I'm pissed off

[ethan_greer]

So, over in this thread we're talking about my recent playtest of my game, Thugs and Thieves. This is a somewhat related yet stand-alone thread, hence the link.

The reason I'm pissed off is that, once again, the differing play preferences in my regular group have slapped me in the face.  You'd think I'd get used to it. Somehow, I expect my fellow players to grow a little bit, stretch out, and expand their role-playing sphere of experience. It seems they'd rather bitch about the games they could be playing but can't or won't, while the games we are playing are poisoned by inter-player sniping about how much this or that system sucks, or whose play style is more or less valid than someone else's.

Fuck that.

So these guys are decent friends, and they know I'm really into starting this little publishing thing, and this is my first game.  None of them have made any effort to read it.  We playtest it. They insult the game at the same time they're saying things like, "it does what you set out to do." How would they know that when they haven't read it?  Or, "there's something missing, but I don't know what..." Again, how would you know if you haven't read it?

The most glaring example of insult follows:

1. <contemptuously> "This is the most incredibly rules-light system I've ever seen... Everything about the character minus description could fit on one side of a 3x5 index card."

2. <snorts> "More like a postage stamp."

Fuck that.

Then when it comes time to decide what we're doing next week, Thugs and Thieves comes up only at my suggestion and is voted down.

Fuck that.

Maybe I didn't run the best adventure imaginable, but what gets me is, everyone had fun. Really, they did.  I was there, and watching carefully. And yet Thugs and Thieves gets the shaft.

At this point, I want nothing to do with these people as a gaming group. Whether this feeling will pass or not, I'm not real sure right now. Over the years, the feeling has come and gone; each time it comes, it's worse than the last time. What I do know is, my feelings are hurt and I can't take it to the people who hurt them right now because I'd flame their faces off, which I'm more than capable of doing.  As a result, you guys get to be treated to my ranting and raving.  Sorry.

What makes the whole thing worse is the fact that recently I sort of took the mantle of running and hosting the game upon myself in an effort to actually get us to play more than, say, once every six weeks.  (I'm not exagerating. Our record for actually playing is absolutely atrocious.) Now, after Sunday's session, I don't know if I ever want to game with these guys again.  I'm so fucking sick of hearing things like the following comments (paraphrased for your reading pleasure):

"Campaign play is infinitely superior to one-shot adventures."

"Well, I'm Gamist so that's the only type of play decision I'm ever going to make." (This person blatantly misuses the term Gamist, by the way, based on a thirty-second synopsis of GNS I gave a while back when asked about it. He's apparently latched onto the term and uses it as an excuse for his Hard-Coreness, and has made no effort to learn more of the theory.)

The whole situation is fucking depressing right now, and I'm at least partially to blame.  Anybody got any advice for me?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ethan,

Just to cheer you up:
We are all elitist pigs!
My group's motivations & rewards

Chris Chinn (Bankuei) recently posted some good observations about how poorly people remember or reconstruct their role-playing experiences, but I had some trouble finding that thread.

Here's my call: when playtesting, be sure to play with people who are committed to your success as a designer and potential publisher. They may dislike the game, they may have intense criticisms, and so forth ... but they're there for constructive reasons. They won't simply weigh in with disruptive interjections or reckless insistence on what they're used to seeing.

Interestingly, other would-be designers are often very bad participants for these purposes. I don't know if it's jealousy or what, but beware.

Best,
Ron

[MachMoth]

I can feel your pain.  Some people make for bad playtesters.  I have one small segment of a group that cannot let go of D&D.  They tried playing a homebrew at a convention once.  It used a d12 and was skill-based.  It also had one of the most beautiful magic/tech settings I've ever had the pleasure of seeing.  There complaints were as follows.

Would have been better with levels and classes.
The d12 didn't produce enough variance, try a d20.
Needs more combat.
Guns are bad, mkay (well, you get the idea).

The long and the short of it was, this poor guy got negative critizism for anything that wasn't D&D.  Not once noticing the elegance and simplicity of play, and the wonderful balance and depth to the setting.  I would never playtest anything with them.  They are narrow minded, and set in there ways.  If they enjoy that, I'm not in any position to change that.  However, if someone can't be constructive and open-minded, they aren't any good to you.  Also, if they would rather play something else, don't use them as playtesters.  I've seen it all too often.  They will, in essence, try to turn your game into what they would rather be playing, without even trying.

[Marco]

Playtesting can be scary. The more emotionally invested in your work you are, the worse criticism hurts. Barbs even moreso.

1. These guys are *not* the target market for your game. Some people love chracters that can fit on a 3x5 card (I can get a whole champions character on a 3x5 card so I dunno what he's talking about).

Some people want characters that can fit on a postage stamp.

These guys don't.

2. Whatever else they've been, they were pretty calous with your feelings. I wouldn't show them any more of what you're working on on that score (especially considering that you didn't get any good feedback). Sometimes people have other stuff goin' on when they're thoughtless (maybe its the jealousy thing--the people most interested in making their own system have, IME been the least interested in mine).

Maybe it's a conflict of philosophies (that seems unlikely outside of broad strokes). But whatever it is, I wouldn't play-test with them any more.

-Marco

[Brennan Taylor]

1. <contemptuously> "This is the most incredibly rules-light system I've ever seen... Everything about the character minus description could fit on one side of a 3x5 index card."

2. <snorts> "More like a postage stamp."

So where's the problem?

Seriously, I can also relate. I had a group of good friends, good gamers, we were together nearly ten years, gaming almost every weekend. When I had this group play my homebrew (later self-published), they enjoyed it, but I never got any useful feedback beyond unfavorable comparisons to other systems. None of these people ever ran the game, and I got mostly lukewarm support after I published.

In this situation, you can't rely on your own group for the feedback. You have to get out there to new folks, and I think evangelizing is the key. Your friends can't get as charged about it as you do, but if you can get some other gamers outside your group enthusiastic about it, they will help you playtest the rules and talk them up to boot. I found this was the case when I moved states and developed a new gaming group.

[ethan_greer]

Well, the concensus from everyone is the same, and I must agree.  I don't plan on playtesting with this group ever again. And that's so obvious I can't believe I didn't realize it for myself.  Thanks, guys!

Instead I'm going to focus on trying to improving our general play, as I've recently started doing. As I said, these are decent friends. In the end, the occasional frustration is probably worth the effort of making a group that works.  I think it can be done; time will tell.

I'm still pissed about the playtest session.  But now I can move on from it.  You guys are da bomb.

[David Chunn]

Sorry about your troubles, Ethan.

If you keep trying to play with those guys, shift the social dynamic, recruit some new blood into the group.  Just one person whose on the same page with you --can-- make a big difference in changing everyone else's perceptions and responses.  Also, if they really did enjoy it, then you're probably dealing with a mental block on their part.  They don't know they're enjoying it and --may-- see things differently if you keep at them.

For what it's worth, I'm spoiled by having my wife and best friends as playtesters, but even so I didn't start getting good feedback until I made them feel like their feedback was really important to me.  The biggest problem I had, even with them, was that they wouldn't read the text.  So I started giving it to them in advance, not rushing things, and wouldn't teach them how to play step by step until they showed up with ready made characters for my approval.  I try to channel my excitement over to them.

All in all, I'd say find a new game group to play with on the weeks in between meeting up with those guys.

[Simon W]

It seems like many of us have similar difficulties. A lot of my games I have to almost force some of my friends to play. They enjoy them when they do play them, but I never get any feedback - critical or otherwise other than vague "Oh yeh, it was good". Again, like many here, none of them actually read the text.

One of them in particular won't play anything that you cannot get commercially - i.e. that you have to buy from a shop.

Other times that I have gone to clubs and stuff where I don't know the people, I have had them fighting over themselves to play (thankfully, otherwise I may have given up).

Even one of my best buddies, who used to be a creative game developer himself, doesn't seem interested in reading the stuff I come up with. It is quite frustrating. I always read stuff he does and give him feedback. Oh well.

I have given up with them and look at other avenues of playtesting.

Simon

[Ben Lehman]

It seems to me that the problem of lack of interest and feedback from playtesters is not limited to gaming.

By calling and practice, I am a writer (albeit I've yet to make more than $5 from writing, but still...)  When I give my friends my own writing to read, I get the following responses:

1) I liked it.
2) Silence.

 Neither of these are helpful to me, as a writer, at all, in the slightest bit, improve my work.
 This is why, as a writer seeking peer criticism, you must seek out other writers -- people who understand what goes into a story and what the mechanisms behind it are.  Your friends suck at comments, because they haven't written a damn decent word in their lives.  You must let the other writers read your work without your explanations, and then give their comments.  Particularly useful are the comments about what doesn't work, but that's always true.  This is what writing workshops are good for.
 The Forge kind of functions like a writing workshop for games.  It tends to be nicer than most of the good writing workshops I've attended.  I have yet to decided if this is a good thing or not.

My advice is the following:
 You have a game manuscript.  You know that it can be played, at least in theory.  Send it out to playtesters.  Don't explain anything else to them, just let them play the game as is.  Then, let them give feedback.  If they are good playtesters, it will be harsh and exacting.  It will sting like a son of a bitch.  Resist the urge to scream at them, or explain yourself to them.  Rather, let it sit for a few days, then make the revisions that you think are necessary based on their comments.  Then, send it out again.
 It is useful to take on new playtesters every few revisions, because "fresh eyes" see things better.
 You cannot playtest your own game, because you will subconsciously fix things as you play, making a much better game than the one that is written on paper actually is.
 Your friends cannot playtest your game, because they know you too well, and thus refuse to take your game seriously.
 Your average gamer cannot playtest your game because he has no fucking clue what goes into game design and what considerations have to be made.  He only knows how to play what he buys, and whether or not he likes something.
 Get good playtesters.  Connections and the RPG.net playtests forums are places to start.

yrs--
--Ben

[MachMoth]

It's an odd balance.  Those versed in RPG creation can give the most detailed feedback, but I often take that with a grain of salt.  Players often could care less how your game conforms to the GNS model.  While this may be important, you're best playtesters are interested, unbias, non-RPG-designing, players that want the game to be the best it can be, because they want to play it.  Yeah, that's it!  

Players that want to play your game want it to be good, and will suggest ways to make it better.
Players that don't want to play your game will suggest ways to make it like what they do want to play.
Players who don't care give worthless, or no feedback
Designers give good input on design.
Designers are also arrogant know it alls, that seem to lose track of the big picture (sorry, probably a bad place to say that).
[/list:u]

[Bill Cook]

I've walked into some of these thorn bushes.  No one hurts more than he who cares most.  It may be useful to detatch yourself from any expectations of playtesting.  To yourself, emotionally, give your playtesters the freedom to make what they will of the experience.

Keep their hats straight.

Audience
Player.
Critic.
Counselor.
Cheerleader.

Question
Is it fun and playable?
Do the rules work?
Isn't my idea exciting?
Do you see how that's a better mousetrap?

Function
Play my game.
Guide my design.
Keep me sane and loved.
Sell copy.

My advice: keep them seperate.

[Daniel Solis]

Even one of my best buddies, who used to be a creative game developer himself, doesn't seem interested in reading the stuff I come up with.

Not so sound harsh or anything, but chances are that from your friend's perspective, you just wrote a really neat poem and you're hoping he'll read it and give feedback.

My gaming group is the same way and I've long ago given up using them as playtesters. I can understand where they're coming from, really. One of their buddies is coming up with a "really cool idea" every month or so for a mechanic or setting, but no one's interested in hearing about it. If they do critique the idea, it's only on the grounds of whether or not it's similar to their favorite games.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you it'll get easier. The problem with playtesting is that it's an oxymoron in many players' minds. On the one hand, they'd like to play a game. Maybe even a new game. On the other, this is testing an unfinished or possibly poorly developed system. Then they're expected to provide feedback on how to improve it. In other words, it's work. As they see it, subconsciously or consciously, (Play + Play) > (Play + Work).

[ethan_greer]

Thanks to all for the great advice and commiseration.  It's really a pick-me-up.

As a result of this and the other great threads that have been happening about Thugs and Thieves, I think it's time I go back to the trenches and really hammer the game into shape. So, look for a new playtest version in the next few.

[Jason Lee]

I think the thread Ron was referring to is this one:

the psychology of getting enjoyment from play (split)

[Bankuei]

Hi Ethan,

The hardest part regarding creating, playing, and working things out is divorcing personal issues, emotionalism, etc. from the actual observations.  At this point, its hard to tell how much of the criticism is valid, or simply just "play habit preference", "John had a bad day", or whatever kicking in.  It's rather the same reason that most couples have a bad time giving each other advice, and taking it, because too many emotional issues tie up the actual communication.

With that, especially in gaming, there is a tendancy to very much alter the actual experience within memory...You may have sat bored for 3 hours and had about 30 minutes of real fun...but the session is remembered as being "fun throughout".  Just something to be aware of.

Chris