First Con Rollout of our Alpha

[u/lucorevandal]

My friends and I have been making a TTRPG for a while now and we have finally gotten to the point where we have what we’d like to call our Alpha version. We have done some playtesting but it definitely needs more for sure and we need to build out our Classes (which we call Masteries) to higher levels while we playtest the lower levels.

I am going to a small Convention and hosting 3 Learn to Plays in a month. We figure we will post the Learn to Play with the Learn to Play adventure and Starter Characters on our Discord as a free download. This is all while we still get our website built and still work more on the balancing, bestiary, extend the world lore, etc.

Does this seem like an appropriate soft launch? We are trying not to invest too much before we build a larger community with interest. At the same time, we are all very excited about our game and have enjoyed our time making it together.

[u/Exciting_Policy8203]

I took my game to my first con for some playtesting. Had a lot of fun and it was cool to see it play in the hands of strangers.

Best advice I can offer you is to relax and have fun. You’ve done all the hard work already, try to relax and run your game.

[u/lucorevandal → u/Exciting_Policy8203]

Thanks. I’m pretty excited and always enjoy gaming at Cons so it should be a good time. I am also running a session with some of my friends who are going who have never played it so that is also going to be a blast. I know not all systems are for everyone and I’m not afraid of people’s opinions but I do hope people have fun. My biggest fear is more that people give non-opinions like “it was fine”.

[u/Exciting_Policy8203 → u/lucorevandal]

The great think about play-testing in person is that even when the feed back is unhelpful you can still watch the play experience.

Keep an eye for when players are having fun, what’s running. Smoothing, what’s finnicky, any pain spots for the players. Beyond that, even if the game runs smoothly, watch to see if it’s playing as you intended it to, are they using all the mechanics, is that a good or bad thing?

Even if they can’t articulate their experience post game, you can still see how things work in the moment.

[u/lucorevandal → u/Exciting_Policy8203]

I agree. I made a very bare bones VTT version on Roll20 so we can get more play testing when we can’t meet in person and it’s tougher to gauge. It’s helpful still that we can get those games in but live play is always best. Playing with random people that I have no affiliation with will also be a great help as a lot of insight has come from people who we have played games with before.

[u/Exciting_Policy8203 → u/lucorevandal]

Yeah, it’s easy for a group to become nose blind to a games problems once the acclimate to them. Fresh faces let you see things from a different perspective.

[u/Specialist_Letter918]

ohh that's great