I’m hoping to find some people interested in playtesting the new game which I’m designing, but I’m not sure whether there is any part of these forums where that is an appropriate place to do so. I don’t want to seek interest in an inappropriate area.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Most discussion about playtesting as well as a few playtest requests that happened on the board were in the Game Design section so I’d simply start a thread there. I know it states “no recruiting” in the rules but I suspect the intent was to not recruit people for online sessions there. This kind of stuff happens in the Hangouts section and as far as I can see quite a few playtests were organized there.
So I think that 1) if you want to perform playtests and exchange feedback in the open, Game Design seems the best place as testing is part of game design after all, 2) if you’re looking for players to run for in order to test you game, Hangouts are the place.
Thanks! That’s clear and helpful!
The Game Design category is a great place to discuss your game development process and playtesting! But to clarify, we have a hard “No recuiting for play or organizing games” rule on the Forums, and that includes playtesta. The only exception is the Hangouts category, which is only for posting games that are played through the Gauntlet Games Calendar, which does host many playtests. You can find it here: https://gauntlet-hangouts.firebaseapp.com/events If you want to post games on the calendar, you should reach out to @edige23. The general policy is that you should play a few games first, to get a sense of the play culture, and then you can get posting access to the calendar to put up your own games. Games are posted at least two weeks in advance. Gauntlet Patreon patrons have Priority access, which allows them to sign up right after games are posted. Open access begins a week after that. 70% of games pull from their waitlist, so if you’re number 1 or 2 on the waitlist, you have a very good chance of being in the game.
And that’s the run down. The reason for the rules is so that Gauntlet Hangouts happen, consistently and on schedule. It creates a culture where committing to play a game means something, and if you can’t in the end (because we understand life happens), somebody will be there to step up andmake sure there are enough players. Hope that helps!
(Edited to clarify the rule against recruiting on the forums.)
Oh, that’s very disappointing.
I don’t suppose you know of any other indie games forums which are more open in that respect? It’s so difficult to find potential playtesters out there!
I’ll say a lot of designers have had some good success playtesting with us within that approach, but I can get where you’re coming from.
I’m going to repeat Lowell’s sentiment that the Gauntlet calendar is a great way to play games, and though it may seem rigid, it’s actually a chill place to play, people are welcoming, and when you do get your playtest up people will be excited to play it. I also understand if you’re excited and want to get those games going right away.
The Exalted Funeral discord has a playtesting area, though I’m not sure if they limit who has access to it. You could definitely ask. You can post games on reddit at r/lfg. I’m not sure what’s happening at the Itch.io forums, but at one point there was an attempt to create a robust indie TTRPG space there, you could check that out. RPG talk Discord has a pretty robust LFG section, as does the Math Club discord, you could try those out. Good luck !
This strikes me as an odd stance. This hard rule is not mentioned in CoC, ToS, FAQ or any of the sticky topics as far as I can tell. There was no mention of it when playtesting was discussed openly in Uncharted Worlds 2nd Edition topic (or a few others I was able to dig; UW is the most recent though). Heck, there’s even a dedicated “we’re in open playtest, spread the word” topic for Hearts of Wulin.
I can definitely see how Hearts of Wulin is special but still, really odd line to draw. People will post rules in design threads and if one were looking for a free feedback, they’ll get it. When it comes to paid playtesting I can see how one wouldn’t want to turn this forum into a job bulletin board but I don’t think this is what the anti-playtesting rule is about. So what is it about, really? I’m genuinely curious.
It’s not an anti-playtesting rule-- just want to be clear on that. If someone wants to talk about their game, do a design diary, and maybe point people to another site where you’re signing up folks for interest or future playtests, that’s cool.
What we ask is that folks not organize game sessions on the forums. There’s a couple of reasons for that. The most important to me is that we organize games via The Gauntlet Calendar. We have a firebase site which supports that, we have a code of conduct which applies to those games, we have a strong play culture, and we require GMs to use and explain safety tools. So we want any games posted/offered in our space to live up to that. That’s why we ask folks to play with us a couple of times before GMing and we offer support and events to help folks get used to running online (or just running).
That’s always been a mainstay for The Gauntlet, a complement to the podcasts. The forums arose because of the closure of G+, and we wanted to offer a decent public game discussion space.
The Hearts of Wulin topic you mention wasn’t about organizing events, but rather gathering feedback and pointing people to things.
Again, if you have a game-- feel free to talk about it. Direct people to resources, point folks to playtest materials, link to your site. That’s cool. What the moderators have kept off the forums has been direct recruitment for play groups and setting up specific events. There’s lots of great dedicated places to do that-- I know lots of people use the Roll20 game tools to get players and the RPGGeek forums also have a section dedicated to finding players and setting up games.
And if you have questions about if something would or wouldn’t fit that, feel free message and run it by a mod. They’d be glad to help out.
I’ve edited my earlier post to clarify the rule. Though there may be no single place where that rule is stated (and perhaps we shoud fix that), the pinned description of every relevant category clearly says no recruiting for play.
OK, so answer to @Alex’s question really is: post about playtesting in Game Design section, preferably alongside the complete set of materials needed for playtesting. You can ask people to playtest your game offline and they can share their experiences on the board, no problem. It would be great if you asked your playtesters to adhere to The Gauntlet CoC when conducting tests on their own accord to spread the best practices developed by The Gauntlet community over the years. However, no gaming sessions should be organized on the board unless they are part of the Gauntlet Hangouts, you’ve played a few hangout games already, and will adhere to the CoC when running.
Is that correct?
Yes, that is correct. Sorry for the delayed response.
Thanks all. I appreciate the effort to come up with a comprehensive statement.