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    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    qazzquimby's Avatar

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    Default On the organization of homebrew playtest games.

    First of all, is this the place to do it? It's a borderline, but this seems more appropriate than in recruiting.

    What is the most efficient way to judge the classes? A full 1-20 level campaign would be most thorough but obviously take ages. Accelerating leveling? Tests at benchmark levels?

    Which classes get tested? "All of them" would be wonderful, but isn't happening. Do we go for more complete and impressive classes to polish them, or help struggling classes meet their potential?


    I will most likely have time to run a game, and would like to try Castle Whiterock (though I can't see it surviving to the end, given the eventual death of most games). If unaccelerated dungeon crawl isn't considered optimal then I'd run something else.

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    nonsi's Avatar

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    Default Re: On the organization of homebrew playtest games.

    Quote Originally Posted by qazzquimby View Post
    What is the most efficient way to judge the classes? A full 1-20 level campaign would be most thorough but obviously take ages. Accelerating leveling? Tests at benchmark levels?

    Which classes get tested? "All of them" would be wonderful, but isn't happening. Do we go for more complete and impressive classes to polish them, or help struggling classes meet their potential?
    Which "the classes" are you talking about?

    Before you playtest a class:
    1. Roughly estimate its basic numeric values at each level.
    2. Figure out its features - the things it can attempt to accomplish.
    3. See if it gets nice things at each level. In my view, a level at which you only get more of what you already have (more #uses... elevated numbers...) is not much fun. It's ok if it happens once or twice in 20 levels, but not more than that (I'd accept up to 4 times, if it's an awesome class).
    4. See how competent it is at what you expect its focus to be.

    Only then should you proceed to playtest it.

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    Zaydos's Avatar

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    Default Re: On the organization of homebrew playtest games.

    Quote Originally Posted by qazzquimby View Post
    First of all, is this the place to do it? It's a borderline, but this seems more appropriate than in recruiting.
    I don't know. I start 'em in recruiting myself, usually link them in my sig (ah but not this time for some reason), and mention them in the Base Class Challenge chat thread because I am usually doing it because I've made something for it and want to get to test out the class a little before the contest closes and figure others might too (i.e. because it's on topic). Current attempt at recruiting.

    What is the most efficient way to judge the classes? A full 1-20 level campaign would be most thorough but obviously take ages. Accelerating leveling? Tests at benchmark levels?
    I'm currently running two parties through a randomly (i.e. hey look it's cheap) selected 3.5 module, and looking to start another through it (the third party I tried before fell apart when 2 players disappeared halfway through the first fight). This is not the most efficient way, though. I chose it because the module showed a sort of benchmark of game design. For the other? I'd say accelerated leveling/benchmark levels might be the way to go. It depends upon how many games you intend to run vs how many classes to test as well. You could, start 4 games each with the same 3 classes and 1 Tier 3 base line at levels 1, 6, 8, 14, and 18 and that might work very well to test those 3 classes (classes tend to get major buffs at 5th or 6th level, casters spike again with 4th level spells, then 7th, then 9th). But again it depends upon how many games and how many levels.

    Which classes get tested? "All of them" would be wonderful, but isn't happening. Do we go for more complete and impressive classes to polish them, or help struggling classes meet their potential?
    My policy has become only classes I know the creator will get the feedback/look over the game to see how the class really serves in it. Beyond that... what players want to play? Any of mine they're willing to test

    I will most likely have time to run a game, and would like to try Castle Whiterock (though I can't see it surviving to the end, given the eventual death of most games). If unaccelerated dungeon crawl isn't considered optimal then I'd run something else.
    I'm going unaccelerated dungeon crawl myself, so I'd say it'd be fine. It all depends upon exact goals, and I decided a module was optimal for a few things:
    1. Baseline: The game designers saw this as an adventure balanced against characters of this level. I went with one I had heard squat about because I took that to mean it wasn't infamously hard.
    2. Ease: It's a pbp I don't even need to have read the whole module, just find the relevant stuff ahead of time (I've not read the final portions of this one, just looked over to see if they had any information on an NPC which showed up... they didn't), instead I can just plop the PCs in, run the encounters, and don't need to build encounters/make dungeons/etc.
    3. Lack of DM Interference: I make Eigen Plots. I build adventures around my players. They tend to like that, it makes them all feel useful and have fun. When testing to see how useful something is, though, it's better not to be building encounters with it in mind. A module stops me from doing that.


    That said I am thinking about creating a mega-dungeon dungeoncrawl for homebrew testing where the non-adventuring parts of the game are truncated and it's mostly combat/problem solving making a dungeon as various parties explore it. Accelerated leveling, and low RP, just to more efficiently and quickly test brew. So I can't give you the answers really, since I'm still looking for them.
    Last edited by Zaydos; 2014-08-27 at 01:24 AM.
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  4. - Top - End - #4
    Barbarian in the Playground
     
    qazzquimby's Avatar

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    Default Re: On the organization of homebrew playtest games.

    @Nonsi
    Didn't answer any of my questions, and but good advice for others :smalltongue

    @Zaydos
    An accelerated leveling standardized megadungeon sounds like a very useful project.

    Off the top of my head
    1-2 encounters per level up
    Classes that requires extended downtime to work should have 3days-1week at the beginning, and every level or two after to simulate a non accelerated game.
    Gain wealth simply by leveling up, to match WBL? With purchasing of items during downtime.
    Fairly standard monsters, traps and hazards chosen for each level. This is hard because which monster is picked could reflect differently on the classes depending on their immunities and abilities. To find an average against all monsters you would actually need to fight all monsters.
    No puzzles or social elements unless added in by the DM. Puzzly things that could be solved by spells are fine.
    Mostly one path for a more standardized experience, with side objectives for some sort of bonus (health? "Points?"). Ex, walking along the lip of a chasm, they see a chest on the other side. Test if anyone can jump it, fly it, bridge it, ect.


    Also new question, what criteria are the classes judged upon? Is there anything beyond how much they can contribute and how fun it is for the player? Can either be empirically measured somehow?

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