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Dale Yu: Sample Playtest Report
Thanks to everyone who had comments (both public and private) on playtesting. I fielded a few questions concerning my playtesting method as well as a few requests trying to gather more information on the actual playtesting. Rather than answer them individually, I’ve decided to post an example playtest report as my column for this week.
The majority of my playtesting has been for Age of Steam variants in the last few months, and I have developed a idiosyncratic form of report for this game. For those of you unfamiliar with Age of Steam, it is a train game of sorts where the players take turns to build track in order to set up a network to allow them to deliver goods (wooden cubes). Additionally, in the course of each turn, the players participate in an auction to allow them to choose different actions.
I have discovered that an entire game of Age of Steam can be captured beautifully in a photo-essay of sorts. Generally, when we playtest an Age of Steam game, I’ll set up my camera on a tripod near the table. We then take a picture of the table at the end of each player’s turn. This allows the game designer to look back at our entire game and see how it developed step by step. With careful planning, every important piece of information can be captured for later review. Furthermore, I felt that a system such as this could allow the designer to be right at the gametable with us for the whole game.
Though I have playtested variants more recently than August, I thought that it would be interesting to show you a playtest report from an already published game. Last summer, I was invited by JC Lawrence to playtest his two variant boards which were released at the most recent Essen. For context, when I received my prototype copy, I really did not know much more than the overall theme/idea of the game. I generally try not to learn much more than that before starting so that I can accurately test all aspects of the game including setup from the rules as well as clarity of the rules.
[For those of you who do not yet have a copy of this excellent board, you can refer to its homepage here for copies of the production version as well as a .pdf version of the rules for reference. http://games.bezier.com/AOSLondon.html ]
What follows is the report which I submitted to JC after our playtest. Please be warned – the report includes 44 images at a total of 5MB. I will only include the first few images on this initial page so that those who wish not to download them all are not obligated to do so. Many thanks to JC Lawrence for allowing my to playtest his game as well as granting permission to publish these details on the playtesting process. The format will involve a series of pictures with the appropriate caption underneath. Enjoy!
--- report pasted below ---
Playtest notes for AOS London
Players: 4
Time: 2.5 hrs
Date: August 5, 2006
Respectfully submitted by Dale Yu
JC, this is a hard game to give you a verbal/written report on because there is so much going on. I have decided to give you a photo history of the game. I did not take many other notes during the game, so I’ll add in the details here where I can remember.
We had a few rules questions, I will address those at the end with the overall comments.
Initial Setup. We were unclear what to do with the four single cubed un-urbanized towns
Initial building phase. Initial order was yellow-red-green-purple. Initially each player took out lots of shares. (3-4-4-5) Actions chosen in order were: Locomotive (green), Urbanization (red), Engineer (yellow), First Build (purple). Purple went first and tied up the middle.
More from the initial building phase. Red took urbanization and found that the others likely got as much benefit from placing the city as Red did at this stage of the game.
More of the initial building phase. The rest of the builds were not that interesting IMHO, but you can see where we went.
More of the initial building phase. As far as deliveries, Green got 2 deliveries (having the free loco), each other player took a turn to pass and made one delivery.
Want to see more? Click here to see the next portion of the playtest!
KIDS GAME OF THE WEEK on hiatus this week
CRAZY DALE’S GAME BAZAAR on hiatus this week as well
Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor
Posted by Dale Yu on Feb 7, 2007 at 12:00 AM in Columnists, Dale Yu / 735
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