Playtesting in the Age of Pandemic

Most of my posts are a bit more formal, posing a question and attempting to answer it in a methodical manner. This has been a hard year+ for almost everyone, however, and sometimes a more honest and personal approach is the best one. I've mentioned in other posts that the tabletop gaming industry has been especially affected by Covid-19. The cancellation of conventions, brick and mortar store closures, and difficulties with distribution and postal shipping delays have caused dozens of companies to shutter, and numerous creators to leave the industry for more stable employment.

Oddly, some of the smaller indie studios who were already operating from a digital publishing and print-on-demand model are managing to stay afloat, simply because they hadn't already invested a lot of capital into physical products, warehousing and distribution. There's still the problem of promotion, however, as our main vehicle for getting the word out--conventions--remains largely unavailable. While digital conventions have been offered as an alternative, it has quickly become apparent they don't generate the kind of numbers equivalent to a physical event.

Another issue I've come across, in a year of trying to maintain a business in a Covid-ravaged US, is the difficulty of playtesting games without physical conventions. Part of the issue is that, because many digital conventions are last minute affairs, most developers don’t even have the option to add demo games to their schedules. Another is that interest in digital conventions is markedly lower, so fewer players are curious about games they've never heard of. Finally, while some games translate well to a digital medium, not all of them do. So, while I can easily run Praedormitium for a group, a game like Follow Me Down--where two players take turns GMing for each other--can be extremely difficult to playtest online.

Trying to figure out how to playtest Follow Me Down has the ever present question hanging over me this year. Back in February of 2020, before any of this had happened, my goal was to playtest it at multiple conventions to get the word out, tighten up the rules, then release a Kickstarter for it in October 2020. Obviously, none of that has happened. 

What I'm trying to do now is figure out a way to playtest Follow Me Down online in the next several months and have it ready for Kickstarter this October. Will this work? I honestly have no idea. But the book for Follow Me Down has been complete for almost a year now. The only thing I'm doing at this point is cleaning up the mechanics, and trying to make sure enough people hear about it so the Kickstarter funds. Perhaps more than many of my other games, Follow Me Down is a game I truly believe in, and I would really, really like it to see the light of day.