In the third part of the Sebastian plans a playtest series series, I talk about setting up a yardstick to measure success.

So I know the kind of information I’m looking for from the players, and I know the kind of feeling I want afterwards, now to try to engineer a positive result. More… »

In the second part of the Sebastian plans a playtest series, I talk about finding out how to measure success.

So I’ve identified what I thought was a good playtest experience, that is, the feeling I got when I left the table, and I’ve figured out the dangers of a bad playtest experience, that sometimes I can’t trust disaster, so where to go from here? More… »

In HfL, before play begins, players collectively decide upon a sequence of objectives that will make up the narrative anchors of the game’s fiction. These are called Checkpoints. In the beta draft there are some dedicated notes as to how to choose a good Checkpoint, but it’s all very vague. I’d like to clarify that today. More… »

Playtests can be bumpy. Not just cobblestone bumpy, but roller-coaster bumpy too. One day they soar and praise, the next they plummet and frighten. Over the next couple of days I’d like to to try to establish why there’s such a fluctuation of experience for me, and what I can do about it. More… »