Daily Ponderance

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.

So that brings me more or less to recent times... 33 years old almost, living in the spare room of my folks home, (when I say folks I mean my moms, my dad doesnt actually live here thought does stay here sometimes...don't ask its complicated and thats a story for thier blog not mine), no job, no income, no partner, no offspring..and due to recent events only one friend in the world that isn't my relative.. my only companion throughout the whole thing is whichever dog I happen to have at the time (big dog lover, always have a pet dog..keeps you sane).

Before I continue I should back up a little in order to note something of some relevance. Around October 05' my mother had a fall at work, she was a manageress for a charity shop. And by November 05' she was beginning to suffering terrible pain in her groin and side so much so she was unable to work despite numerous attempts to return to her job. By December she is in hospital thinking she's looking at a possible hip replacement (she's in her late 50's)..the doctors have her on an opiate called Fentanyl, commonly given to post surgery or terminal patients.. indeed for a time there, the amount of pain she was in had them thinking cancer! thankfully it wasn't. However once she was taken off the Fentanyl she began to suffer intense and horrendous burning pains, which she describes as though someone was putting burning coals on her, as well as extreme nausea. The doctors ran test after test all of which apparently came back normal except for some deterioration of the spine, and a hiatus hernia and Di-vaticulitus she had...but the burning and the nausea continued to get worse.

Fast forward to the present day and suddenly I'm finding myself needed to become my mothers official carer as she continues to deteriorate, not something I ever thought I'd have to do, but at the same time not something I had to think about twice before accepting, she is my mum, enough said.

She still has all her marbles, but is in excruciating pain most of the time, no medication seems to work, she's losing weight due to her inability to eat much, the doctors are at a loss for the cause, and she's fast losing the will to cope with things.

Indeed I can, safe with all honesty say noone has actually felt true turmoil and pain until they have seen thier own mother reduced to tears like a wailing child and begging for someone to take her pain away, and being unable to provide any respite for her beyond a few soothing words and hopes that some cause for her pain will be found and treated...eventually.

Oddly the closest thing I've seen symptom wise has been chronic anxiety? She is seeing a neurologist soon in order to rule out any form of nerve damage or disorder, and then I imagine things will likely be steered along looking into possible psychological causes.. its tough to say and tough to watch, indeed things are tough all round, but we'll deal with things as they happen as that is what families do, and she is my mother, to do any less for her than my best wouldn't be right.

But it just goes to show you never can tell what is around the corner, every day something new and unexpected, good or bad, right or wrong.. every day is a new frontier upon which we are the pioneers, I only hope I find the new world in this instance with my mother beside me still.

be well, avid readers and be sure to phone your mothers and tell them you care..as you never know which tommorrow may be your last chance.

I thought I'd touch a little on expectations.. we all have them. In this instance I'm going to blog a little about life expectations.

From an early age we all have things we want to be or do..some realistic, some not so. Indeed when I was in school I can remember speaking to the careers advisor about various options. My fellow students would state desires to be footballers and astronauts, join the army and all the other common expectations at such an age..

However me, I knew from the age of 12 or so that all I wanted was to be a husband and a father. I didn't want to change the world, make a mint, or become a superstar. I simply wanted someone to come home too whose priority I was, and they were mine, a couple of kids to impart some wisdom too and dote on horribly, a house in the burbs, a steady income and maybe a cheap old four door to get us from A to B... essentially the things that millions worldwide take for granted day in and day out..

The eye opener for me came around my 30th birthday when I had yet to come close to almost any of those mundane expectations... the jobs I had tended to be short lived (more due to the state of the economy and country than anything I did, indeed I've never quit or been fired whatever the job I've done in my life ever, yet still I have a few redundancies under the belt all of which knocked me for six), as a result of which I never had the money to get my own home or simple little four door, and lacking the means to socialise enough to meet many women (and being of a larger build than I once was..read pie muncher the field is somewhat smaller than it once was for me to wander through in that regard) and the ones I do meet tend to be either less than expected with bugbears of thier own they "Really" need to deal with before getting into a relationship, or not as they portray themselves.

Short and wide of which, is here I am now in my 33rd year, single and forced by circumstance to be living in the spare room at my folks once again.. How the world turns, actually it turned out to be fortuitous (see later blurb) as things would turn out. But isnt it funny how we start out with expectations both simple and extreme but never really knowing from one day to the next how things will turn out.

It has alwasy amused me how diverse and unexpected the moments are in which we live.. indeed we are all on a ship headed to the same destination (our eventual demise), but the route we found ourselves going along the way varies wildly from whatever we expect or oftentimes hope for, but its certainly never dull