I dusted off my Thornwatch game last night and ran it for a few friends including Mike Selinker. Mike is a professional game designer and I was really looking forward to hearing what he had to say about my game. I’d sort of stalled on the development for a few different reasons. The biggest one was I simply didn’t know what to do next. I've never done this before and so I don’t have a road map or anything. I got the game to a state where it is playable and people seem to like it. Each time I run it for a group I get some notes and make some tweaks but I didn't know what the next big step needed to be.
After playing the game last night Mike gave me some great advice and an idea of where to go next. What he said is that I need to get the documentation to a point where someone else can run the game without me. He said “you’re not going to come in the box”. That’s pretty obvious but I had not really taken it into consideration. Yes I can run the game right now, but can someone else run it? The goal is that eventually this will be a product that you can buy and run for your gaming group. It’s time for me to put it in other peoples hands and hear how the game works when I’m not there managing it.
Last night’s game gave me the kick in the pants I really needed. I’m excited about the game again and inspired to get it to a state where you all can actually play it. Job one is going to be getting the documentation in order so that I can hand it off to another GM and they can run it for their group. I’m going to start with some of my friends here who I know have their own gaming groups. My goal right now is to get it to point where I can do a much larger scale test with multiple GM’s and groups running the game at PAX East next year.
-Gabe out
