23.1.10

Twin Rivers Play Testing Sign Ups

Well, I'm all ready to get this show on the road and start some testing. Mmmmm, testing.

All right, so here is what you need to know before hand:
We'll be playing by blog (I have another one set up just for this), every round-half will be it's own post as I'll be manually updating the map to reflect the movements during the turn. Turns will be taken by leaving a comment, keeping to turn order, with your actions. Questions for myself or others can be asked at any time in the comments section. I highly recommend that you come up with some form of relatively synchronous communication for use in diplomacy negotiations.

As a final thought, testing isn't like regular play. It's slow, and things aren't always going to work out. On the other hand, you'll be right there helping to not only explore the rules, but to refine them and create them. Testing is more about the feeling of reward at the end when something you had intimate involvement in is finally ready for the world at large, then any moment to moment fun. (Though hopefully there will be some of the latter as well.)

What You'll Need:
Print out a few of these minimaps, they should fit on 8.5x11 landscape or a sheet of a4. You'll need to form a shorthand to mark them with, but they will be invaluable in keeping up between official board updates.
A notebook, a stack of lined paper, or a word document, whatever the format may be keep a journal of how the game strikes you. It's best to keep this on hand while making turns so you can immediately jot down anything that stands out, positive or negative.
A gaggle of ten sided dice... okay you don't actually need them but they're great stress relievers when your entire army gets bludgeoned out of existence.

Stuff to make your journaling more useful and my life much easier:
Whenever you deal with a unit for the first time, record in your journal the unit and a numbered ranking from 1 to 5. 1 being completely useless, 3 being perfectly balanced, 5 being overpowered to godlike proportions. Then a few rounds later revisit this ranking and update it with your current opinion on how it's ranked.
At the beginning of a round, write down what you expect to accomplish during that round. At the end of the round, write down how your prediction differed, what you think caused it to differ, and how you feel about the differences.
We're going to be moving slowly, especially as it's play by blog, so just take your time and write things out as they occur to you. There is no such thing as too much information at this stage in development.

We'll need six players to start a game, if you want to participate just leave a comment with e-mail address and preferably an im handle below. If you want to participate but aren't comfortable leaving your email in a public place, just send me an email at sara.pickell@gmail.com

4 comments:

  1. Sign me up! you have my skype/twitter

    ReplyDelete
  2. there are 3 players signed up so far. Anyone checking this out should know it's not dead or completely undermanned, just need a few more.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would really love to help but I'm pretty overwhelmed at the moment working out the final details of the facebook version of FOA and putting in more content to the FOA WIP2 3d version as well as consulting on a 3rd mmo. The one thing I never seem to have enough of is time.

    ReplyDelete