• The indispensability of playtesters

I am always greatly humbled by the ingenuity of my playtesters, and know that I would be lost without them. They have a way of finding issues and problems I could never have dreamt up on my own, and find opportunities I could easily have let slip passed me.

I am currently running several groups of playtesters to walk through the adventures that are currently written for ht 15^th edition of the game, the core game system and character creation-system.

Recently one such group arrived in a town, and found themselves in need of horses to reach some time-critical destination. The adventure they are playtesting contains, apart from the adventure itself, rules for horses, and I was all too happy to pull these out and offer the players options as to which horse they would like to purchase, and the pros and cons of each.

Several of the players were also concerned about the possibility that once they reached their destination they would be riding into fire, as it were, and were interested in how being on horseback would influence their ability to fight, if such a situation would occur.

Now, rules for mounted combat have been in the works for a long time, but I always planned on “saving them” for a later adventure, possibly making them more of a central theme, but of course that was shortsighted of me, as there was clearly a need for them, and not just a need for them, but the perfect opportunity to include them, along with the rules for the different kinds of horses.

So here we are, with tested rules for mounted combat included about four adventures “too early”, all because my playtesters correctly identified the need for them.

This is why playtesters are clearly indispensable.