This past weekend was Geekway to the West - a 4-day board game convention in St. Louis. It had been a couple years since I attended, but it was just as fun as in years' past. The difference between this year and previous years, however, was that I brought a game design to playtest. I have a lot to learn about bringing a game to playtest at a convention.
My first mistake at the convention was not setting aside time just to playtest the game. I am used to going to Geekway to take part in the Play and Win promotion (play a game, then enter for a chance to win it). Unfortunately, I spent most of Geekway doing just that. When I finally thought to myself that I need to get a playtest in, it was Saturday afternoon, which was spent at the Euphoria tournament run by Stonemaier Games. This left Sunday morning to get a playtest.
To follow up on the first mistake, it's time for something I did right: I playtested someone else's game. Ben Rosset (designer of Brew Crafters) was at Geekway playtesting a game (tentatively called Home Brewers). By watching someone else demo their game, it gave me a lot of information on how to present my game to people that have never seen it before. Ben's game was a lot of fun, and I hope that I provided some decent critiques based on my play of it.
So now, back to the mistakes. My 2nd (and hopefully last) mistake was that I did not get the word out about playtesting my game. When I finally sat down to playtest, I had a few friends at the table that wanted to play. Naturally, I let them play, along with the 1 person that was unable to find an available game. At this point, I had a 5 player game (which I had never attempted before - the game plays 2-6), so I did not even think about asking anyone else to join in. Although I received fantastic feedback (only 1 of the four players had played the game previously), I think I should have attempted to find one more person so that I could get as much feedback as possible.
With all that said, though, the playtest was fantastic! After the first Year, we had a good 20 minute discussion (started by the other players - I was going to wait until the end) where many ideas and critiques were voiced. The biggest complaint in a 5 player game was that there was not enough player interaction. I had done quite a bit to help that for 2-4 players, but the traveling coach did not work well in a 5 player game because not every player had a chance to use it in the first Year. My plan, based on the feedback provided, was that there will be a second coach for 5-6 players, and a new building in each starting town that allows opponents to trade resources with the owner of the town. I need to look further into the new building spot, though, because, based on our discussion, it could be too powerful (by allowing players to return their Workers to their home town if no agreement is reached).
Also, it appeared that the resource availability was a little high (after the last playtest, I increased the amount of resources received per worker). The consensus was that there should a different amount of each resource available depending on what season it is (since each Year is divided into 4 rounds, each round can be considered a season). I have decided to take this one step further by combining the seasonal resource collection with the event cards. My plan (at the moment) is to have a default value for each resource, then a card of the current season will be revealed. This card will adjust the value of the resources for that turn only, and, depending on the season, may also have some event (based on the old event cards).
Unfortunately, we were only able to complete 2 Years of the 3 played in a game. At the end of Year 2, though, one player had uncovered a strategy that would allow him to score 11 points each round in Year 3. This definitely seemed like a very powerful strategy (since the best buildings in Year 3 can score up to 10-12 points if they are upgraded), so I am going to pay close attention, and see if I need to make a change to (just slightly) weaken that path.
Looking forward, when I next go to a convention, I plan to devote most of (at least) one day to find playtesters whenever I take a design with me. I would love to go to DieCon in June to attempt another playtest, but I will be unable to do so (kid patrol).
For the other designers out there, do you have any tips based on your experiences at taking designs to a convention? For other convention-goers, what do you look for when being asked to playtest a game?
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