The public playtesting session last Saturday at High Tide Games went really well. Lots of people came, I ordered the right amount of pizza and people played my games. I am in the enviable position of having to decide which of the positive comments to put up on the website.
Why is it that I am able to design games? I’ve never tried it before. Except my son Howard reminded me that I did, in the second year of our family D&D campaign when I created a sort of Space Invaders type thing for an invasion from above. I also made a bunch of tokens for a big final battle for that campaign and used it in conjunction with miniatures to run the battle beside small party encounters. So I guess I have tried it before. I might try it again.
The three minigames for the Adventure Calendar are attempts to make simpler versions of encounters in a role-playing game (RPG). There will also be system agnostic stat blocks, maps and item descriptions so they can be played out in an RPG the player chooses. Those encounters are quite specific and relate directly to the story told over the 24 days of the calendar.
I think the limitations help a lot. In this case, I wanted games for 1 or 2 players with rules that fit on one page, components that fit in a drawer of the calendar and come with the calendar anyway, and a connection to the story. That really narrows it down. I am glad that people thought they were OK. There were also a lot of constructive comments that will help to make the games better. The whole thing has been a positive experience and I plan to do another session at another store soon.