Hey, I'm new to the Forge and I feel a little lost. I've recently (over the past 6 months) gotten very excited about game design. I've been fired up by the pod-casting community, but now that I've gotten to the Forge, I feel a little lost. Could someone help me figure out where to go and what to do? I'd love to play-test, get feed-back on some of my game designs,and just get to know some other folks who enjoy this stuff.

Thanks,
David

Hi David,

And first, welcome! I don't blame you for feeling lost. It's a little bit like walking into a boxing gym - everyone seems to be busy doing something, and there isn't any obvious starting point. And at least one of them, the ring, looks pretty scary.

The good news is that anywhere is OK to start. If you have some ideas about the game you're designing, pick one that strikes you as especially interesting (it might not even be original, but might be something you 'ported from some other game, doesn't matter) and describe it here in this forum. If you do that, it helps to articulate a question or topic for discussion, even it it's as simple as "does that make sense?" However, try to avoid opinion polls. It's pretty much taken as given that you're interested in your own work enough to approve of it, so who would or wouldn't like this or that detail isn't important.

If you've already playtested the game, even in an older version from its current form, then start a thread in the Playtesting forum. It might even be all about how awful it was, or about how you threw out 85% of what you had at that point. Or it might be about something good that happened. The point is, once a game is playtested in any form, that's the forum for it from that point on.

The Publishing forum is pretty self-explanatory, I think, and go to Site Discussion if you have any questions about the design or conduct at the site. You can always send me a private message if you don't want your question to be public.

My usual recommendation, though, is to start by posting in Actual Play. People make this ten times harder than it is. If someone were to post, "We played AD&D2 back in 1991, and my brother back-stabbed me right after we made second level. The bastard!" it would be perfectly cool. All it takes is a wee bit of thought as to what about the play experience was important to you, and what sort of discussion you'd like to have about it. Finish up the post by explaining those, and you're set.

I hope that helps!

Best, Ron

Welcome to the Forge, David.

Ron (who is The Big Kahuna around here) has put it perfectly. To add to it, you can help others by reading their descriptions, having a think and asking some questions about their designs. There's no such thing as a stupid question.

The best advice for any writer, though, is to keep writing!

Please forgive the threadjack, but what podcasts have you been listening to? I'm always on the lookout for some good ones related to RPG interests.

Hi Rudy,

Please take that discussion to private messages (use the IM button under the person's name). No big deal, and I hope you accept my welcome to you along with the one for David. Or if you want to hunt down good podcasts more publicly, then please post in the Connections forum.

David, that reminds me - if you're looking for playtesters, then the Connection forum is definitely the place to post about that. (So see, Rudy, your post turned out to be a fine thing after all.)

Let's see some more, right here in this thread, if you want to talk about the game you're currently designing.

Best, Ron

Thanks everybody for the great help, and Rudy, if you don't start a podcast threat I would love to.

David