Okay I'vbe covered the serious things in my life at the moment.. so now I'll touch on one of the things I do in my spare time.

Playtesting
What is playtesting you ask? well in this regard it is playtesting Roleplaying Game supplement, rulebooks and adventures. Namely where an Editor is responsible for checking spelling and grammar a playtester is responsible for checking game mechanics, balance and statistics. However unlike an editor playtesters do NOT get paid, which si something I'll discuss some more below.

I've playtested roleplaying games for five years now and have playtested over 200 books across half a dozen publishers. Playtesting can take anywhere from a weekend to a year..for any particular book dependant upon the size, content, number of drafts, and intended release date. Various companies also handle playtesting in various ways some have forums where feedback comments are posted as an when and means of fixing them discussed, others take all feedback and release a new draft, which is then itself gone over and so on and so forth until it is objection free. And then there are those companies that take a report of findings all fo which go off to the company and author of a book and its left to them to decide what fo this feedback they correct and what they don't, oftentimes without the playtester knowing what gets altered and what doesnt before the book is released.

So what is the pay off for all this time and effort you ask? well thats the thing... it varies, it didn't always vary but with the most recent boom in the roleplaying industry and the companies that came about from it due to Wizards of the Coasts release of Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 (and later revised 3.5 edition) it has varied greatly.

Of old the expected price of playtesting was a complimentary copy of the book your playtested as well as your name in the front under playtesting credits.

However the recent tendency has been.. wait for it... nothing, just your name in the front.. and let me tell you your name in the front means nada.. indeed the only people who read playtesting credits in a book are the playtesters themselves. So how do these companies get away with it, simple because there are a steady supply of willing playtesters (note I say willing not necessarily competent) so these companies don't care whether we like that they don't give us a complinetary copy or not, if we gripe they can replace us and they know it. Competent playtesters have for the most part become an overhead they can cut as if they are doign us the favour by letting us check thier releases for them.. its crazy.

Now I have to say there are some companies out there that do not follow this tendency and indeed without generalising too much I would say that those that do still provide complinetary copies are predominantly outside of the U.S.
Perhaps the best of these and the one with whom I've had my longest standing relation with and playtested over a 105 books for to date is our own Mongoose Publishing

Mongoose Publishing

I suspect many of these companies believe that every member of a playtest group expects a copy but generally that is not so, roleplayers function as groups, one running it the rest playing in it as such the necessity is only really there for one book to be available to be of use for the group.

I'll tell you a little secret now, since I began playtesting I've done so as a group..despite the fact I have only ever been just me a single individual doing the job. Indeed up until recently I roleplayed every week running a game for my "so called" friends and have run RPG games every week for the last 25 years right back to the time I actual started playing myself. My group happily signed the NDA (non disclosure agreements) as they were happy to have thier names in the book but were too lazy to participate, so I did it all myself. Indeed I have done so, so competently I have been noted for the quality of my playtesting and am also quite proud of the fact that I have never missed a deadline or even come close.

It would howeever be nice if the companies out there could give us playtesters the credite we deserve and pay us our fair and honest dues by providing a complimentary copy for our hard work. HEck the editors get a wage.. that would be even better, but for most of us we do it because we love the game and as such a book that we work hard and shed blood, sweat and tears to get right for a company should be the least they can do.

I wont name the companies I have had dealings with that don't provide copies, they know who they are and Im sure they've a thousand excuses why they don't do the right thing, but the long and short of it is this.

You may be able to get a horde of willing yet useless testers to pretend to test a book in order to get thier name in the front, but if you want the job doing well and right your going to have to rethink your policies as we legitemate playtesters deserve our dues.