How do you feel when you give a new player your sleeved cards, and their first instinct is to take out the slip of paper to see what’s underneath? Cause this happens to me all the time.
Usually I'm the one doing it. They stare mystified, and I say, this is how you make a prototype, and pull out the slip of paper and show them the three parts.
You once considered putting "face down" on Farmhands, why was that? And if text space wasn't a thing would you have gone for it?
Text space is always a thing, even when there's almost no text. Man did I consider "face down" on Farmhands? I guess the idea would have been, let's not waste time staring at what other players have lined up for Farmhands. And set-aside cards that weren't visible tend to be face down, for this reason. There's also, what's this card doing in my play area; face down cards are maybe slightly simpler there than face up ones.
Of all profile pictures you could’ve chosen for your discord account, why an image from The Brain from Planet Arous?
I haven't seen the movie. It's just a mad-scientist-type picture. Years ago I used a mechanical bee that a friend drew, when I wanted an avatar. Often I just didn't have one. It's nice to have one though, let people recognize your posts by it. For some reason I needed another avatar one day around two decades ago, like some kind of "everyone briefly change avatars to be confusing" thing, and well I did not keep notes on how I found it or any of that.
Where/when do you come up with your best ideas? While laying in bed? While walking around your room? While taking a shower?
I do get extra thinking value out of pacing or going for walks. I try to think of stuff in bed and in the shower, but not as aggressively as when walking. I also get a lot done just sitting at my computer with a file open and trying to come up with ideas. There's also ideas that show up when playing games.
What’s it like having playtesters that have minds of their own and sometimes will refuse to playtest stuff? Some actual examples:
* You were trying out a new rule for [redacted], and DZ and their playtester friend said “the old rule was/is better, I’m playing with that instead”
* You said “Billy, let's play that this game, [redacted]” and Billy responded with “fuck no.” Yeah when I said there were f-bombs during Rising Sun development, that wasn't a joke.
* An anecdote you shared: “Destry and I might buy a card just to try it out; man Kevin can't do it even when instructed to. We say "we're testing Remake vs. [redacted], Kevin you will buy [redacted]," and he never buys it.”
* You were trying out [redacted], and Natalie just ignored the game and "made Morse code messages with dice"
The Kevin thing is a real issue that you address by learning the playtesters. You make someone other than Kevin buy the card; Kevin will test trying to beat it, and he'll do a great job there. We can make him not buy a card; we can let him do what he wants. We can't make him buy it; any given turn he doesn't have to buy it, so he'll put it off if it looks losing.
Ultimately any game has to please me, or I won't get work done on it; then it has to please the playtesters, or they won't get work done on it. Then I can worry about, does it have an audience outside of us. So who you play with affects what you make. Some of my playtesters are pretty open there, will probably play whatever it is I make a bunch, so that's great. I mean they're in it for the Donald X. games and that's what I deliver.
The job doesn't pay. Well the in-person playtesters get copies of the game when it comes out. Anyway you know. At some point if they don't want to play something, well that's that. And I mean like you guys not liking the new [redacted] rule, well I take that seriously, but in the end that's the rule isn't it, and if you want to playtest then there it is.
