Any interest in playtesting something?

[Gladius]

Excuse any violations of etiquette and protocol - I'm not sure if this belongs in this forum, or the DIY forum, or some other place. I'll start it here because this subforum seems to be the best fit, but feel free to move to another location if it's wrong. Or, feel free to smack me down entirely and tell me to go back to scrubbing the latrine until I have a hundred posts :)

As I mentioned in the Welcome thread, I'm a game designer (previously working in video games, now working in my spare time on my own creations). I have created a game that is in the playtest-and-feedback stages. It's a wargame, but it's a bit unique in that it's not hex-and-chits nor is it really a miniatures game. It's a bit of a hybrid. I'm looking for folks who might be interested in doing some blind playtesting for me - that is, I send you a PDF of the game, you go and try to play it without any help from me. This helps to see if the rules are understandable and if the mechanics make sense without me explaining things.

A bit about the game: It's a beer-and-pretzels tactical tank game. While the scenarios are vaguely based on real battles, I don't intend it to be a true-to-life simulation game - however, I do want the authentic feel of tank combat. That said, it's ONLY about tanks - no infantry, no AT weapons, just tanks duking it out. If you've played Wings of Glory/War, or the Star Wars X-Wing game, or the Pirates of the Spanish Main ship minis game, it's got some bits of those games in it.

Here's the pitch blurb:
"Head to head WWII miniature tank warfare where the cards are the minis"

In Armor: Victory in Europe!, you take on the role of a battlefield commander by deploying tanks, represented by cards, onto a tabletop battlefield. Move your tanks into assault position, avoiding obstacles and using cover to block enemy fire, and attack by rolling dice. The more powerful the tank's gun, the more dice you roll; the more accurate it is, the lower the number needed to score a hit. Overcome your opponent's armor to force him to draw damage cards – which can disable a tread, injure the crew, catch the vehicle on fire or cause it to explode outright!

If you're interested in playtesting this, send me a PM with your email and I will send you a PDF. You'll have to print and cut out a bunch of cards (in my prototype, I slip them in old magic card sleeves) and be willing to send me some AAR/playtest notes.

[GJK]

A playtest kit made using VASSAL or ZunTzu might garner you more responses, IMO.  A pdf of a kit that I have to cut out and assemble may not seem like a lot of work, but if it's for a volunteer playtest thing, more people than not are probably going to pass up on it.  If it were in VASSAL/ZunTzu, it would be easy to test it out in our spare time as we can and we also don't have to worry about the paper cards getting strewn about if we don't finish a game in one setting.  Just my $.02.

[Barthheart]

A playtest kit made using VASSAL or ZunTzu might garner you more responses, IMO.  A pdf of a kit that I have to cut out and assemble may not seem like a lot of work, but if it's for a volunteer playtest thing, more people than not are probably going to pass up on it.  If it were in VASSAL/ZunTzu, it would be easy to test it out in our spare time as we can and we also don't have to worry about the paper cards getting strewn about if we don't finish a game in one setting.  Just my $.02.

BAH! Quit being lazy GJK!  ;D You call yerself a real wargamer? Git yer scissors out and start cutting.

Gladius, I'd be interested in helping out. Might have to wait until I get back from sunning myself in Jan. though. I'll send you a PM.
Maybe GJK would volunteer to make a VASSAL module and I could play against him!  ;)

[GJK]

Is it a solitaire or multiplayer game?  I could put together a ZunTzu module in 20 minutes for it or I could make a vassal module in a few days.

[Barthheart]

Is it a solitaire or multiplayer game?  I could put together a ZunTzu module in 20 minutes for it or I could make a vassal module in a few days.

Really that much time difference Gary? I haven't done anything in ZunTzu so no real idea of scale.....

[GJK]

A ZT gamebox takes a small fraction of the time that it takes to make a VASSAL module in general and I'd assume that the cards would be all on a few pages of the pdf which is how ZT uses graphics (countersheets or graphics with all of the cards on one page) as opposed to VASSAL that makes every counter/card/piece it's own individual graphic.  All that meaning that for the pdf of this playtest kit, I'd have to make individual graphics of each of the cards and whatever counters or other pieces the game uses.

[Barthheart]

Interesting that it uses "sheet".... I'll have to take a look.... can you solo with ZunTzu... I thought you needed to be online to play with it?

[GJK]

Interesting that it uses "sheet".... I'll have to take a look.... can you solo with ZunTzu... I thought you needed to be online to play with it?

You can play it offline.  I'd have to go look on the zuntzu website, but there's instructions for starting up the application for when you're not online (after you've downloaded and installed it initially of course).  But yes, you can solo it offline.

[Barthheart]

Cool... I'll do some reading up while on vacation.....

[GJK]

Cool... I'll do some reading up while on vacation.....

Here's links to the gameboxes that I've made for it:

http://www.garykrockover.com/zuntzu/

The "Assault on Hoth" game I'm particularly proud of - I redrew all of it from scratch.  I actually did that for the few VASSAL modules that I made.  I hate the way scans come out so it became fun to redraw the maps and counters. Anyways, drifting off topic....

[Barthheart]

Cool... I'll do some reading up while on vacation.....

Here's links to the gameboxes that I've made for it:

http://www.garykrockover.com/zuntzu/

The "Assault on Hoth" game I'm particularly proud of - I redrew all of it from scratch.  I actually did that for the few VASSAL modules that I made.  I hate the way scans come out so it became fun to redraw the maps and counters. Anyways, drifting off topic....

Thanks..... sorry for the de-rail.... back to Gladius' interesting game...

[Gladius]

Thanks for the feedback - I'll take a look at both of those apps, I've heard of Vassel but haven't tried it. To be clear it's not really a card game (in the sense that you don't have a hand of cards), but rather a game that utilizes cards to represent and track information.

The game could be played solo, although as with most things it's more interesting pvp.

Currently all the card stats are in an Excel sheet, which I then pipe out to a separate Excel worksheet that's formatted the way I want the cards laid out. The images of the tanks on the cards are initially worked over in Photoshop (so that they are scaled correctly) and then pasted into Excel manually. For the play pieces, the position/size of the image is important. I then save the pages of the Excel file as PDFs.
This is all just so that I can easily tweak/tune the numbers in Excel without having to manually edit a bunch of different files - I can also apply a formula to everything in a column, for example, if I wanted to tweak all the armor values.

This of course is all for the prototype version. Eventually I'd get a graphic designer friend of mine to do a real artistic layout. The art right now is all prototype, not for public release/etc.