Gaming with the Author: A Pax Draconis review(ish)

[Mark D. Eddy]

OK, I've been meaning to do this for quite a while, and now that I've worked up the nerve to go back to starting up topics, I'd like to talk about what is, essentially, the only indie game I've actually played.

Pax Draconis (Technicraft)

It's space opera. It's fun. And we've got a mixed bag of players including Justin Dagna, the guy who wrote the game (Hi Justin!). Sally Dagna, his wife, is our GM/referee. I was thinking about doing an analysis of the play group, but the only problem is an outside-the-game flakiness on the part of one of the players.

As we play it, Pax Draconis is mostly Sim. We have occasional flashes of Narrativist play, but the group goal seems to mostly be staying in character in this rich world we have around us. Justin has been building this gameworld for more than a decade (I don't remember the exact nuber of years), and there are lovely details that reflect this.

Now, here's the interesting part (to me, anyway). We're trying to be a playtest group, but almost any rule location or organization question is usually answered off the top of Justin's head -- information that might be hard for a 'pick it up in the game store' customer to find is readily available to us, because we have the ultimate index. I know that Justin has other playtesters that he *doesn't* game directly with, and they will, hopefully, be pointing out rules that are important but hard to find.

I suppose the lesson for the rest of us is that being too close to the rules has the danger of leading to a broken ruleset that doesn't play broken until we step away from it. Not that I think Pax has this problem; I was planning on running my own campaign with Pax Draconis until Justin made a comment about wanting a new group to game with.

[jdagna]

Hi Mark!

Somebody should make a point of smacking me when I jump in and volunteer information!  It's a bad habit of mine, which is why I try to stay out of playtesting and keep it entirely independent from myself.  Of course, part of it is that I enjoy the group so much, I want to keep the gaming going without making people find things.

I'm learning some very useful things, though.  For one, I know that when I have to cite key rules or tables more than once, they could probably stand to be moved, indexed better or giving a separate heading of their own.  I don't always get that from a playtesting group I'm not watching.  For example, the playtesters had never mentioned that experience table on p112 because they could always find it "well enough" and its location makes sense.  But, having seen the way it is used first-hand, it's become obvious that moving it to the chapter on character generation would be better.  

It's also been invaluable to overhear some of the conversations about where the group members want to take their characters as they gain experience.  The fact that people are going through the thought process the system was designed to elicit is a great reinforcement.

I've found with playtesting that three types are the most useful, each providing certain advantages:
1) "Development Testing:" By taking a bunch of people who know things inside and out, we can throw around lots of ideas, narrow them down to a few and test them in play before handing them off to outside playtesters.
2) "Outside Playtesters:" Handing the game to people who are completely new to the game and setting gives a good check for whether concepts are clear, usable, etc.  It also gives outside inputs on what people want the game and setting to do.
3) "Inside Playtesters:" This is my term for groups I'm actually in (like this one).  I mentioned most of the advantages here - actually being present makes you aware of a lot of subtle things.