So now that we have Hollowpoint all set up for playtesting, I’ll reveal what I’m thinking about for managing this beast. This does not contain things you need to do — this is just how I will be handling what I hope is a decent flow of information about the game. In keeping with the rest of my brain, this process will be evidence-based. I think the time for speculation about how the game might succeed or fail is past.

Another principle that will be followed is that the game is not intended to please everyone. It’s not a universal system and it uses methods to deal with topics that aren’t going to make everyone happy. I’ve talked about this before — it’s okay to not like the game on principle. That won’t change what we’re doing. If the game just isn’t fun even though it sounds like a good time, that’s more interesting.

So as reports trickle in I’ll be filing them in three categories.

Textual. These will come from anyone, but will be about the only thing that people reading and not playing can offer. Textual reports are about the structure of the document and the language — can you understand how to play the game from the text? Is it organized logically? Is the “voice” functional? Are you aggravated by it and if so why? That kind of thing. Anyone should be able to comment credibly on the text by reading it.

Textual reports we can react to pretty fast and usually get them addressed (either incorporated or discarded) within one release cycle.

Mechanical. Here’s the meat. Mechanical reports are about how the game plays — whether the mechanisms of the game work and how they fail when they fail. I expect a fair number of mechanical reports that don’t include examples from real play, and I’ll have to discard these unless they are very compelling: mechanical reports need supporting evidence because reading the game is not the same as operating the game with multiple people with different expectations. Game mechanisms for Hollowpoint have been developed during actual play so I expect them to exhibit non-obvious behaviour in play. So as a playtester, it’s worth your time (and mine too!) to look at your reports and, if they are mechanical, include actual play that suggests the problem.

Now if you have only read the text and suspect a mechanical problem, you can still participate here: fake some actual play. Just write a dialogue of fictional people playing the game in a way that exposes the defect. This has less weight than real evidence, but it helps everyone (including yourself!) think about the mechanism in more practical terms, and stands a better chance of exposing a real weakness.

There’s a gray area here that I’m going to keep in this category: textual mechanisms. I’m thinking here mostly about whether or not the text enables an owner to teach the game to the rest of the table (because I assume that the usual model at the table is one eager early-adopter buys the game and wants to play and so teaches it to everyone else). This is commentary on the text but, again, requires evidence from actual play to be useful.

Discard. This category is where everything we can’t use goes.

Done. This category is where our solved problems go.

So for every report I get I’ll break it down into specific issues and file these under one of these three categories. Toph and I will then analyze them (including a playtest if necessary) and decide how to act on each. Either the text will change and the report filed under “done” or the report will go under “discard” because it doesn’t need to be addressed.

I expose this information because I think understanding my process might help playtesters file better reports but also so it’s clear why some things get discarded — one of the risks at this stage is that enthusiasm from outside sources can steer the game into a place it wasn’t intended. Now, if that’s awesome, then that’s where we’re going, but right now the game has a pretty tight objective and I want to stick to that if possible. Certainly if you read the text and can’t figure out what that objective is, then that’s a textual problem needing attention!

Oh yeah, credit. At the end of the day we’ll credit everyone who sent in a useful report in the book, and make sure there’s a comped digital version of Hollowpoint (at least — I’m still thinking about this end of things) for them as well. Your name in lights! It’s not much but it’s within budget, and with luck you’ll have a good time playing this game before anyone else gets their hands on it, too. That’s been worth something to me, so far.

–BMurray