Playtesting! [Mage: The Awakening]

Mage: The Awakening, Open Development

EDIT:

Okay, everyone – check your private messages. In the end, we had a staggering 95 groups apply for playtesting, so please don’t feel bad if you don’t have a message from me waiting for you, but that number of groups is simply impossible to manage. I have not sent “rejections” out, as I will happily be in touch with other groups if any of the people I have gone for drop out, fail to respond, or whathaveyou. But if you don’t have a message from me, you were not selected for the initial tranche.

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Wow! A day and a half after I posted this call, and I have Sixty-Three applications! Many thanks to everyone who’s applied, and if you haven’t yet, you’ve got until Saturday night to message me. I’ll go through and contact as many groups as I can reasonably handle on Sunday to get the ball rolling with NDAs and such. If you don’t hear back immediately, do not despair, though, as in the nature of these things at least one to three groups will fall through.

Real spoiler post on the book is coming soon!

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Welcome back, faithful readers!

Busy busy busy putting the nearly-final touches on Awakening before it goes off to editorial and the gentle caress of Mike Chaney’s art direction, so this will be brief.

We’ve been playtesting Awakening second edition for a long time now, from before first drafts, when the team were hammering out concepts of mechanics, up through the first drafts into redlines, and now that all the second drafts are in and I’ve been making sure things fit together. I’m going to run the game again before we’re finished, and I’m now seeking groups willing to help playtest the game.

Do not just hit reply now. Read the rest of this post first.

I already have some playtest groups lined up. Those recruited here will join those directly-contacted. Not everyone who volunteers will be tapped. There’s a practical limit to how much feedback I can sort through, which brings me to; Be certain that you’re willing to follow instructions. Every playtest we do, there’s at least one group who ignore the parameters – that’s one less useful group, in a spot that could have been filled by someone else. Don’t be those guys.

By way of encouragement, those participating according to instruction will be credited in the book and will receive a pdf copy of the finished game. The best playtest group will receive a Mystery Prize, and I have projects in the future (like, Awakening’s product line, for example) that I may invite groups who please me back to playtest.

This, then, is what I’m looking for:

Enough system familiarity to run a second-edition new World of Darkness game: that means a WoD corebook and the God-Machine rules update, Demon, Beast, Vampire, or Werewolf. A mix of those familiar with Mage’s first edition and those who are coming in fresh, both within a group (telling me your group contains newbies is advantageous) and entire groups. If I get 9 applications who are all old hands and one group who live and breath Requiem second edition but want to try Mage, I’ll choose groups based on balance. The biggest danger for a games designer – hell, the whole reason we playtest outside of our own groups – is that we know how it’s meant to work. Face to Face groups only. Willingness to sign NDAs and stick by them. Which means not telling people you’re in the playtest until after the book comes out. The playtest groups will be run blind from another, too. No white rooms. We have already run all the mathematical models we care to (and that number is greater than zero, too.) I care about the experience of the game in-play more than pitting designed characters against one another; is such-and-such a subsystem too complicated to use in the middle of a combat scene? Did you spot the various synergies in the system, or come across them spontaneously in play? That sort of thing is great, and ignored by theorycrafting. No copy-editors. You’ll get a Playtest Packet excerpted from the second edition drafts, not the full text of the book, and you’ll get it before editorial has their way with the draft, so spending time on spotting spelling mistakes wastes everyone’s time. “I didn’t understand X mechanic, it could be clearer” is good feedback. “Typo!” is not. Ability to run the game – preferably more than once – and report back quickly. Which in most cases means an established gaming group willing to take a break from their usual game. Group Size is no object, from one-on-one games to five or more. I will be selecting for variety here, too.

If you fit the bill and are willing to help out, log into our forums (create an account if necessary) and send me a private message detailing;

Your real legal names. I’ll need them for the NDAs.

Degree of familiarity with Mage and nWoD 2nd edition.

How large your group is.

DO NOT apply in the comments of this post, on my profile, on facebook, or in forum threads. That defeats the purpose of a blind playtest, and means I have to gather details from all over the internet.

NB! If you have previously contacted me about maybe helping out, do not take this post’s existence as a rejection – I just had to wait until I felt the game was ready. Please feel free to review this list and apply formally if you’re still up for it.