thread: 2005-11-14 : Long and Short
On 2005-11-14, Joshua BishopRoby wrote:
One of the prime reasons you see a lot of "short" games at the Forge is because they have a much shorter production cycle once you take playtesting into account. I mean, if you want a long-term game capable of playing for years on end, and you want it playtested before publication, you're going to have to be in production for years on end. This is also why experience and advancement systems are so often broken—they almost can't be adequately tested, given the realities of the RPG market.
This makes JK go "Assumptions."
This is assuming that the systems that people have played for years and years had a long playtest cycle or a cycle of playtesting at all.
I think the shorter games are at the Forge because so many of us have seen the longer model break down for a variety of reasons and that closure is so satisfying.
This makes BR go "This could be why Burning Wheel works for long term."
Didn't Luke play it for years before hitting revised edition?
This makes JBR go "Long-Term Play Generally Uses House Rules"
I'm not saying that the books produced elsewhere that people have been playing out of had their years-long playtests. With few exceptions, they didn't. The long-term games played out of those books either suffer through the inadequate advancement rules, or they house rule extensively. I'd hazard a guess that the latter is more the case than the former.
This makes BR go "Depends on the game, Josh"
D&D does long term pretty well by the book. I've also played 3 year long Exalted games, and seen 4 year long Exalted games, that worked pretty well by the book.
Long term Deadlands games, otoh, are all FUBARed.
This makes Tim go "Not quite..."
"Short" or focused games take just as long to playtest.
This makes TC go "Sorta-maybe..."
Claims like this one without any real data to back them up are difficult to accept as valid. It really depends on the game and the people, Josh.
This makes JBR go "Then how?"
I'd be very interested to hear how someone can playtest a long-term game without playing it long-term. As for D&D and Exalted -- both of them have been "playtested" for years -- Exalted is the what, sixth or seventh edition of Storyteller? And D&D has been through about six ruleset editions as well.
This makes MW go "I sorta agree with JBR"
However, a group playing long-term will probably find things that you'd need to playtest short-term multiple times to find. The question is whether your playtest group only plays the game one time through.
This makes luke go "yes, but"
Burning Wheel itself is seven years old, and it was built on a game that was first designed in 94. But I disagree with Josh's assertion. BW is suited for longterm play because I designed it that way, not because I played it for a long time.
This makes JBR go "Playtest Good, Not Necessary"
Oh, Luke, I'm not saying that playtesting it makes it useful for long-term games, but that, if you want a long-term game design that's been playtested, well, it's going to take some time to do so. Certainly long-term games can be designed -- it's just that they can't be quickly playtested (unless you have some special insight here?).
This makes luke go "you're killing me"
Playtesting helps all designs equally. Longterm play doesn't necessarily require longterm playtesting. There's some magic that goes on behind the silver screen...
This makes JBR go "No Explaining the Magic Tricks?"
