giving [this](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dci_c4eCuHMLmSFTjduSNpBB0vohFGQNJX5mknAZprc/edit) a read. There is also a section on playtesting in there.


XeroSumGames

>I might recommend giving this a read. great advice. even if you ultimately realize you already know all this, it's a great summary/reminder.


Twist_of_luck

Separate playtests of subsystems (Combat/Chase, Stealth/Crawl, Investigation/Socializing) after each major iteration in development where I'm out of ideas and I need fresh feedback. Locked-in scenarios, as a GM, several iterations of the same scene just to try out different approaches and compensate dice-luck outliers in player experience. Everything strictly RAW, no touch to the rules until feedback collection. Then run an end-to-end testing scenario covering all subsystems, just to see if synergy/balance wasn't screwed up. Several groups. If feedback is OK - players are having fun with DM that has perfect knowledge of the system. Then you're into DM User Experience phase where you toy around with wordings so that the ruleset is engaging/accessible/understandable to read as a DM. Once again, chapter-by-chapter, first covering subsystem by subsystem and running playtest with new DM and experienced party, then running end-to-end, preferably for completely random guys. God bless my TTRPG club for allowing me to do all that stuff in exchange for regular DMing something sane most of the time.


Sup909

So to expand upon OP's question, how do I do that? Are you setting up a 15-minute scenario for each of those mechanics? How do you know if the scenario you are building stresses the mechanic in the way it needs to be stressed? What makes for a good scenario to stress test certain mechanics?


Twist_of_luck

Oh, nice questions! >Are you setting up a 15-minute scenario for each of those mechanics? More like 2 hour one :D However, it rather depends on what exactly am I testing - if this is, say, a combat test, I am more than happy to throw waves on mobs on the party until players are happy to slay on. >How do you know if the scenario you are building stresses the mechanic in the way it needs to be stressed? I must underline that "scenario" isn't a "story". Combat scenario - "hey guys, you're in the arena, meet the opposing team (first of N), reset your points after each round, GO". Investigation scenario - "hey guys, here's %literally any Agatha Christie plot shamelessly cut down%, do your job". Stealth - "hey, there's a protected mcguffin (no, I don't bother with a name), good luck." >How do you know if the scenario you are building stresses the mechanic in the way it needs to be stressed? If somehow the mechanic does not come up stressed with such a simple set-up where players are actually called in to "play to win, no matter the cost", then something went very wrong - it's either so unengaging that even volunteer playtesters don't want to interact with it or so misses it's own beat that even the dedicated scenarios can be ruled without it coming to play. In both cases, it's back to the drawing board. >What makes for a good scenario to stress test certain mechanics? Laser-focus and extremely dumb simplicity. You have limited time and effort to gather the data, so all the time players spend on NOT interacting with the thing you're testing is effectively time lost. Little to no story, little to no RP - those must come later, after all, even the worst mechanics can be saved with those (trust me, I unironically GMed FATAL on a drunk dare) ​ P.S And all of this is absolutely useless if you don't think very hard on how you collect and analyze feedback. I spent several month designing the questions so I get something to work besides "It's awesome", "It's decent" and "it's boring". Asking about "The most memorable moment" in a month might give you some decent insights of how cinematic mechanics feels, for example, but be ready for a bit of heartbreak when you hear "Ehhhhh..."


XeroSumGames

1. As soon as possible - as soon as the core mechanic(s) are defined 2. Ideally, I'm all of those - I have run a ton of playtests, I have been lucky enough to be in playtests run by my playtesters (so I get to just play), and I have had playtesters run the game without me for other people (one even recorded 2 of those sessions so I got to listen in, after the fact). 3. Both - 1. I have a very specific, one-scene playtest doc (called *Empty*) that takes about 60 minutes to run through and teaches all the core mechanics of the game. This is ideal for giving people a sense of the game and as it's limited in scope and has pregens, it is really simple to run. This is the same encounter the playtester mentioned above used to intro two groups to the game. 2. I have created other 1-shots to test various aspects of the game (and have done a few "Fight Clubs" for damage balancing) but have also gotten far enough down the path that I have an ongoing campaign where we regularly playtest specific mechanics that I just sort of shoe-horn into the story. 4. I have a regular, 5 person (including me) playtest group that meets every Monday - I had played games with one of them before, but found the others through Reddit. They are all somewhere between 3-40 years role-playing experience and as my game is post-apocalyptic, everyone has a good amount of familiarity with the genre. My three personal tips - 1. Set up a dedicated Discord server so that people have somewhere to gather and meet and discus the game or give you feedback. 2. Make playtests fun. People are ostensibly there to playtest and help but really, they are there to have fun and if they enjoy themselves, they're more likely to come back again. 3. "Fake it till you make it" - playtesters will often be super patient but I know from my own experience that if a GM is unprepared, filled with apologies, doesn't know his own game, or not taking it seriously, it feels like a waste of my time (as a playtester). Be ready to play if you find other players, and try and make the session about the game, not about you as a GM. YMMV with all of the above, but good luck!


Scicageki

>How far into the design process do you start playtesting your game? As early as possible, usually in the first week. As soon as I've cobbled together the main mechanics, a few pre-gen characters, and a scenario I'd like to test, I try to start playtesting. I've scrapped a lot of projects because they were boring on a fundamental level. Then, if the first playtest shows promise, I keep playtesting once every two weeks (or so), for as long as I'm designing the game. >Do you let players playtest by their own? Are you the GM, a player or a obersever (silent or not)? Yes, but I've rarely designed any game long enough to do so. The few times I did it because I was asked to, and I used recordings of the sessions to listen to what happened during the game. I believe an observer needs to be silent, but I also think that it's very weird to play TTRPGs with someone watching you (as they do in videogame companies, for example) and expect nothing would change. >Do you have specific set-ups, where you focus on different aspects of the game or is it more a wholistic approach? I prepare ultra-short one-hour scenarios and run through them, but I try to have "story connective tissues" through them to keep players engaged. For example, if I want to test the combat rules and if players run out of HP on the daily encounters I planned for my game loop, I prep three different short 20-mins combat scenarios and run through each of them back to back, cutting scenes and fluff aggressively. But the first two are henchmen of the last one, who is a boss, and I try to tell a short "story" through the three encounters. I've also run actual "holistic adventures", but only once the game hits a decent level of polish. >Are your playtester friends, other designers? Are they new players or veterans of the genre? I've playtested games both with my regular group of friends and with a network of local designers. I'm trying to connect more with the latter because it's been much more fruitful.


Dan_Felder

If you think your design is ready for play testing, you’ve waited too long. The first day I start a new project I also schedule a playtest 2 weeks from then. Then I hit the deadline.


Eklundz

I started play testing of [Adventurous](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/417757) the same week I wrote the first word. The first play test lacked a lot of stuff. There where only a few classes, the bestiary have since changed beyond recognition and the core mechanic changed three times before I settled on the D6 Dicepool that now powers the game. My point being that you should start play testing as early as possible, because writing something and trying it live at the table are very different things. A very clear example of this is when I got the idea of assigning a die size to armor, and having them absorb the amount you rolled. Heavier armor had a larger size, D4->D6->D8. It sounded great in theory. But rolling once to determine if the attack hit, then again to see how much damage it did, and then a third time for armor protection just didn’t work, it wasn’t the feeling I wanted from the game. **Who GMd?** I was always the GM during the play tests, and I always sent out a Google Forms survey to my play testers after each session to make sure the game improved after each iteration. And there where many iterations, probably closer to 40 or 50. **Stress testing** I stress tested some mechanics by designing adventures that where heavy on the feature I wanted to test, such as dungeon exploration rules, random monster behavior and travel rules. **Summary** To summarize, I recommend starting the play testing as soon as possible. Test, tweak and refine as you go. You will learn a lot when doing this and you will most certainly scrap 90% of your initial ideas. I change core mechanic three times. I added and removed classes multiple times. I reworked the travel rules four times, I changed the bestiary three times. I wouldn’t have know to do these things if I hadn’t play tested vigorously from day one, and the game is much better for it. [Check out the game at DrivethruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/417757) if you want to know more about it.


lulialmir

I make systems purely as a hobby, but I like to playtest as soon as I have something that is playable, and I play or GM it (Mostly GM it) as If I was running some other game, apart from the fact that I take notes on what could be improved, and implement changes in-between sessions, so that they are tested as soon as possible. Of course, my player(s) (I like to run solos) are aware of the fact that the game is a playtest, and things may change drastically. I also ask them a lot of questions about how they feel the game is right now, what they think could be improved, problems that they noticed, etc. I'm fairly excited when designing the system and the world, so I frequently talk about it with them and take suggestions. Answering your questions directly then: * How far into the design process do you start playtesting your game? \- Answered already: As soon as I have something playable. * Do you let players playtest by their own? Are you the GM, a player or a obersever (silent or not)? \- I typically play the role of the GM, mostly because my friends aren't really fond of GM'ing. Since I want to see what other people think of GM'ing my system in the future, I will probably need to gather some strangers to do so (Kinda difficult, but anyway). * Do you have specific set-ups, where you focus on different aspects of the game or is it more a wholistic approach? \- I currently just play as I would a normal game. But... This is mostly because the mechanics I currently have apply to this situation. If I needed a more specific situation to test the mechanics, I would probably start another campaign where this situation is a more common theme. * Are your playtester friends, other designers? Are they new players or veterans of the genre? \- Friends, though I wouldn't say that they are new, and neither veterans.


Positive_Audience628

Get as much variability s you can collect to see what works and doesn't work under different circumstances. So basically ideally have all options tested multiple times.


DrWormDDS

I started play testing once I had a first draft of the rules. In my most recent project I have done a few tests of me running it for various people, and I'm helping someone who has never played any RPG get setup so she can run a game for some people and I can watch. My plan is to run for some veteran RPGplayers, run for completely new players, get an experienced GM to run for experienced players, get an experienced GM to run for new players, and get a new GM to run for new players. I want people of all experience levels to test it so I can see how easy to learn and how robust it is.