Me running Alter Arms for playtesters during Break My game at Labyrinth Games & Puzzles. (Photo Courtesy of Labyrinth) This past weekend I visited Labyrinth Games & Puzzles in Washington, D.C. for a couple of playtests as a part of Break My Game , an organization that sets up public playtests for tabletop game developers. I had two playtests with three people each. The first had two adult males and one teenage male while the second had two adult males and one adult female. Each session took about two hours for the players to complete the scenarios. WHAT’S NEW? UPDATED CHARACTER SHEETS For this session, I updated the character sheets to match the suggestions proposed during my last playtest at JohnCon. I moved the Arms Name labelS to the top of the sheet in order to hopefully make clear that each column at the top of the sheet represents details about a character when they're in that Form(A). UPDATED ARCHETYPES Between JohnCon and this playtest, I was a...

The first playtest group from JohnCon. (Photo by Duffy Austin) This past weekend I visited JohnCon , the annual gaming convention held at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. hosted by the university's science fiction and fantasy club. Alongside the other developers there as a part of Break My Game , I was able to get one full playtest in along with two partial playtests and feedback from a number of helpful individuals. The first group was made up of two college students and a board game designer with Break My Game. that session lasted about two hours. The other sessions had two high school students each, but unfortunately had to cut our sessions short. WHAT'S NEW? EXPERIENCE FOR ARCHETYPES Experience can now be gained from lowering allies' Drama. The intent here is to encourage players to use their archetypes to keep other players from Crashing. Originally, lowering Drama was the only way to Advance characters. I included the experience system - reward...

(Photo by Duffy Austin) This past Saturday I was lucky enough to run some playtests at Awesome Con in Washington, D.C. in the dedicated tabletop room, and wanted to go over how the playtests went and the feedback I received. There were two playtests in the afternoon, each with two players. The first participants were a young man and an older gentleman, and the second group was an adult man and woman. everyone had prior experience with RPGs and were familiar with tokusatsu on a basic level. I recruited them by walking up to them as they were looking around and asking if they were interested in testing out my game. Each session took about two hours. WHAT'S NEW? Not much difference between this playtest and the last at the  Big Frederick Gaming Convention , other than adding more detailed explanations of the rules associated with Powers. WHAT HAPPENED? Saw-Tooth, one of the pregenerated player characters for this playtest. They're a werebeaver (Art by Duffy Au...

My playtesters during BFG Con. I was able to get in one playtest at the Big Frederick Gaming Convention this past weekend with some lovely volunteers and wanted to go over the session and feedback I received. I had two players - a father and son - who had prior experience in role playing games and were familiar with the tokusatsu genre who took part in a two-hour playtest session. This gave me the opportunity to take things a bit slower for each player, and gain more focused feedback. WHAT'S NEW? For this playtest, I incorporated new features including unique benefits for Finishers, the consequences for Crashing, and what I'm calling Trappings that are tied to different forms. FINISHERS As before, Finishers are all-or-nothing attacks where players can max-out their Drama so that they at the brink of Crashing, but gain access to the next-highest dice-type (a characters in form 1 who normally uses a d6 would have access to a d8). For this session, I tied spec...