I've created this thread in response to Ron's Forge Vision thread. I was worried I might muddy the waters too much posting this there. It's likely not as interesting as my somewhat seditious subject title pretends it is.

I've been wondering recently about the playtesting forum. It seems to me that folks start with an idea in the first thoughts forum and typically get a good amount of feedback, they rack their brain, get the game into some playable form and then move to posting in the playtesting forum. Then... crickets. They then move to the connections forum and post; [my cool game] looking for playtesters! Then... crickets. Is my perception skewed? It wouldn't be the first time.

Now-- I've also noticed that the actual play posts that have problems and aren't mainly put up for recollection, get good response. Playtests tend to have problems, are actual play, and it makes me wonder if the neat idea/geocities folks wouldn't be better served by being put in actual play. So much so that my selfish plan was to just post in actual play once I got to playtesting.

I guess my question is would a change of this nature be within the Forge Vision? Would my selfishness be encouraged, thwarted, or tolerated? Would this make actual play unreadable due to the increased volume?

Hi Clyde,

It's a cultural transformation thing. Playtesting needs to become a real forum because the culture of dialogue about playtesting needs to be transformed, at least in the limited sphere of the Forge.

The crickets you're hearing are real. They're real because those folks who do want to support the Forge vision (or rather, what it serves) are not understanding their clear path toward that end. That clear path means: post meaningfully about playtesting, in others' threads; post meaningfully about your own playtesting, in new threads. I need to post more Playtesting too. Changing habits is hard to do.

As with everything at the Forge, mutualism matters. If you work in good faith for someone else, chances are high that either they, or someone who witnessed it, will work in good faith for you. I think we all need to realize that getting this effect reliably into action in Playtesting will transform this site. (In fact, Levi's Frostfolk threads should be in Playtesting. I didn't realize until after they were well started that the game system was not a published one. I think I'll move them now, or at least the current one.)

As with Actual Play, going back in time is perfectly OK. If you published an RPG in 1992, and if playtesting made a big difference to you (or in retrospect, you wish it had), then freakin' post about what happened and what you think about it.

So Clyde ... I ask that you do take your work into Playtesting. You may have noticed that many eyes have fastened upon your work with this game. Some of them are still a tad clueless (Ur? Won't that offend people?), but many of them, including those who know to stand back and let you think, recognize that you are doing something important. By bringing it into Playtesting when the time comes, those eyes will follow. You will be aiding the cultural transformation I'm talking about far better than you might imagine at present.

Hey, everyone - I invented the term "actual play" as a topic of discourse. Clinton and I added the forum to the Forge in 2001, and slowly but surely, it entered RPG.net culture and general internet dialogue. Its daughter "Go Play" is an emergent meme, or may become one. This was not some who-knows-where-it-came-from thing. I said, "We must discuss real play in a new way," and we started doing it - and I was right. The intrinsic value of doing so became apparent and now folks who think I'm the Devil are fully committed to that kind of discussion in any number of venues.

I'm going for the same thing with the subset of playtesting-discourse. Rosie the Riveter moment: we can do it. Let's.

Best, Ron

Hi Ron,

Stay the course? I can get on-board for that. I don't have anything more meaningful to add, I just wanted to publicly raise the issue.