At Dreamation 07, we* should organize an Indie Playtest Explosion, either formally or informally, part of the overall Indie Games Explosion or not. The basic point of it would be to get people to volunteer to run playtests of a given game, with the designer getting them all of the materials with whatever lead-time they want. And then the designer watches the playtest, or maybe gets a recording of it if they can't be present.

The point of it, of course, would be to get independent playtesting happening, and also to get players involved with brand-new game goodness.

Yes, this is awfully early. But I'll bring it up again later. But it's an idea to start thinking about, I think.

*...by we, I suppose I mean I. But we'll see if anyone else gets excited enough to help out!

I'd love to see the same demo setup at Dreamation as at GenCon (a cluster of small tables and chairs). It's more friendly than the long tables, in my opinion. If we have the space in front of the elevators, that would be perfect.

I'm totally available for any on-site details that need to happen before the convention -- I live 5-10 minutes from the hotel.

This would be fantastic and is an excellent idea, and I'd be on board with this in any capacity that was needed.

Amen.  And I'm on board.

My worry is I probably will have rules I just don't know if I will have rules anyone else can make any sense of.

... which is precisely what external playtesting is good at showing you.

I'd be thrilled to hand off some rules and have people playtest them.  That would be a hugely helpful tool to me (both the actual playtesting and the deadline that it represents for getting my thoughts into coherent form).  Thanks for thinking of it!

Would these playtests happen all at once?  Or across the course of the convention?  I wonder if there would be enough of them to represent a track (at least for one day, say Saturday).  A formal "pre-release playtesting track" for playtesters might well draw people from outside our community ... and folks with a different aesthetic are key to getting good playtest feedback.  They break the things that us forgiving Forgies would just gloss over.

What I meant Tony is that I am pretty sure that I won't have gotten the chance yet to write the "anyone but me can understand them" version of the rules by then.  But come to think of it, if I don't have those rules by then, then this isn't for me.  It's not a problem to be solved, it's just me adding meaningless data.

Awesome!

Right now, logistics-wise, I'm thinking of coordinating with Kat when she starts getting the Indie Games Explosion together (assuming she continues being the point-person on that). So, depending on how many playtest sessions people submit, maybe we could have a track on one day, or one evening, or whatever.

The dates for Dreamation haven't been put up yet, but there will be a deadline for proposing a playtest, a deadline for someone to agree to demo it, and a deadline for getting the playtest materials from the designer to that person that will be at least a week in advance of Dreamation.

Other thoughts?

Will these playtests be run as actual convention games, or more "on-the-side" affairs? I mean, I'm a little wary of someone who paid convention admission signing up for my game and it bombing because they playtest rules are horrible or my understanding of them is horrible. Tony's idea of a "playtest" track is cool - I just want people to know what they're potentially getting into.

I think that could be the selling point:  "Come to this game!  It may be your first glimpse of a bright and glorious future.  Or it may well fragment completely, leaving you all laughing hysterically at how totally impossible it is to complete the slot in any reasonable way!  Then you play Jungle Speed!"

It seems to me that game designers in the past (Shawn, Andrew, Michael,me) have put their playtesting in normal game slots and had success with people signing up to play 'em at Dexcon and Dreamation.

Does this need to be something set aside and different?

If it ain't broke don't fix it?

I am tending to agree with Judd, but I think the point was to have OTHER people playtest your game, without you running it or playing in it.  That said, one could continue to playtest one's own games just as before.  I wonder whether the old practice plus the playtesting track might deplete the supply of players though.

EXTERNAL playtesting.

That is a great idea, to get other people running each other's new games.

Neat.

I think we should do this off the formal schedule / as a supplement to regular play. Dreamation is a great con for our community because so many folks come out, hang together, play each others games, and generally are pretty chill.

I don't think that playtesting = fun, it's work that sometimes can be fun. People who come to play the con games are expecting to have a fun experience.

Maybe this can be done the evening before the designers roundtable discussion (if that's still happening), and then during the roundtable more people in the audience can talk about how the game plays into talking about the concepts / themes of the games being discussed.

Nathan wrote:
Right now, logistics-wise, I'm thinking of coordinating with Kat when she starts getting the Indie Games Explosion together (assuming she continues being the point-person on that). So, depending on how many playtest sessions people submit, maybe we could have a track on one day, or one evening, or whatever.

Mayuran wrote:
I think we should do this off the formal schedule / as a supplement to regular play.

Count me in. I was already planning to have a complete copy of One Night ready for Dreamation. It would be wonderful to have someone else run it.

I would definitely be up for running some else's game and/or helping out in some other way.

I think people would be fine with it on the regular schedule as long as it was accurately described.