Play testing

I've been having my worked looked at for nearly a year now, off and on, by various beta readers and critique partners. It's a vital part of the writing process that helps me sees stuff I am just blind to. Now I'm moving into something similar with my upcoming panel at Con-Nichiwa. Play testing.

If you haven't been paying attention to my rants on it, I've been approved to run at panel at Con-Nichiwa in Tucson. I've chosen to run a game of Smash Fiction's Surprise Party, the game where you replace the party in a fictional work with characters from other works of fiction. It's a story telling game with elements of DnD, fan fiction writing, and Whose Line Is It Anyway? Dan Mulkerin, a gifted game master, crafted the first iteration which is Lord of the Rings, but I needed to have more to run a full panel on it. So, I have give you the three other scenarios: The Wizard of Oz, The Magnificent 7, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Seeing as how Dan only made one scenario so far, I've had to base the concepts for these additional scenarios on a very limited source. I can't mirror it exactly, but I'm doing my best to find a similar feel. What I've extracted is, your party needs a chance to have an epic one on one battle, a charisma challenge, a pair-up challenge, a massive battle challenge, and then something fun and weird. Dan executed these masterfully, of course, but in concocting my extra scenarios I've had a rough start. That's where play testing comes in.

I ran everyone through the Lord of the Rings scenario once, and just today we tried out the Star Wars scenario. Reviews are good, but there is a little confusion in directives. I'm a bit more verbose than Dan has been, which is to my detriment. This panel will only give me one hour to run the game and Dan, with his crisp and to-the-point descriptions still ran an hour and change. That means I need to do everything he did, plus introduce myself, plus pimp Smash Fiction a little, plus hand out prizes (if possible.) So... much like with my novel, it's time to edit and... Delete! Delete! Delete!

(That was a Matt Hardy reference. Please forgive me... )

​Be Excellent to Each Other