Matthew Rodgers's blog

Tonight was game night, and we did manage to get in a four-player playtest of The Abbey.

It was a semi-blind test, meaning that one of the four players grabbed the rulebook and tried to explain the game from it, while I looked on and tried to keep my mouth shut. Three of the four are part of my core playtest group and the fourth has done a playtest with me before, so there was a good vibe. Everyone knew that I don't take negative feedback personally and that the game was up for evaluation, not praise.

The second game that got playtested last game night was Sint Maarten, which has the dubious honor of never having had a complete play of the game (other than the one time when the ten-year-old purposefully threw the game, just to get out of the playtest).

After the great success of Disaster!, Mark and Gerald were willing to playtest another of my games. The ten-year-old solemnly informed us that he would not join us, since the store owner has invited him to play a demo of Flames of War.

Reposted from my blog at mrwgames.com:

“The game plays you” is a complaint that seems to come up fairly often and one that I think that comes down to meaningful choices in the game. A game with few meaningful choices will often feel like it’s in charge and there’s no real choice for you to make. Lack of meaningful choices is usually due to either false distinctions or strictly dominant strategies.