Playtest Groups Wanted

Playtest Groups Wanted

Playtest Groups Wanted

Exciting news!   #Stonetop  is going to be published by Lampblack & Brimstone, with Jason Lutes editing, doing layout, and art directing.

We’re ready for some serious playtesting. Interested?

We’re looking for groups who:

• Play every 2-3 weeks (or more!)

• Can commit to actually playing 3+ sessions

• Are willing to specifically try out certain content

• Will ask questions & provide thoughtful feedback

• Can put up with potentially frequent changes 

If that sounds like you, please speak up in the comments.

If you’re interested in playtesting, but don’t have a group that meets the requirements above, let us know and we’ll see if we can’t put some of y’all together. EDIT: If you do, please post your time zone (e.g. GMT -5) so we help identify possible Hangout groups.

If you’d like to take a look but aren’t really interested in playtesting, that’s cool, too!  Click the #Stonetop  hashtag and check out the content. It might not be totally up-to-date but it’ll give you an idea of what we’re working on.  

106 thoughts on “Playtest Groups Wanted”

  4. i would, depending on when it is. I’ve actually tried to run such a campaign in the past, but to no avail, as the people simply wanted to kill everyone in their village and move on

  12. I’d love to try running this, but my regular group is pretty busy these days so it could be tough. What is an ideal group size and number of sessions?

  16. Greg Baatard Ideal size?  Probably GM plus at least 3 semi-regular players.  I think you could play individual sessions with just 2, no problem, but I think 3 is a good minimum number of players to really breath life into the village.

    I suspect this can handle a fairly large number of players, like ~6, with the assumption that only 2-4 make it each session.

    As for number of sessions:  We’re asking for 3+ session. First session will largely be character creation & village setup, plus the start of an initial situation.  And a lot of the stuff we’re hoping to test will take a couple sessions to see how it works.  It’s intended to be a long-form game.

  19. Do we get the inventory cards Jeremy Strandberg? I’ve been using your sheet with Paizo Item cards to great effect, but I’d love to have ‘the real thing’ 🙂

  20. I’ve Pitched to the new pair of roleplay converts in town, and they are like…

     ‘Oooh, does that mean we can be like Pug in Magician?’

    ‘Or Rand in The Wheel of Time?’

    ‘Or Garion in the Belgariad?’

    ‘Yeah, sort of’ I reply. They’ve played 4 sessions of DW and that’s it for any kind of Table top role play, so I’d love to commit to a few sessions to try out the system 🙂 

    Can we use villager playbooks with a funnel first Jeremy Strandberg?

  21. I’d not heard of this so far, but I’m suddenly VERY interested in it!

    I have a regular group but we’re currently playing Blades In The Dark, so no time for play testing something right right now sadly. But I’d like to keep up to date with what’s happening with this. What’s the best way? Is there a G+ group or something?

  22. Drew Harpunea We’re going to keep the playtest community closed to folks who are actually running games for now, but I’ll keep posting stuff to the DW Tavern as I generate new content. 

    If your group shifts gears and wants to try this, hit me up!

  23. Nathan Roberts Cool cool!  

    I answered you about the funnel/villager playbooks over at the L&B site, but for everyone else:  running a Funnel or using the villager playbooks is probably not a good idea, at least not right now.  The Stonetop playbooks are all keyed up to establish them as Stonetop’s heroes now, with backstory built into the playbooks.  

    Funnels are awesome, but they tend to create a sort of random assortment of “heroes” with (in my experience) pretty serious personality disorders.  Not quite what we’re going for on this one.  

    (I am rolling around ideas for a Funnel World/Freebooters/Stonetop-style-steading mashup, but that’s on the backburner right now.)

  24. Oh, and Nathan Roberts, regarding inventory cards… you mean these?  

    goo.gl/NMC9K6

    If so… that’s actually for a different game. Stonetop is using bog-standard Weight and Load rules, so we probably won’t go down the route of making inventory cards or anything.  

  26. Joseph F. Russo Peter J Mark Weiss Are you all in U.S. time zones?  

    Harrison s and Gerard Snow have previously expressed interest… perhaps y’all could form up?

  27. I think I’ve sent invites to everyone who’s identified themselves as part of an actual group.  If you’ve got a group and haven’t received an invite from me, speak up.

  31. Christopher Meid, you said you’re looking for a group on the L&B thread, and it looks like you might be U.S. Eastern.  Peter J,  Mark Weiss, and Joseph F. Russo… one of you want to GM for the others?  

  34. Nathan Roberts that’s super weird.  I’m looking at the “Manage Members” section of the community, and it’s showing you under the Invited tab. Maybe the notification isn’t showing up for some reason?

    …oh, wait.  Looks like you got it.  Sweet.  

  37. Jeremy Strandberg  let me know if you have any room somewhere. It seems there’s an overwhelming response, but I would still love to play if you can squeeze me in somewhere.

  40. Joseph F. Russo Heh. If you’ll have me again and we can work out a time, I’ll gladly join your group.  We played a DW game at either BrigadeCon or Virtuacon, I was the emo wizard, if you recall. 😉

  43. You can count with me Jeremy Strandberg! I’ve been following your releases and enjoying all the material.

    I’m going to playtest and introduce your game to the brazilian community.

  50. Jeremy Strandberg My interest in this game has been slowly growing the more I look into it so I managed to talk my group into it! We play weekly and in terms of putting up with frequent changes, we played through every playtest version of Blades in the Dark, that’s the game we’re just finishing up with now! So we have a lot of experience with that. I’ve been very active on the BitD community during the whole process, so I imagine that will not change in this case! The group isn’t terribly familiar with Dungeon World, but I imagine that will only provide a different perspective on the game. Looking forward to getting a hold of this.

  54. Tiburce Guyard no, not too late at all! Check with your group, and let me know if they are game.

    Oh, also, I believe Antoine Pempie is looking to join a francophone group (if you have space).

  55. Oh cool Antoine Pempie is my DM. As I haven’t seen him posting here, I had no idea he already asked you (after me manipulating him to launch a Stonetop campaign).

    Damn, I should trust better my evil manipulation skillz! 🙂

  61. Jeremy Strandberg I can always fill a spot and would be eager to do so. Sadly, I can’t bring any others in as my player contacts can barely make the games we do play on a biweekly basis. Let me know if you need a player 🙂

    Ah! Jennifer Erixon’s post pointed out that I’d missed posting my timezone. I’m in EST (GMT-4/5)

  62. Joseph F. Russo Christopher Meid Harrison s Ari Black… I think y’all have expressed interest in joining a group. Is one of you interested in GMing for the others?  

  64. Jeremy Strandberg Joseph F. Russo Christopher Meid Ari Black  Perhaps. My life is going to be busy the next two weeks, but it should die down from there. I usually have a lot of times on my hands, but I’m also already GMing two games, and my schedule can be weird, so I can’t really say yay or nay until we figure out a date.

  66. Looking over the list again… Peter J, Jennifer Erixon Christopher Meid, Ari Black I think you are all GMT -5 (Eastern time). Any of you up for GMing for the others?

    (And Harrison s if he’s available and can make the 2-hour time difference work?)  

  80. Jennifer Erixon JENFURIOUS! 😀 Peter J I have a Roll20 account that I use for my current DW game. I can create a new one for us and send out the joining address shortly before the meet, if that works.

  84. Jeremy Strandberg Is there a drive location or compressed archive that collects all the #Stonetop play files? Also, when we do get to testing, are there any specific things you want us to be trying out/exploring?

  94. Not sure if you are still looking but this setting looks amazing. I would be like to try to run this with my group or get in on a hangouts session. Time Zone: EST

  95. Hey Ron! Yes, we’re still taking playtest groups. Do you want to check with your group and let me know? If they’re not up for it, we can see if any online groups have an opening.

  97. Good news I think I’ve got a solid local group of 4 players together – we are meeting every two weeks we just need to finish up a funnel then I’ll move them onto stonetop

  99. Joshua Faller is looking for an online group! He’s GMT -9 (Alaska time zone), but potentially has a co-player that’s in GMT -6 (Texas). He’d prefer to join a group, but says he could GM something on weekends if necessary.

    Anyone GMT -6 through GMT -9, looking to put a group together? Harrison s Joseph F. Russo Aaron Griffin? Anyone else?

  102. I’ve got a session this Tuesday that I expect to be the first of several. I have a sketch of my own design that’s similar to Stonetop (play is about the fortunes of a steading) but it’s a lot less mature than Stonetop so I’m up for pivoting to that.

    Likely to be a revolving cast of players, tho – the only way I can keep regular sessions is to let people drop in an out. That viable with Stonetop as designed?

  103. Rob Alexander it’s doable, but I’ve been finding that expeditions from town are taking multiple sessions to resolve. So you’ll either need to handwave “where did Gerralt go, and how did Akios get here?” or come up with fictional explanations for that sort of thing. And/or possibly have “meanwhile, back at Stonetop” episodes if like, a bunch of PCs are on expedition but most of them can’t make a session.

    I’ve got some ideas for “second tier PCs” (basically playing Followers as PCs) that could work for that sort of play, kind of like how grogs work in Ars Magica. Nothing formal, but if you find yourself doing a lot of that, it might nudge me into actually writing it up.

    I’d definitely recommend having all the players there for session 1. You do a lot of setup and world/town building during that session, so it’s best if everyone’s there for input.

    Anyhow… I’ll send an invite shortly.

  105. Hi Jeremy, it looks like I may have a group coming together thats excited about playtesting Stonetop. I wanted to make sure I have the latest versions of the playbooks, moves/rules, and background/worldbuilding stuff.

    Thanks!

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