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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.

8/8/2009 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.

8/3/2009 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.

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.

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.

7/27/2009 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.

7/27/2009 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.

7/24/2009 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.

7/22/2009 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.

7/14/2009 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.

7/8/2009 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.

7/2/2009 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.

7/1/2009 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.

7/1/2009 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.

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.

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.

6/24/2009 Tim C Koppang: [S/lay W/Me] The Lion, the Wretch, and the Woman
Ron and I gave one of his three (four?) ongoing projects a playtest last night.  As our regular Tuesday night group has dwindled to just the two of us, it…
In Playtesting
Participants: Tim C Koppang, Ron Edwards, Gregor Hutton, Rod Anderson, Patrice.

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.

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Subsequent Topics
In Playtesting

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.

8/24/2009 MatrixGamer: [Engle Matrix Game] Salem Creek Cthulhu Horror PBEM
We are play testing the first draft of what I hope will be a future EMG board game/story game on the MatrixGame2 yahoogroup. We'd love to have some more players.…
In Playtesting
Participants: MatrixGamer.

8/25/2009 Ron Edwards: [Rats in the Walls] Prep, questions, suggestions
Hiya, Some history: almost four years ago, Lance won a Low Ronny award for the first draft of this game. See Summary thread for more about the contests; see…
In Playtesting
Participants: Ron Edwards, Lance D. Allen.

8/27/2009 Vulpinoid: [Quincunx] Playtesting begins
Just thought I'd share with everyone the progress on my game Quincunx. Quincunx Playtest Rules Part 1 Looks pretty... the mechanisms work independently... ...and they've been tested pretty thoroughly... but…
In Playtesting
Participants: Vulpinoid, JoyWriter, Spooky Fanboy.

8/27/2009 HeTeleports: [ Powers ] - First three solo playtests
Well, this will be my first major contribution to the Forge forums. Let me preface this entry to playtesting with a disclaimer: what will be discussed is more of a…
In Playtesting
Participants: HeTeleports, MacLeod.

8/27/2009 Ron Edwards: [Clover] Fairies are not easy to spot
Hello, A little while ago, Ben Lehman participated in an activity in which you were to handcraft something neat and send it to five friends. Ben aparently knows how to…
In Playtesting
Participants: Ron Edwards, Ben Lehman, Arturo G., tonyd, Elizabeth, Jake Richmond, Noon.

8/30/2009 Darcy Burgess: [Storming the Wizard's Tower] - Get those Vikings outta Egypt!
Glenn H, Glenn W, Jason, Steve and I just wrapped our Verradheim campaign of Storming the Wizard's Tower.  We ended up playing three adventures, and never made it to level…
In Playtesting
Participants: Darcy Burgess, lumpley.

9/1/2009 Darcy Burgess: [Black Cadillacs] - The final push
I had two fruitful playtests of Black Cadillacs at GenCon '09.  The first was an after-hours affair with Me, Julie, Matt, Ron and Tony.  The Troopers were Israeli Tankers invading…
In Playtesting
Participants: Darcy Burgess, Ron Edwards, Paul Czege, jrs, Capulet, agony.

9/4/2009 northerain: [Dark Days] ''The man that never was''
This summer I ran some intense (8 hour sessions no less) Dark Days games, for playtesting purposes. This is the AP report from a single storyline, played over 4 days,…
In Playtesting
Participants: northerain, Spooky Fanboy, Catelf.

9/4/2009 noahtrammell: [The Gazette] I don't need hands to kill you!
For those who don't know, I'm a new member to the Forge who absolutely loves RPG's but hasn't had much experience in design.  I've been writing a micro-game called The…
In Playtesting
Participants: noahtrammell, Artanis.

9/6/2009 Matthew V: [MV's Rogue] Hello and Matching Rules to Play Goals
[b]First off ...[/b] Let me say that while I’ve been reading these forums for a few months, this is my first post. If I muddle up terms or post in…
In Playtesting
Participants: Matthew V, Simon C.

9/12/2009 soviet: [Other Worlds] The Infected
So, last year saw the main tranche of external playtesting for Other Worlds. It went out to a whole bunch of different people and I got detailed feedback from a…
In Playtesting
Participants: soviet.

9/13/2009 Simon C: [The Heartbreaker War] Not quite as done as I thought
I guess there's always this vague hope in the back of my mind that I'll sit down to playtest a game, and everything will run great, everyone will say "Well…
In Playtesting
Participants: Simon C, Ron Edwards, hix.

9/14/2009 Simon_Pettersson: [Standing Up] Unify, Divide
I'm not sure what kind of response I'm looking for in this thread, but the forum description said to write about your playtesting experiences, so I did! So I was…
In Playtesting
Participants: Simon_Pettersson.

9/15/2009 davidberg: [Super Action Now!] turn-based confusion (monkey god, future midget, wuxia star)
10 days ago I sat down with Dan and Merlin to play SAN!  It was the first time any of us had played. Character creation We started with character creation. …
In Playtesting
Participants: davidberg, Marshall Burns, JoyWriter, whiteknife.

9/18/2009 hix: [Left Coast] Inaugural playtest. Talking dog. Assumptions challenged.
Back in 2005, I wrote a game called Left Coast, where you play science-fiction authors in 1970s California who are all struggling to write novels and hide your growing insanities…
In Playtesting
Participants: hix, Malcolm, Simon C, JoyWriter.

9/20/2009 Eero Tuovinen: [People's Hero] A first stab at saving USSR from itself
I haven't been playing much of anything lately, but luckily the gaming train runs on schedule around here nowadays, whisking me with it even without much initiative on my part.…
In Playtesting
Participants: Eero Tuovinen, Noon, Ron Edwards.

9/23/2009 Graham Walmsley: [Misspent Youth] F**king motherf**ker's on our f**cking tail
We played Misspent Youth last week. Character and world creation was a blast. We were fighting against...oh...I don't know...a corporation of some sort. The advice about choosing things that genuinely…
In Playtesting
Participants: Graham Walmsley, RobNJ, Paka.

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