Playtesting a Hack

Forged in the Dark The Workshop
1

I’ve been working on a sci-fi Blades hack for a while now, and I feel that I am finally ready to playtest. My issue is, how do I playtest this game?

I’m not ready to do a ‘full’ playtest version, with a rulls document and sheets and all, but I have a bunch of different mechanics I want to test out, see if they work as expected both on their own and combined with other systems.

Any direction on how to conduct a playtest, especially in the early stages, and how to work towards having a ‘full’ playtest version, would be really appreciated.

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Welcome to the forums!

Yesterday I read the blogpost on precisely that subject, written by Stras who have made some good Forged in the Dark games
https://offguardgames.com/2019/07/08/minimum-viable-playtest/
I hope it is of use.

1 Like
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Thanks for the link. I read the blog post a while back, and it’s definitely impacted on which things I focused on during the initial design focus.

Part of my issue is that I don’t know what questions to ask playtesters about different mechanics. I know I need to playtest my actions, but I’m not sure how to do that. And same with the more complex mechanics that I’m introducing, especially when they’re supposed to work over multiple sessions (stuff like heat and rep).

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I see this was a couple months ago, but have you considered asking for a few playtesters and setting up a game via Skype?