LOW OPINION: Test Your Games With Twat Players
Find the most dickish players possible, and get them to play it.
I’ve been writing a review, and halfway through I realised:
“This hasn’t been tested with prick players.”
This is a problem with a load of tabletop games. They are tested with players that don’t want to upset the rules writer or the gamemaster. The rules are coddled and subject to only the softest interpretations.
When it hits the real world, the system is treated like a blow up doll, every rule is used thoroughly and then the deflated remains are confined to the fantasy heartbreaker landfill.
One example is Gary Gygax. He famously had some of the most dickhead players that ever existed, raised on wargames where the goal is to win.
These aggressive players ensured that the Gygax’s modules and rules would be subjected to the most literal and negative interpretations, and now they are the foundation for the vast majority of the tabletop space.
Look at Tomb of Horrors. That was an attempt to absolutely grind out the nastiest of his players, and people fucking worship that one.
The response to this is going to be something along the lines of:
“I just won’t play with prick players.”
Here’s the thing:
Prick players purposefully break the things that normal players break accidentally.
This is the reason that testing exists at all.
The point isn’t to make things smoother or easier or make you feel nice. The point is to see how badly an average buffoon on the street can break your product in their genuine attempt to use it.
So, designers, please find the players everyone else hates. Find them and coerce them into play games with you. Don’t guide them or help them or anything else, let them make the most ridiculous and broken interpretations and then fix them afterwards.
It will make your game and your rules so much stronger.
And if you’re struggling to find any, you know where I am.
P.S. An alternate title for this is “Get Kuntz To Test Your Game”, based off of Robert Kuntz and the Tomb of Horrors.
I like the concept you're going for here but it'd be cool to see some examples of new rules that make you think that.