Is this a good or foolish idea in presenting a new game?

[JimLotFP]

LotFP: RPG playtesting is going slowly. None of the people who have contacted me about playtesting seem to have actually tried playing the game as of yet, and I feel like I've been at a standstill for months in progress as far as finally getting the game out.

So how is this idea?

Announce that it's going to the printer at a set date... July 1 2005 is what I'm thinking at the moment.

Put up pdf copies of ALL playtest versions on my site for free download. Version 0.0, 0.1, etc.

Within those pdfs mention the print date that will include up-to-the-minute rules updates and corrections, and offer the chance to pre-order the print version at a 30% discount up to the print date.

The purpose of this will be to generate exposure and hopefully real play by people I don't know (my own playtesting becomes worthless after a point I think, like proofreading your own writing).

It's not really for raising print money and I'm not expecting anybody to actually take advantage of that, just figure I should put it out there, couldn't hurt.

Is this a good idea or is it ruining any small commercial viability the printed version could have had?

[Michael S. Miller]

LotFP: RPG playtesting is going slowly. None of the people who have contacted me about playtesting seem to have actually tried playing the game as of yet, and I feel like I've been at a standstill for months in progress as far as finally getting the game out.

What do you mean they don't "seem" to have played it? Haven't you been in contact with them? Or are you just waiting for them to contact you? You sent these guys your game for them to play it. Follow up! You've agreed to an exchange of information and they've dropped the ball.

But, be certain to nag in a nice way: "I haven't heard anything from you. I hope the New Year finds you well. I was wondering how your playtests of LotFP have been going, as I haven't heard from you in a while. If you haven't managed to play yet, what support material can I provide (sample characters/scenarios)? When do you expect to run your next session?" Ask specific, obligating questions.

I think the idea of putting the playtest documents out for anybody to download will just get you more uncommitted types that won't actually playtest. Matt Wilson had a similar problem with PrimeTime Adventures. I'd suggest more personal contact is what you need, not a wider "playtester" base.

[JimLotFP]

What do you mean they don't "seem" to have played it? Haven't you been in contact with them? Or are you just waiting for them to contact you? You sent these guys your game for them to play it. Follow up! You've agreed to an exchange of information and they've dropped the ball.

Already did the follow-up email bit and got less of a response from that than I did from the original mailouts. I suppose the possibility is there that the game is so bad/boring that even mention of it makes everyone angry/sleepy so they resent my sending it, but even so it would be nice to find out why they'd think that. heh. But it's not like I can force people into giving constructive feedback...

[daMoose_Neo]

Or they could just be ignoring you, forgot, or never really cared about it in the first place.
Can't really use that as a meter stick as to how good the game is. Granted, if it were the best ever you'd have 100% return, but you still have people who got busy, forgot, or didn't care in the first place. Doesn't mean the game isn't worth pursuing yet or is horrid. Just get some new folks you know can dedicate a little time.

[Bankuei]

Hi Jim,

How's your own playtesting going?  

It may help to have a mailing list or yahoo group in order to share info.  Put up info about your own playtesting, some issues or ideas you have going on, have the players in your group also post up.  The same thing that is going to sell your game in the future is what you need right now: a sense of community.

Odds are, few folks are really going to playtest your game, even folks who contact you for info.  Doing demos helps, keeping in contact, encourage folks to "do their own thing" and see what they're doing.  

Worst come to worst, your group may be the only one to playtest it.  In  that case, it would be a good idea to give a couple other players the chance to GM, in order to see if any rules issues come up.  Grab friends and ask them to read it, and see if there are any glaring issues as far as presentation.

Chris

[JimLotFP]

How's your own playtesting going?

My own playtesting went great. I know the kinds of games I want to run so of course the rules were written to facilitate that. So yay, I'm satisfied, but I know that means squat as far as knowing if the game is any good or not on a wider scale.

It may help to have a mailing list or yahoo group in order to share info.  Put up info about your own playtesting, some issues or ideas you have going on, have the players in your group also post up.  The same thing that is going to sell your game in the future is what you need right now: a sense of community.

I have a message board set up. I tend to dislike mailing lists myself for various reasons... I have one for website updates and that's about it.

In  that case, it would be a good idea to give a couple other players the chance to GM, in order to see if any rules issues come up.

Oh I wish. I've always liked the idea of playing more than GMing, the problem is nobody runs a game the way I want to play 'em. ;)  Finding players willing to be guinea pigs is hard enough, unfortunately.

But I've decided to try this idea out and see what happens... I've decided it can't hurt. :p

[GregS]

Just to chime in my experience, with few exceptions damned near every remote playtester I had flaked.  The only real way I could get valuable feedback was to force everyone I could to sit down with me and play.  I hit local game stores, my friends (geeks and non-geeks a like), and even suckered a few people into just doing quick rules crunch sessions with me.

At the end of the day I got about 1/4 of the testing I wanted...but it was enough to make sure that the system/product is sound.

[daMoose_Neo]

At the end of the day I got about 1/4 of the testing I wanted...but it was enough to make sure that the system/product is sound.

Which, to my mind, seems almost better than most major companies. I mean, TSR went close to twenty years without massively overhauling the system entire, but Wizards puts out a .5 edition of a core book in a matter of a year? or was it two?
Thats something great about PDF products though too, if something DOES come up thats broken, you can throw up an edit and contact your players (cause in most cases you do have their e-mail address) about the new version available~

[Vaxalon]

The DnD 3.0 rules had MASSIVE playtesting.  Open up a copy of the 3.0 PHB and look at the list.

The 3.5 edition came out in July 2003.

The 3.0 edition came out in July 2000.

That's three years.

The reason they made these changes from 3.0 to 3.5 probably has to do with the method they used for choosing playtesters on 3.0... they were mostly 2e players, whereas 3.0 brought a lot of people back into the game who hadn't been in.  The audience changed, the game changed.

[daMoose_Neo]

Off, but not by too much.
Personally, I don't think WotC spends enough time actually playing the games. They may strenuiously test D&D, but my statement still holds- TSR went umpteen years with AD&D, bringing in new fans, dealing with an OD&D audiance and drawing on different genres. WotC gets it and, within the first couple years, rewrites the core books to their 3rd edition and invalidates anyones work prior with the d20 lisence (I do believe in the fine print for the lisence it does mention that any change to the core means the d20 publisher has to re-issue their material as well to reflect the new changes).
Magic sets are heavily playtested as well, spend around three plus years in development with folks who play it for a living, and yet every set that comes out ends up with a restricted/banned list.
So yea, I'd say indie games see better "playtesting" because the games are actually being played, not tested.

[jdagna]

I know a few people who were involved in playtesting for D&D 3, and I know for a fact that it was more tested than any indie game (perhaps even all indie games lumped together).

Of course, the quantity of testing doesn't always equate to quality.  For example, my friend participated in the 3.0 playtesting and was told by WotC that his group was the first one to start characters at 15th level so as to playtest how things worked up there.  Some groups had made it that high simply by playing through msot of the levels, but the result was that D&D is much better tested from levels 1-10 than above... and I think anyone who plays it can tell.  (It's long been my belief that D&D characters should start at level 3 and end at level 7 but that's beside the point).

Still, I think you also have to admit that D&D 3.5 was economically motivated - both to sell a new edition and to increase the use of miniatures.  Given the reactions of most players, it added as many problems as it fixed, so if it's purpose was to cover up bad playtesting, it did an equally poor job.

Also, is there anyone here who has created a perfect game that could not possibly ever be improved?  Seriously, a lot of indie designers are using PDF and HTML formats specifically because they make revisions easier and cheaper.  The fact that D&D 3 was upgraded and that Magic cards are blocked from tournaments doesn't point to a lack of playtesting, just a lack of perfection that happens to be built into this universe (either as a fundamental condition or a result of the Fall of man, depending on your views).

Anyway, I'm not just ranting on D&D here... I think it illustrates two important principles in playtesting:
1) your playtesters will not always do what's needed by themselves.  A little prompting may fix the problem, or you may have to just spearhead most of it yourself.
2) no matter how much playtesting you do, there will be problems.  Just admit that up front and don't worry too much.  This advice is easier to give than to follow (just ask my wife how I feel when I find problems that playtesting missed).

[GregS]

I have to vehemently agree with both of Justin's points. People are inherently lazy, especially when they have no vested interest in something, and there will be errors.  The only thing you can hope for is that none of them end up being "game breaking."

One of the things I found, though, is that my playtest efforts benefitted from focus group procedures.  At one point through our testing, when I realized that not only was no-one playing any kind of Valherjar campaigns, but that even play with me at the helm was grinding to a hault, I spent a couple of sessions drilling specific concepts before a group.  I'd grab a collection of current, past, and non-gamers, introduce them to the game basics and the specific concept in question, play it out in brief fashion, and then poll for "what was wrong" and "what was right".  It turned out to be exceedingly beneficial and all it cost me was a u-bake pizza for the group to split.

Finally, on a point of inspiration, every time I'm worried about how broken my game might or might not be, I'm reminded of Kevin Simbeida (sp) and Rifts/Palladium System. This game/system have consistantly been within the top 10 on the market for better than a decade and, as far as I know, has been the single most high profile system to go the longest without a major revision or overhaul.

That said, at one point he issued a statement within one of his books that essentially said, "Though I know within the rules of the system most characters will be able to survive any manner of wounds, please try and roleplay some realism.  Though a character may have the hit points to lay down on a grenade, take the full damage, get up and dust themselves off, and go merrily along their way, please try and interject some logical reality into the situation."  Now, to me, that would seem heinous...but no one seemed much to care.  Which simply tells me that gamers, in general, may be more forgiving and easy going than we are inclined to give them credit for.

[KeithBVaughn]

Jim, you're about to throw away money on a print run of a game that is 10% finished. A few quick questions to show you what a potential buyer might ask:

Who is the Flame Princess?
What is she Lamenting?
Where is she lamenting it?
How does her culture lament things?
Why are you trying to rip off the initials of Lord of the Rings? LOTR

I downloaded your game and looked over it. It was not even close to complete. All you had were a character generation and a combat system without even a context to play a game in.  You didn't leave me an open world, you showed me a lazy game designer who hasn't even got around to providing a referee with anything to work with.  I can cannibalize many working systems out there and paste on my own world.  But why should I? I pay to buy a complete game, not a half finished one, not one where the designer quit when things got a little hard.

Small wonder you're getting no feedback, there's nothing to play.  You have a lot of work ahead of you and publishing early won't alleviate you of that work, it will just squander your money.  

Right now you don't need playtesters, it is too early in the design process. Create your background, your world, its history...create a place buyers/players want to visit repeatedly. Create the tools the referee needs to present a living world to his players. Do the work a referee and the players can't do on their own, that 's what game design is.

This is game design, you've done a hundred yard dash but you're in a marathon. Take another six months to two years and design the hell out of your game and make it a good one.  After all your name is going to be printed upon it.

I've written my own heartbreaker so I know where you are at right now. It's rough to climb a hill to realize there is a mountain range behind it. But that mountain range, that amount of work, is what every professional game designer goes through to pay his dues.

I know this isn't much of a pep talk but it is honest and I always have considered honesty a mark of respect.

Good Luck,
Keith B. Vaughn

[JimLotFP]

Jim, you're about to throw away money on a print run of a game that is 10% finished. A few quick questions to show you what a potential buyer might ask:

First off, from version 0.1 which I hope will be ready in the next couple weeks for upload:

"The name Lamentations of the Flame Princess itself doesn't mean anything in terms of what this game is, it's just a brand name that I've used for my various self-publishing efforts for the past several years. The material relating to the actual LotFP name may see light as a setting sourcebook later if I can figure out how to make it an actual 'game supplement' and not 'failed novel masquerading as game supplement'."

"(Actually, I'd just be way too sensitive to people messing with the premise for their own games in that 'I killed five Tiamats and fifteen Demogorgons sort of way.') "

Who is the Flame Princess?

Back in junior high school, I had this weird series of dreams... where the idea was that there was no such thing as imagination. Every single thing "imagined" was actually a psychic connection to another dimension. Somehow beings become aware of this connection and can use it to travel, using their imagination as a conduit. The catalyst for this was a demon that had possessed a young girl, but was looking for a way into a more powerful body. It jumped from her to "me", bad things happened to her, bad things happened in general, and voila, I'm a dimensional traveler who has discovered I'm one of the few who has no duplicate in all the multiverse... whereas anyone else, like the 'Flame Princess' as she became known because of this really really really cute redhead with waist-length hair blowing all about in this one picture I saw that kinda looked like the girl from the dream, had a duplicate self in every single dimension that existed.

It was a big mess basically combining Elric and the Green Lantern Corps (those 'individual' beings became recruited to monitor dimensional jumper), but funny enough I didn't read a single word of Moorcock for ten years after this concept was solidified. To say I was crushed to discover that many of the key points was already in print for decades was a huge understatement.

What is she Lamenting?

Her own death, over and over and over and over again. Every time I went someplace new, she was somehow in danger, and to right the wrong of my killing her in my home dimension, I'd try to save her. It was like a formula TV show. I'd solve her problem, but I'd always kill her in the process, somehow, some way.

Where is she lamenting it?

Everywhere imaginable. Wherever you go, she'd pop up. And disaster would follow. And she dies.

How does her culture lament things?

She doesn't have any set culture. She's an ancient tribeswoman in one dimension, an intergalactic empress in the next, soccer mom in the next, super hero in the next, terrorist in the next, etc etc.

Why are you trying to rip off the initials of Lord of the Rings? LOTR

The words came before the initials and it wasn't until I started writing it down that I started using the initials for convenience. It's been over six years since I've been using the name and I can't recall anyone ever making that connection before.

PS. The kicker of it all is I have absolutely *no* desire to play this kind of thing out in terms of role-playing, no desire to play a game that would define the tragedy aspects as a mechanic, no desire to actual write down the cosmology that makes this all churn. The even bigger kicker of it all is that while reading the Sorcerer book all my mind was doing was converting Humanity = Tragedy and Demon = Dimension travel ability.

While I have no problem describing what it is, I have absolutely no desire to make it into a game. To emulate the idea would define character roles which is a HUGE no-no for me in an RPG. And the whole thing seems too personal and as I said it would absolutely infuriate me to have other people traipsing around in something I consider an internal construct..

You asked. :p

(And no, I don't think that is The Way Things Really are.)

I downloaded your game and looked over it. It was not even close to complete. All you had were a character generation and a combat system without even a context to play a game in.

It's a system. A set of rules. What I need to know about the system is if it's internally consistent and if the actions work in a logical way with logical outcomes.

When you say "context" I'm guessing you mean setting and nothing turns me off of an RPG immediately like a married set of rules and setting. I have my own setting I've been using since 1990 for my games. No matter the game, if it was medieval/fantasy type stuff, it happened there. I think it's pretty awful to assume that other people would care about it, and I think it's pretty awful when other games that might have a system I love needs to be separated out from a background and setting material.

The setting could be fleshed out into publishable format but I wouldn't place it in with the rules in any event because I hate when other people pull that in stuff I've unfortunately bought.

You didn't leave me an open world, you showed me a lazy game designer who hasn't even got around to providing a referee with anything to work with.

I've also always maintained that it's not the job of a set of rules to drive the creative process. It's an engine that should disappear into a game being played.

From my personal notes on the project: "RPGs should enable gamers to exercise their imaginations, not be a barrier to them by doing all the creative stuff up front and forcing the players to adapt to it. RPG books are not exercises in creativity. Reading an RPG book is not an exercise in creativity. I think that suggesting what sorts of things characters should do is pushing what an RPG rulebook 'should' do. Odd concept I know, but I strongly believe RPG books should be as creatively neutral as possible."

I can cannibalize many working systems out there and paste on my own world.  But why should I? I pay to buy a complete game, not a half finished one, not one where the designer quit when things got a little hard.

I have the opposite viewpoint. I know how I like to play, I have my concepts, I just need a good engine to run those concepts with.

Small wonder you're getting no feedback, there's nothing to play.  You have a lot of work ahead of you and publishing early won't alleviate you of that work, it will just squander your money.

All I need is a couple hundred people on my side and it's a viable project. http://www.lotfprpg.com/about.php has all the info on what the core rules do and what they don't do, I don't think I'm attempting to fool anyone or get them to buy something they don't want to.

From that page:
"LotFP: RPG doesn't sing, doesn't dance, but it does provide a simple, fast paced, and inexpensive game engine with which you have so wide a range of possible options that it's only limited by your wishes and your imagination. Yes, we fully expect sales of the Core Rules to be initially slow, and pick up as the supplements then introduce the various hooks that entice people to play and finally convince them that yes, this game really can do what they want a game to do. It may not be the best marketing move, but contrary to what the marketing people tell you, x books sold over two years equals x books sold over three months. We're patient, we're confident in our product, and we'd rather do it our way."

Create the tools the referee needs to present a living world to his players. Do the work a referee and the players can't do on their own, that 's what game design is.

Thing is, what you're describing is what I consider the sole domain of the GM and the players, not the game designer. I know it's a reverse position than most people seem to have (especially at the Forge where the games seem created around a very specific player role), but I think it has validity and I refuse to believe I'm some hermit out in cave concerning the issue. Aren't other companies that have long published a series of games finally separating the 'basic rules' into their own separate releases? I'm just doing that first.

This is game design, you've done a hundred yard dash but you're in a marathon. Take another six months to two years and design the hell out of your game and make it a good one.  After all your name is going to be printed upon it.

Well assuming I decide that these core rules does not a full release make... anything else is to be added on top of these. I really can't move forward until I'm sure the stuff works. I know it works for how *I* play, but how *I* play means jack shit because it has to work in a logical manner with how other people play as well. Without that being tested and ripped apart and fixed, it's going to be flawed, which means anything else I would add would also be flawed because its built on a bad foundation. So  I need it tested, regardless of whether my original plans are good, bad, or indifferent, and whether anything gets added to the main book or not.

I know this isn't much of a pep talk but it is honest and I always have considered honesty a mark of respect.

Hey, something's thinking of the game in a critical manner. This is exactly what I need, just not everything I need. :)

[Luke]

Hi Jim,

Initially I was going to make some suggestions for getting your game out into the world and getting it playtested. But then I read Kevin's post and your own response.

Then I downloaded your pdf to check it out for myself.

Kevin's critique is spot on. Every word of it.

A long time ago, Burning Wheel was much like your game. Just a simple text file with a couple of mechanics in it. Not so much a game as an idea of one. I forced all my friends to play it -- much to their chagrin -- and constantly retooled it as we went. It drove them crazy. That was 7 years of development. Then I published it.

Over that time period I had to take a lot of hard looks at the game. In fact, none of the original mechanics, aside from Instincts and IMS, are in the game. Everything else is gone. Yanked out by the roots. But the spirit of it is still in there. What I have now is much closer to my original concept than those original mechanics.

Given what you said in your response about not wanting to design the game that's in your title... well, I think you need to re-evaluate your position.

Either toss out what you have and start over on the Flaming Princess concept -- why not tap that emotion? Or toss the flaming pretensions and really dig into the game that you have in front of you.

I'm not trying to bust your chops, but you're at an inbetween stage in your game development, and honest feedback is what you need.

I only scanned the combat mechanics you provided, but they didn't grab me. Nothing original, and nothing to do with a theme or core concept. If you're going to have simple task resolution in your game, you better back it up with some other cool shit. Take Conspiracy of Shadows, for example -- simple system, but lots of cool tweaks and great atmosphere.

If I were you, and I'm not, i'd take the lack of playtest feedback as a sign and go back to the drawing board.

Hell, drop on over into the Design forum with your concepts and ideas. You never know what could happen.

best of luck -- i feel your pain.
-Luke