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In Playtesting

6/24/2009 Emily Care: [Kagematsu] Tea and Banditry
I ran Kagematsu at JiffyCon earlier this month. The players included 2 men and four women: Liz, Kim, Rachel, Jim, John and myself. Only one of them had heard of…
In Playtesting
Participants: Emily Care, Ron Edwards, Pauls Girl.

6/23/2009 Abkajud: Informed Consent and Premise
I'm playtesting a Greek heroic adventure game, The Hellenes, and I've noticed that my players haven't read the rules. They remember everything I tell them out loud, in person, but…
In Playtesting
Participants: Abkajud, Ron Edwards, JoyWriter.

6/22/2009 lumpley: Psi*Run at a creepy-odd angle
A little while ago I ran Psi*Run for Meg, Julia, and Rob. We played it in 3 sessions. I was thinking that Psi*Run would be really good for survival horror,…
In Playtesting
Participants: lumpley, Marshall Burns, John Harper, RobNJ, Darcy Burgess, Meguey, jdfristrom, ophidian_flux.

6/11/2009 Abkajud: Firewalling the Fiction [The Hellenes/Mask of the Emperor]
I've noticed that in most games I've played, you consult with Fortune once (one roll of the dice, one card drawn, etc.) and then return to narration. For example, I…
In Playtesting
Participants: Abkajud.

6/11/2009 FlamingMoose: [Storming the Wizard's Tower] The Ice Age
[This is going to be an extremely long post because my groups has already completed three sessions of StWT. It's been a while since the first session, too, so my…
In Playtesting
Participants: FlamingMoose.

6/10/2009 Jason Kottler: [Ultrablamtacular] - Fixed Trust
A recent playtest revealed gigantic, cruise-ship sized holes in my game. One of the problems was with the subtle difference between Trust and Confidence. That, at least, has been resolved.…
In Playtesting
Participants: Jason Kottler.

6/8/2009 Abkajud: Is it Force if you get consent?
I've been thinking about the concept of "forced" control of characters, of a sort, akin to the effects of Diplomacy skill or what-not, but used on PCs instead of NPCs.…
In Playtesting
Participants: Abkajud, Vulpinoid, Ron Edwards, Brimshack, Vordark.

6/6/2009 Abkajud: [Mask of the Emperor] Setbacks and non-thematic content
We're closing in on the end of the campaign here, and I'm getting some thoughts together about how things have gone favorably and unfavorably. I'm noticing that, because there's a…
In Playtesting
Participants: Abkajud, Noon, Eero Tuovinen, Brimshack, Vulpinoid.

6/4/2009 AJ_Flowers: Robot Clash Playtest
I decided to run a playtest of the combat system/proto game idea that I tossed on to First Thoughts about a month ago.  Willow: I know I owe you a…
In Playtesting
Participants: AJ_Flowers.

6/3/2009 Ron Edwards: [Thy Vernal Chieftains] Passion and politics
Hello, Tim Koppang and I decided to give Thy Vernal Chieftains a whirl last night. It turned out that, curiously, I did not possess some of the items required to…
In Playtesting
Participants: Ron Edwards, Tim C Koppang, Paul Czege.

5/29/2009 opsneakie: [Night and Day] First 3 sessions, some initial thoughts and opinions
Okay, so I haven't posted anything to the Forge in a long time, not really having anything to post, but I've finally gotten around to running a test campaign of…
In Playtesting
Participants: opsneakie, Vulpinoid.

5/29/2009 davidberg: [Delve] story-gamers in my sandbox
I've been working on Delve throughout a 14-month, 28-session playtest with some of my best friends.  By now, they all know how to get what they want from Delve, and…
In Playtesting
Participants: davidberg, jenskot, Paul T.

5/28/2009 Jason Kottler: [Ultrablamtacular] Save Versus Suck
Well, the long-awaited (by me, at least) playtest session of Ultrablamtacular took place on the Friday before the long weekend. And...man, it was a kick in the designer-nads. I posted…
In Playtesting
Participants: Jason Kottler.

5/25/2009 Everspinner: [Apocalypse World] Car Mountain
(Check out the previous session if you want. This report focuses on the mechanics and is much lighter on the fiction, as I cannot write fiction worth the feel we…
In Playtesting
Participants: Everspinner, lumpley.

5/25/2009 Brimshack: Metagaming - a Rule and a Side-Effect
Okay, so as general rule I do not allow free tactical discussion during my games. The rule says that characters may say anything irrelevant to combat they want whenever they…
In Playtesting
Participants: Brimshack, Bercilac, Noon, Vulash, Ron Edwards, Vulpinoid, contracycle.

5/24/2009 Darcy Burgess: [Kagematsu] - Local Farmer warns Dragon attack imminent! Bleeds on town!
Hi, Waaaaaay back in the mists of time (ok, about two month ago, but it feels longer), I coaxed my wife (Kirsty) and one of my friends (Jason) to play…
In Playtesting
Participants: Darcy Burgess.

5/24/2009 jp_miller: How do you formalize feedback from playtesting?
Hi all, I'm preparing a game for playtesting and was just wondering how you manage your feedback. So the scenario is you playtest it yourself with a few friends (great,…
In Playtesting
Participants: jp_miller, davidberg, Lance D. Allen, Vordark.

5/20/2009 Michael Desing: [Mythweaver: Reckoning] Vault of the Goblin
While I was having great fun with my play test for Mount Brim, and I plan to continue building Mount Brim at some point, the last few weeks have been…
In Playtesting
Participants: Michael Desing.

5/10/2009 Eldrad: NOVEL RPG: Megalopolis Hero's Mag
Hero's Mag Using the freeform system as described in this earlier post. http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=24786.msg245893#msg245893 Two characters were Sapphire and Jade played by my two daughters. Sapphire is a mutant that can…
In Playtesting
Participants: Eldrad, Noon.

5/8/2009 Vordark: [Genesys] My First Play-Test Report(tm)
For reference, the system is here:  http://www.chaosphere.com/genesys/ While I have run a number of sessions using the Genesys core rules, I haven't until this week had the opportunity to focus…
In Playtesting
Participants: Vordark, JoyWriter, chance.thirteen.

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Subsequent Topics
In Playtesting

6/25/2009 Ron Edwards: [Mars Colony] Just a little lying, this once
Hello, 1. I know they've always been around, but lately it seems to me as if a number of game designers have been turning their attention to, for lack of…
In Playtesting
Participants: Ron Edwards, Ben Lehman, Tim C Koppang, Willow, Dev.

6/29/2009 Paul Czege: [S/Lay w/Me] the Lover and the liquids
Danielle and I playtested S/Lay w/Me last week. She was the adventurer and I was the situation and the Lover. I was holding off posting about it until we'd played…
In Playtesting
Participants: Paul Czege, Pauls Girl, Ron Edwards, MacLeod.

7/1/2009 Abkajud: [The Hellenes] mental/social wounds and player agency
[cross-posted at story-games.com] Since one design led right into another, I have a lot of holdovers from [i]Mask[/i] lurking in [i]The Hellenes[/i]. Case in point, here's an excerpt from my…
In Playtesting
Participants: Abkajud, Vulpinoid, Ron Edwards, JoyWriter.

7/1/2009 brianbloodaxe: [Oxygen] First playtest of my SF RPG
Seeing as Gregor's AD 316 playtest finished up I snatched up the group and subjected then to the musings of my own game last night. My GMing skills were a…
In Playtesting
Participants: brianbloodaxe, Gregor Hutton, mindwanders.

7/2/2009 Ron Edwards: [S/Lay w/Me] The back-story and earliest playtesting
Hello, Beginnings It started with Sean (Calithena) asking me to contribute to the magazine Fight On!, which I definitely wanted to do but kept getting screwed on time. Certain events…
In Playtesting
Participants: Ron Edwards, Tim C Koppang.

7/8/2009 Ron Edwards: [Showdown] Mayhem and trauma, start your engines
Tim and I continue with the twosies!* Seth sent me a copy of Showdown a bit ago based on the Mars Colony thread. Here's his Showdown development and playtest page…
In Playtesting
Participants: Ron Edwards, GreatWolf, Tim C Koppang, MacLeod.

7/14/2009 JoyWriter: [Rustbelt] Lory Plaza
[i]Lory Plaza, Glory plaza it used to be called, but only Reverend Peters calls it that now. You can hear him sometimes on his PA speakers, mixed in with his…
In Playtesting
Participants: JoyWriter, Marshall Burns.

7/22/2009 Doplegager: (Path of Journeys) Sandbox and Litterbox
[b]A little Background[/b] I'm doing revisions of the Path of Journeys, one of the Ashcan Front games from 2007. The original impetus for the game was a combination of A)…
In Playtesting
Participants: Doplegager, Adam Dray, Ron Edwards, Paul Czege.

7/24/2009 Marshall Burns: [Hex Rangers] Strange Fruit revisited
[i]Hex Rangers[/i] is my design that was formerly titled [i]Witch Trails[/i]. It’s a game of investigating and exterminating the paranormal in the American frontier. A couple weeks ago, I ran…
In Playtesting
Participants: Marshall Burns, Patrice, Simon C, DWeird, Mike Sugarbaker, davidberg, Noon, JoyWriter, Emmadexter1970, contracycle, charles ferguson, northerain.

7/27/2009 Simon C: [The Heartbreaker War] Fictional Causes
Here's the pitch for my project "The Hearbreaker War": The Heartbreaker War is a campaign setting and character creation system designed to work with any fantasy RPG system.  You play…
In Playtesting
Participants: Simon C, Noclue, Lance D. Allen.

7/27/2009 Melinglor: [Spectre of the Beast] What's a little piracy among peaceful peoples?
You know, I have been very, very stupid. I've been working on game design for a couple of years now, and I have completely ignored the Forge as a mine…
In Playtesting
Participants: Melinglor.

7/29/2009 Doplegager: (Path of Looting and Slaying) Elfs snuck into my fantasy parody...
In another playtesting thread, I've talked about about a poor playtest experience I had last week, with a focus on failure on the social level but touching on ways to…
In Playtesting
Participants: Doplegager, JoyWriter.

7/30/2009 Librabys: {AethEra}
Here I shall post all about what is going on in AethEra! You are invited to post any comment or questions as well First I will copy (and edit) a…
In Playtesting
Participants: Librabys, Adam Dray, Ben Lehman.

8/3/2009 Simon C: [The Heartbreaker War] Its Glory is all Moonshine
Based on the proceedings of the last thread on this game, I substantially changed the rules of the game, with excellent effects.  Playtesting the game some more, it's reliably producing…
In Playtesting
Participants: Simon C, lumpley.

8/8/2009 Librabys: {AethEra} : The System.
Hi to all the folks interested in the development of AethEra!   I don't think It is still worthwhile to read the playtest post on AethEra, Because The game changed…
In Playtesting
Participants: Librabys, Dan Maruschak, Noclue, Vladius, Simon C.

8/9/2009 David C: Getting players to define their characters... also, character death by suicide.
So I'm back to play testing my game and some of the new mechanics in it.  The current group of players are interested in developing a story and a character…
In Playtesting
Participants: David C, Lance D. Allen, Noon, Simon C, Jasper Flick, Mike Sugarbaker, JoyWriter, Adam Dray, 7VII7, Sam Orton, Catelf.

8/14/2009 Simon C: [The Heartbreaker War] Character Death
The Heartbreaker War is my character creation/fantasy setting thing, where you play through a fictional war in a fantasy setting, to create characters with interesting relationships and compelling history.  You…
In Playtesting
Participants: Simon C, Lance D. Allen, Selene Tan.

8/17/2009 Charlie Gilb: [the Waste] Struggling with player agency
Hello, I've been working on my post-apocalyptic RPG titled 'the Waste' since the beginning of summer, and the rules have gone through many different changes. This last Saturday, I decided…
In Playtesting
Participants: Charlie Gilb, Eliarhiman6, Lance D. Allen, Marshall Burns.

8/18/2009 wrshamilton: [Misspent Youth] Culture Jamming the Foundation
This is like my fifth post, and was maybe my second story game, so please feel free to let me know how I could be more helpful with Actual Plays…
In Playtesting
Participants: wrshamilton, RobNJ.

8/18/2009 Lance D. Allen: [Mage Blade] Let's Play a Game...
So, I'm doing a little exercise here that I would like you Forgeites to help me out with. This is not actually the start to a game. It's a streamlined…
In Playtesting
Participants: Lance D. Allen, 7VII7, DWeird, Ron Edwards, Bret Gillan, MacLeod, telperion, contracycle, Darcy Burgess.

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