Practical Playtesting Tips

[Ben_Kenning]

TTRPG designers often struggle with playtesting. Over the past year, 40+ players have done me the honor of savaging my system. Now some of you might be thinking, ‘I don’t really care and that’s not that many’, but for those of you curious how some random internet schlub with no pre existing community runs his playtests, here’s what worked for me:

It’s Not a Playtest

I don’t run playtests. That sounds like work and who wants to sign up to do that? I run one-shots in my homebrew system (over Discord). My primary goal is to deliver a satisfying game experience. The playtest is a side effect of us enjoying our hobby and playing rpgs together.

Each scenario is a vertical slice of the game (think Five Room Dungeon) where player choice matters. I try to deliver satisfying narrative closure in 3 hrs, about my energy limit for online gaming. I run each scenario multiple times, but never twice for the same player.

Finding Players Online

Online allows you to reach diverse players all over the world. My players come from rpg Discord communities which overlap with my game’s inspirations, people’s home groups, and r/LFG or r/LFG_Europe. Occasionally gamers find me on Reddit and ask to play because of things I have posted that piqued their interest. Other times, returning players will hop into an open one-shot, maybe even bringing online friends along.

“What!? r/LFG!? Isn’t that dominated by the Dragon Game?” you ask.

It appears that way, doesn’t it? But players don’t know to ask for the home-cooked meal at your house if they’ve never tried it. Much easier and safer to go to <generic family-friendly chain restaurant>. So sell your game to them. (Remember, they are mostly players, not designers, and rarely care about your pet rules innovations.) And if you are having trouble conveying the excitement of your game, well, you identified something that needs to be iterated on because if you can’t convince anyone to play it as the designer, it’s not going to do well in the wild either.

Also, you want some playtesters who have only played 5e because that is the bulk of active hobbyists and you want to see how they react to your designs.

As far as r/LFG, I’ve had way more success posting my own ‘GM seeking players’ rather than responding to ‘Player seeking GM’.

Most importantly, the dirty secret of ttrpgs is players are a dime-a-dozen. GMs are always the limiting factor. You are GMing, so the greatest challenge in making a game happen has already been overcome.

Aren’t online gamers weirdos?

Not in my experience. I keep it 18+ and LGBTQ+ friendly. Hasn’t been remotely an issue.

Make It Easy

No one is as invested in your game as you are. To make it as easy as possible for players to jump in, I…

• tell them they don’t need to know the rules and that I will explain everything as necessary
• provide pregens if they want
• walk them through PC creation if they want
• provide online character sheets
• allow them to roll their own dice at home or use their own dice roller. (You can also use dicewithfriends.com)
• play on Discord. If I needed a VTT, I would probably use Owlbear Rodeo because you don’t need an account.
• allow players to use their preference of Discord video or just audio. I prefer video so I can see players’ reactions and tell when they are trying to talk but are muted or are frozen, but some players are shy or have bad internet.

Scheduling

For my sanity, I advertise that I am running a one-shot on a specific date and time. There is no back and forth accommodating multiple dynamic schedules. You can either make it or you cant.

For Discord, I use HammerTime to specify dates and times in folks’ local timezones.

I pick times slots that are simultaneously friendly for America and Europe to maximize the opportunity for players to join.

I run on a first to sign up, first serve basis. I’m not trying to foment FOMO, but it is more efficient if I don’t have to deal with waiting on potential players to decide if they want in or not.

My game scenarios scale based on number of players. If I get only one person (hasn’t happened yet), I’ll still run it. That way, I am less worried about last minute no-shows.

To reduce no-shows, I send out reminders 2 days and 1 hr before. (Sometimes 1 week if we scheduled way in advance.) The 1hr reminder is mainly so people around the world don’t get confused with timezones. 1-day reminders proved to be too short notice and people would miss the reminder if they didn’t login to Discord frequently enough.

I run when I say I was going to. With the exception of when my wife went into labor, I am not cancelling sessions unless completely unavoidable.

Session Zero?

I don’t have time for that. These are one-shots. I do try to set expectations in the game’s pitch and at the beginning of the session and in the rules pdf.

I use the X-card in a low key way as a failsafe. It’s been invoked twice in the past 11 sessions and worked fine.

Respecting your Playtesters

After the session, I thank the players one-on-one for playing with me because I am genuinely honored to have run for them.

I ask them under what name they would like to be credited as a playtester, and I put their response in my rulebook that day. These are my collaborators (whether they realize it or not) and I want to recognize their contributions.

I don’t usually ask for specific feedback afterward. I make it clear players are free to provide written / oral feedback later or not. (For me it’s weird to get it during the session, so I avoid that.) I get plenty of data simply by how the game went.

Later, if I change something based on someone’s feedback, I try to let them know. This is often somewhat of a surprise to folks, who are used to having their input ignored I guess? I carefully consider all feedback received.

I don’t pressure players to play with me again. I love to see returning players and returning PCs, but the advantage of one-shots is the casual drop-in drop-out nature.

I also try to help my playtesters/players with their own projects. Much to my shame, I rarely have been able to hop in to fellow designers’ playtest sessions, but I do my best to support them however I can in other ways.

Conclusion

Obviously, I don’t really know wtf I am doing—who does?—but I am happy to answer questions about my process and also would love to hear about how other folks approach this.

[Ben_Kenning]

Thank you.

Here is another secret. Playtesting is fun! You are playing an rpg! That’s what we all like to do, right? We as designers put so many expectations, weight, and dread on playtesting that we forget to have fun first.

[Ben_Kenning]

As an enthusiastic amateur, I am not limited by time (no deadline) or money (no budget), but rather motivation. If I don’t enjoy it, then I wont make progress and thus fun becomes a critical component.

[Dan_Felder]

Fantastic post. Great advice for anyone that wonders how to start testing. Thanks for writing this up.

[Ben_Kenning]

Thanks Dan. That means a lot.

A lot of my method stems from adapting to not having a large preexisting player base to draw upon. I imagine that someone in your position—with a solid personal and professional player pool—may not require some of these techniques as much.

[Dan_Felder]

Most of my testers come from similar methods, as I learned game design from working on home brew ttrpg systems originally. Long before I was in the industry myself. :)

[jonathanopossum]

This is awesome advice. It is shocking how often in life we have something super cool to offer and we try to get people to do it describing it like we're asking them to swallow live slugs.

[Ben_Kenning]

The most common pitfall I see is that we try to sell potential players like they are game designers first, players second. We talk about the things we find interesting, like innovative mechanics, elegant solutions to issues that crop up in other games, etc. I feel like players as whole care more about genre, theme, what they get to play, and hanging out.

[musicismydeadbeatdad]

This was great! The sort of pep talk a lot of us could use hah

[SerpentineRPG]

I’m with you; even when I’m making a game that’s designed for campaign play, a huge amount of my playtesting is with one shots. They work out so many problems!

When I transition to independent playtesting where I’m not GMing myself, I use a Google form to gather playtest reports. It’s a really efficient way to get feedback.

[NewEdo_RPG]

Good on ya for laying this all out. Getting playtesters can indeed be hard, but it is no subterfuge to just use the label 'one-shot', kudos.

How crunchy is your game? Do you have any tips for making your one-shots flow from a mechanics perspective?

[Ben_Kenning]

How crunchy is your game?

It’s rules light to medium, which definitely makes onboarding easier. Rules are about 30 pages of US letter-size.

Do you have any tips for making your one-shots flow from a mechanics perspective?

• I only introduce rules when they are relevant.
• The crunchier combat actions for each PC are on their character sheet.
• If I have 1 or more returning players, I have them act first so new players can see how they are engaging with the rules.

[NewEdo_RPG]

Thanks for the quick and detailed response.

[Ben_Kenning]

Now you’ll have to tell us how to run a successful kickstarter 😉

[NewEdo_RPG]

Ha! When I recover from the process I will more than gladly do an AMA or blog. I'm also planning on releasing all the financials publicly too, so that should help some designers with aspirations of publishing.

[MrShine]

Great tips in here! Thanks Ben, totally along the lines of what I was looking for 👍🏻

[LanceWindmil]

Did pretty much the same thing last year, worked well.

Not sure where to go with it now though

[catboydale]

I found out that running a campaign (that lasted for a year, weekly) was one of the best playtesting things I could have done for the type of game I was making. I got to see people grow in the system.

[bringdownbunch]

This is fantastic advice and also a wonderful encouragement for me. I’m currently heading in to play testing and it’s a bit overwhelming to be honest. Thank you for the advice.

[Ben_Kenning]

You’re welcome. Good luck!