Playtesting strategy

Ralph has made an excellent point about putting things in the order in which you have to explain them.

In doing Multiverser, we started with an introductory chapter that in essence said, you're going to come in contact with all of these concepts in the game and will need to understand them, but here are the core essentials you need to know so that you will have some idea what they mean until you get to the details. Thus we give very brief statements of what we mean by the multiverse, scriff, bias, multiple staging, and gathers, because they're going to be mentioned in the text in relation to other things. After that, we go into basic character construction and task resolution, somewhat together--understanding skills overall is presented both in terms of how characters get them and how they function in play. Since Multiverser is really primarily about its characters and what they can do (who they are is fairly straightforward: it's an I-game), putting this character information first makes sense. World building information, details about bias, understanding scriff--these things are touched on periodically as they relate to matters in the text, but are summarized and expanded in later chapters after you've got the characters pretty much in place.

By contrast, I'm reading the draft text for Legends of Alyria (playtesting for Seth), and I note that several chapters are spent giving the feeling and description of the world. Character creation comes rather late in the book. This is quite appropriate for the game. Players don't start by creating a character. They start by understanding the world and developing a story idea, and then cooperatively create all the major characters, and then once that is done they decide who plays which one(s). Character creation is certainly critical to play, but there is much that the players must grasp and even do before they get there.

So I think the way to do it, if I can overly generalize, would be:

[*]Give a very brief overview of the important points the reader will eventually need to fully understand;[*]Begin with the one that you would explain first to a new player;[*]Move through them in the order that people will need to know them;[*]Allow yourself to provide some information early on points that integrate, but summarize and expand this in its own place.[/list:u]
I think this last point may be overlooked. Game mechanics tend to integrate. It is difficult to talk about them in isolation. Thus where they interact, you must explain how they interact, but you also have to remember to restate those ideas at least in brief summary in their own sections. Using Multiverser as an example, there's hardly an area of the game where bias is not important. Every character has bias ratings, ever skill has a bias rating, every world has bias ratings, and these bias ratings control a tremendous amount in play. I can't really explain character creation, skill use, or world development without talking about how bias fits. I still have to put most of the information about bias in one place. If someone has a question about characters which involves bias, they're going to be looking under character information, and they have to find it there; if they have a similar question about bias that involves characters, they're going to be looking in an entirely different place, and they need to find their answer there.

Besides, don't be afraid to duplicate the information. People learn by repetition. If they read your rules once and they get it, you've written them well.

--M. J. Young