Playtesting Prep

I'll be heading to Minneapolis shortly for a weekend of playtesting Smile Police.

Over the past couple of days, I've been printing and assembling lots of stuff: character sheets, a gm screen, handout cards, dice/pencils, etc. in the Yazzle brand colors.  I also created some stickers to hand out as a thank you to playtesters. 

Rules-wise, I've got the intro read-aloud section down to about 5 minutes, which is way under most modern board games, so I feel really good about that.  

Playtesting and user research is something I'm always excited about -- you can never really know how a design will work until you see real people interacting with it.  Sure, it can sting a little when parts of it don't work like you had hoped, but I try to approach it with enough distance that I can find a solution pretty quickly.  It's much easier to do that after you see the problems with your own eyes and have a bit of humility.

Some of the questions I'm looking for during the playtests:

• Do the players feel overwhelmed with options?
• How quickly do they get into the spirit of the game?
• Does the competitive aspect of the game motivate them to be more entertaining and creative, or is it just stressful?
• What bonus cards or other character features do they use?
• How does the combat math work out in an actual session? 

Have a Yazzle Dazzle Day!