TheRPGSite

Hello, first time poster here -- looking for some help.

I'm nearly done with the alpha version of a game I'm designing.  It's about time for playtesting, and I'd like it done in a timely fashion by professionals.  My attempts to find professionals have so far been stymied, so I'd like to ask everyone: where does one go to find playtesters?  Good ones, ideally experienced playtesters that have worked with other, existing games before.  Normally I'd just crowdsource the bejesus out of this, but my boss says 'Nope, we're done throwing the meat out to whatever wolves show up.'  So I need good playtesters with some cred (doesn't have to be much, just some).

Does anyone know how to find such groups, or know of any such groups?

How much are you prepared to pay ?

I don't want to be rude, but designing a game without a clear idea of who might be interested in actually playing it is not a stellar idea.

Who do you want playing it? Find them and ask around.

Quote from: Sean !;602169How much are you prepared to pay ?

Some.  Not much.  Is there a price index?  "If you drop this much money, you get this many services" kind of thing?

Quote from: Popillius_Scipio;602218Some.  Not much.  Is there a price index?  "If you drop this much money, you get this many services" kind of thing?

Don't pay playtesters. That's silly. Find people who would be interested in trying out games on this forum and others and set up some questions, and NDA's (if you want.) Or Open it up for playtesting and commenting in an open fashion (no NDA)


I'll be honest "professional" playtesters don't really exist, just fans of games who are willing to try these things out. Some of them have experience (I do for example, but I no longer have a lot of time.)

Quote from: Silverlion;602250I'll be honest "professional" playtesters don't really exist,

++ The best you can hope for is competent playtesters.

Quote from: Popillius_Scipio;602149Does anyone know how to find such groups, or know of any such groups?

Perhaps you'd like to use this forum as an opportunity to "sell" the game. Why would someone want to play it, let alone spend the time working with its unfinished version as a playtester?

Game time is precious. How about a pitch.

//Panjumanju

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;602428++ The best you can hope for is competent playtesters.

Indeed.

I'll see what I can do.  My partner-in-crime is the owner of the IP and wrote the setting himself, and he likes his cards close to the vest, after a few incidents with people outright stealing his ideas after he was too liberal with his design ideas.  I'll see what he'll okay me to talk about.

Quote from: Popillius_Scipio;602543I'll see what I can do.  My partner-in-crime is the owner of the IP and wrote the setting himself, and he likes his cards close to the vest, after a few incidents with people outright stealing his ideas after he was too liberal with his design ideas.  I'll see what he'll okay me to talk about.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Its easy to come up with them, I'll be honest--its what you do with them and how you present them that matters.

Well, here's the blurb from our design blog (visible in all of its under construction glory here (http://imperivm.com/whats-imperivm/)):

Mighty armies march upon fields of battle. Gladiators fight to the death in the arena for profit, entertainment, and the promise of freedom. Politicians insinuate war in the senate and carry it out in the streets and marketplaces. Priests and oracles threaten divine retribution if the will of the gods is ignored. All in the name of Power.
An outright clash of wills, goals, and aims results in a visible and often bloody conflict; multiple sides staking a claim and reveling in the struggle of dominance. Setting the stage for each of the various conflicts is the struggle for and understanding of Power. What are you willing to do for Power? What are you willing to do to keep it once you have it? Can political or economic Power really be just as deadly as military Power? Which is greater: to have Power over the lives of others or over your own destiny?
 
 POWER.   ABSOLUTELY.
Imperivm is a tabletop role-playing game currently in development by Paul Allen Timm and Dan Comrie. Your characters inhabit a world with a solid history, an active present, and a future determined in part by you and other players. Though inspired by Greco–Roman myth, society, and culture, Imperivm is not a historical recreation or even a fantasy version of Greece or Rome. At its soul, this is a unique fantasy world populated with creatures from mythology as well as many beings unique to this setting. The visit of a dryad from the Grove of the Patriarch is cause for senators to pull strings to ensure her attendance at a symposium. The Praetor's gleaming chariot flies overhead, drawn by a magnificent pegasus. Potions and charms are sold in the Forum as tokens to assist gladiators fighting in the arena. Oracles prophesy that recent events herald the return of the Fathers of Man who seek to regain their former glory.
Battlefield casualties and arena deaths are matched by the growing corruption in the lives of the people and their rulers. Open conflict isn't always conducive to your longevity and there are more subtle means of blackmail, double-dealing, and assassination available. How cheap would the glory of holding an Ivory Chair be without the commensurate risk of being stabbed on the steps of the senate?
As the newly formed Veridion League establishes control over the city-states that make up its membership, there are those who are loathe to give up their newfound glory and just as many who are determined to seize power for their own. Yours is a shadowy world of decadent senators, petty magistrates, illicit smugglers, and professional assassins. You may choose to fight against the growing corruption and expose those who would poison a glorious empire, or you can try to cut yourself in for a piece of the action.
Benefactors and malefactors, friends and enemies, allies and rivals  – all vie against the backdrop of the island city of Veridios. As the capitol for the burgeoning league that governs the twelve city-states, this sprawling metropolis of over one million inhabitants is the religious, social, and political center of the world. You have come to Veridios to make your way and leave your mark – but you must first begin to make contact with those who can help you: patrons lend a helping hand, generals trade favors for assistance – and even the equites, plebians, and servitor creatures have a role to play in your and your opponents' machinations.
Cape quod potes

Quote from: Silverlion;602544Ideas are a dime a dozen.

But good ideas are far more rare. One of the keys to success — behind working your ass off — is being able to distinguish the good from the bad, the great from the good, and the incredible from the great.

That's why revision and iteration work. You come up with ideas, play with them, try them out, and throw away the less-than-great.

I'd swing more to the side of ideas being a dime a dozen to be honest. What makes an idea great is the amount of hard work you put into polishing and developing it from a few sentences into a finished product. It helps to have an original and compelling idea, but there's an infinite graveyard of original compelling ideas out there that nobody has ever heard of because they were never worked on.

Even talent is secondary to just doing the damn work when all is said and done. So I wouldn't be worried about idea theft, an idea is worthless until the work is done, and by then you have copyright on everything anyway so you're well protected.

Anyway yeah this looks like an interesting idea. Its quite similar to what one of our other posters here (BedrockBrendan) has released, kind of a Roman political thing.

There are lots of Roman re-enactment forums out there, might be a good place to start looking, after you've introduced them to the idea of RPGs.

Quote from: The Traveller;602802What makes an idea great is the amount of hard work you put into polishing and developing it from a few sentences into a finished product.

A finished product has many ideas in it. In a 300,000 word novel there are dozens, maybe hundreds or thousands. And, even in a great work, there can be truly terrible ideas.

Some ideas are bad, some good, some better. You have to train yourself to distinguish the good from the bad.

Work is important, in fact I said that ideas were behind hard work. But the quality of the idea matters.

All the work in the world won't make a terrible idea into a great one. Some ideas are just bad, and should be ignored.

Part of polishing a product lies in eliminating the bad ideas, and elaborating on the good ones.

Hell, if that wasn't the case, why playtest at all? The entire point of playtesting is to identify what shitty mistakes the designer made when writing the rules (what bad ideas they incorporated) so they can be eliminated.

Playtesting is one tool to tag bad ideas for termination. The fact that we have to playtest at all proves that some ideas are good, and some bad.

Well when we're talking about ideas I assumed we were talking about creative setting ideas rather than mechanical ideas, since Popillius_Scipio hasn't let us in on any of the mechanics. Playtesting is mostly used (in my experience) to shake out weak mechanics rather than poor setting concepts, if playtesters aren't taken with the setting in the first place they probably won't participate.

I've got reams of setting notes, which are about 60-35-5 crap-not bad-pretty good, I could seriously fill a mid sized room to the waist with this stuff, but the mechanical development process is much more connected and organic, proceeding from one step to the next.

Would you envision playtesting as also incorporating setting test-screening?

Quote from: The Traveller;602909Would you envision playtesting as also incorporating setting test-screening?

I post setting material for feedback all the time. So do many people. The Gothic Earth thread is a good example, from just the last week.

So yes, that can happen. I'm not saying everyone has to, but it's not a bad idea per se.

Well, ideas can't be protected very well in the realm of RPGs anyway.  WotC would have figured a way to do that if they could have in reference to Pathfinder.  You can copyright the representations of ideas: art, writing, performance...   You can patent ideas of process and mechanics, but not very well these days.  In fact, the only company to really patent a game mechanic in recent history is WotC with the Magic the Gathering "tapping" mechanic.

And really, if it's about gladiators in a Greek/Roman inspired fantasy realm... You're already walking a road that's been traveled just as long and by as many people as the real Roman roads historically.

Ideas are a hyper-inflated currency at the end of the day.

Quote from: BubbaBrown;603054Ideas are a hyper-inflated currency at the end of the day.

Tell that to the two Superman characters.

Both designed by the same people. The first a villain in a suit, something like Mr. Freeze (without the ice). The second, an alien who came to Earth and became superhuman, then dressed in a suit and cape and fought crime.

The first, nearly wholly unknown. The second, not only an iconic cultural figure worldwide, but single-handedly responsible for launching an entirely new genre of media — superheroes — and spawning tens of thousands of imitator characters that have spread into novels and cinema, currently dominating the latter.

"All ideas are of equal value." I disagree.

Great ideas are rare and precious.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;603038I post setting material for feedback all the time. So do many people. The Gothic Earth thread is a good example, from just the last week.

So yes, that can happen. I'm not saying everyone has to, but it's not a bad idea per se.

I wouldn't call that playtesting though, its just posting material for feedback.

Quote from: BubbaBrown;603054Well, ideas can't be protected very well in the realm of RPGs anyway.  WotC would have figured a way to do that if they could have in reference to Pathfinder.

I think that had something to do with an open gaming license which deliberately created exceptions to copyright. Lets take a random idea which may or may not be good:

You are part of a violent alien race whose local region of space has somehow slipped into a pocket dimension. You have to find out ways to co-operate with other species as the dimension fades into oblivion so you all can escape, like the Neverending Story meets a pandimensional Battlestar Galactica.

Now that while potentially a good idea is not protected really. That doesn't bother me though because its worthless, more or less useless except as a blue touchpaper to inspire other ideas. If I put in six months to develop that fully and marry it to a good system, then I would have something that a) could be protected and b) is worth something.

Quote from: The Traveller;603067I wouldn't call that playtesting though, its just posting material for feedback.

And you can't get feedback through playtesting? Of course you can. You're getting feedback anyway, why limit it to mechanics? Why artificially constrain yourself?

Setting has mechanical implications, and vice versa. And if playtesting leads you to change, say, spell mechanics or classes or whatever... that changes the setting.

And if part of the setting is boring or just plain bad, you change it. And that can have implications for game mechanics.

Get feedback on everything anywhere you can. Even in a playtest.

Quote from: The Traveller;602909Would you envision playtesting as also incorporating setting test-screening?

Yes.  I'm trying to find playtesters, who will be bound by NDA, but otherwise have access to everything.  My boss, more experienced than me at this sort of thing, is tired of grabbing any-random-RPG-guy off the street for playtesting.  We've gotten some absolutely bizarre answers on playtest reports:

"I don't like that I can fail any roll."
"This system is hard to remember when you're drunk."

and so on.  We're looking for people who are past the 'This is new and I don't like it because I don't know what's going on' mentality.  People who understand that games are games, and not machines that you put money in and fun comes out.

Paying playtesters is a good idea if you have the money. That way you can treat it like a job and set expectations for the level of feedback you want. Also, you can demand that they focus each session on particular aspects of the game and demand timely responses.

With volunteers, you get what you pay for.

Also, don't get crazy with NDAs. They are a joke without teeth. Your company has nowhere near the money to defend a NDA case in court. And even if you did, it would not be rocket science for a pro bono attorney to shatter the NDA in court because judges only care about provable actual damages in NDA cases.

BTW - here's a cheap solution to playtesters. Get the best group of players you can and assign a reliable GM and a good note taker. Get everyone to commit to one 4 hour session a week for the next 2 months. Then you buy dinner for them and they get hardcover copies of the game when finished, plus T-shirts, supplements, whatever else. It's not a major commitment and they get goodies. As long as your GM does a good job focusing each playtest session, the note taker should get you lots of good feedback.