Shewstone Publishing is holding an invitational playtest of A Bestiary of Enchanted England starting today and running through March 6, 2023.

Kickstarter backers should already have received their copy of the playtest manuscript. No purchase is necessary to participate.

Playtesting for Shewstone

We’re looking for gamers who will read and, preferably, play games using our manuscript and provide written feedback in a structured format. General tabletop roleplaying experience is expected, but you don’t need to be familiar with Magonomia if you’re willing to learn it on your own.

Shewstone Publishing does basic playtesting in-house, but we urgently want outside gamers to give their perspective. Playtesting is extremely valuable and playtest feedback is always carefully considered when presented properly. It will take some thought and effort on your part to give us a playtest report we can use.

Consideration

Playtesting is unpaid. Every member of each playtest group that submits a usable report will receive a free digital copy of the finished e-book, A Bestiary of Enchanted England. Playtesters will have the option (opt-in) to have their name or nickname listed in the book under “Playtesters” credits.

Whether your group’s report is usable shall be determined at the sole discretion of Shewstone Publishing LLC.

Schedule and enrollment

You can enroll at any time, whenever you’re ready. The playtest ends on March 6, 2023 and your feedback must be received by that date to be considered. We expect it will take you at least a few weeks to evaluate the manuscript and produce a usable report.

Giving good feedback

We want to know about your good experiences: what was fun, exciting, and engaging. This isn’t (just) to make the team feel good. Good gameplay experiences are our product. We want to know what works so we can deliver more like that. Feed the fire of awesomeness!

Please be specific. If the players had a spell that let them win too easily, name the spell and describe how they used it. If one of the creature’s powers had disappointing results when you use it, tell us what you expected as well as what actually happened.

Be kind and polite. The authors are going to read your comments with no filtering. Give your honest opinion but there’s no need to be heated, bitter, or sarcastic. A helpful pattern is to choose a word to describe your reaction, attribute it to yourself (not the product), and describe the circumstances that caused that reaction: “we were frustrated when the players tried several spells and none of them affected the creature” instead of “this creature was frustrating.”

Playtesters are not proofreaders. Please don’t bother to point out grammar mistakes and the like. A professional editor will find and correct these issues later. If there’s something that’s unclear, we’d like to know that.

Playtesters are not sensitivity readers. We aren’t relying on you to make the product inclusive or to spot gaffes. If come across something that bothers you, we want to know. Don’t attempt to guess what might potentially bother others. We have a consultant for that.

Playtesters are not designers. We don’t want you to tell us how to fix the issues you find. The designers will make their own decisions after weighing all the feedback. You can tell us what you were expecting or what outcome you want, but please refrain from specific advice. For example, we don’t want to hear “this creature needs more stress boxes.” We do want to hear “this creature was too easily defeated in physical combat.”

Playtesters are a window on the busy gamemaster trying to use our book to plan and run a great session. They’re an advocate for the customer, helping us make the book easy and fun to read and use.

How to playtest

Designate one person as the playtest coordinator. This person will assemble your feedback into one report and submit it to Shewstone.

The most useful playtest is to plan a one-shot gaming session around a section of the book (one creature, in this case). Use the creature as you would in your normal play style: it doesn’t have to be a combat encounter. You can use homemade characters or you can get pregenerated characters from the Magonomia wik: Pregenerated Characters - Magonomia Wiki

Next most useful is to incorporate the playtest material into your regular campaign.

Less useful is to read the material without playing it, but discuss it and report your consensus.

If all you can manage is to read sections of the book and send us written feedback, that still counts! It’s just less valuable than actual play. We will still give you credit and we’ll take your feedback seriously.

You’re invited to discuss the playtest on our Discord server: https://discord.gg/enMx37wYgB . However, just chatting in Discord does not count as a usable playtest report. You must also send us a written report that meets our content requirements.

The playtest report

Each playtest group should submit ONE written report on or before March 6, 2023. The report can be in any commonly used document format (MS Word, PDF, RTF, ODF, plain text, etc.). It must be written in English but it doesn’t need to be fluent English.

For each creature where you have feedback:

• Write the name of the creature as a heading

• Which player(s) participated and what characters did they play?

• What was your method of testing? (One-shot, used it in your campaign, read it and discussed, etc.)

• In one or a few sentences, what happened?

• Give details of specific events that went especially well or that failed to go well. The most useful constructive feedback is to say what outcome you wanted or expected, and then state what outcome you got.

For each person in the playtest:

• What was their real name?

• What name, if any, do they want listed in the playtest credits?

Signing up

Please send an email to andrew@shewstone.com with the subject line “Bestiary Playtest.”

Include a sentence or two about your group’s knowledge of Magonomia and Fate.

Include the following information for each member of your playtest group:

• Real name

• Drivethrurpg.com email address (the playtest manuscript will be send as a DriveThru downloand)

• Name or nickname as they want it to appear in the “playtester” credits in the book. Write “anonymous” if they don’t want their name to appear.

©2022 Shewstone Publishing LLC. This playtest guide may be modified and redistributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)