[explorers] - moving towards publishing

Tom · September 24, 2013, 06:04:05 AM

I posted about this before, but there's been considerable progress.

I'm in the final phases of polishing. I'm looking for more playtesting, and most importantly I want to know how people get by with only the rules, without me there to explain them.

So, are there any people here who'd offer their gaming group for a few sessions of playtesting? I would send you a PDF of the current rules in exchange for two promises: One, to not distribute it further and two, to give me some quality feedback.

I've set up a website where you can get a first impression:

http://lemuria.org/explorers/

Joshua Bearden · September 25, 2013, 01:08:06 PM

Some gamers and I have started a local 'indie night' in town. If you send me the rules I'll agree to take a look and make a pitch to the others to play test it a bit. The only obstacle is that our indie scene is very small and we allready have quite a list of things we want to play. If your game looks like something I feel confident running I'll try to butt in line so to speak by explaining that it's 'playtesting' something that some of the others - being would-be game publishers themselves will certainly be sympathetic towards.

Tom · September 26, 2013, 10:30:58 AM

Thanks. I'm especially interested in any feedback on the rule book and if someone who doesn't have me there to explain things finds it easy to understand.

Can you give me your e-mail address so I can send you a download link?

Joshua Bearden · September 27, 2013, 10:32:07 AM

Sure send it to "joshua"

at the following domain (after I've thrown some random words out like a cuttlefish's obscuring ink in a pathetic attempt to elude the prowling robots hungry for tender and exposed plain text email address floundering around the internet depths...):

bearsend.ca

Look forward to the rules. This is the same game you earlier discussed releasing as an iBook am I right? I'm actually quite interested.

Cheers,

Tom · September 28, 2013, 06:53:48 PM

Quote from: Joshua Bearden on September 27, 2013, 10:32:07 AM
This is the same game you earlier discussed releasing as an iBook am I right? I'm actually quite interested.

Yes, it is. I'm doing a PDF version now so I can give copies to my current players, but the iBook version is also still there. Unfortunately, the javascript in iBooks is pretty limited, making some of the things I had planned hard or impossible. But even so, there are a couple of cool interactive features. The PDF will only have hyperlinks, though.

Joshua Bearden · October 03, 2013, 11:27:45 PM

Played our first session tonight. We had five players including myself who GM'd but I'd made a character as well while studying the rules. Character creation and then requisition took more time than I expected given how simple the character sheets appear to be. However everyone was fully engaged and had no trouble coming up with character concepts and deciding where to allocate skills and character points.

It's midnight here so I'm not going to try to provide a full report. In the mean time please ask me any questions that you want me to answer in particular. Tomorrow I'll try to provide a more comprehensive play report. Since I haven't done a lot of play testing your questions and suggestions will help me marshal and focus my comments.

The bottom line however is that I think the game is very playable and fun. I wasn't initially overwhelmed with excitement about the back story and setting but it very quickly became obvious how well it worked to justify the missions. The mission structure strikes me as one of the best elements of the whole design. The strict order of events and tight timeline are extremely effective creative constraints. We ran the first of the three sample missions and I could immediately see us enjoying the infinite variations.

All the players had a good time and participated. If you have specific questions I'll ask them for additional feedback. Also let me know if you'd like me to post all the feedback here or by email.