Someone told me that management consultants have the guideline of "share 4 good things for every 1 bad one". Maybe if you're feeling stalled, this is a good guideline? If you have a hard time finding at least one good thing to bring into alongside the criticism, perhaps you're just going to have hard time connecting at all with the author in the discussion?

Here's one problem case: what if your feedback is (negatively) critical to something that is at the game's core? Like if I said to Matt Snyder: "The cards? they're really distracting, and take away from Dust Devils for reasons X, Y, and Z." How can I frame that more constructively, when there is really a lot of pride at stake here?

My possible suggestions: if your criticism is clearly directed at the game's core, first make sure that you both have some reasonable shared interest in the game (ex: at least we both love Westerns), and frame your criticism as describing what doesn't make the game work for you; then frame the positive feedback as how the author would construct a future game that included you again as a possible audience.

So, here's a thing. I don't think a public place is a good environment for critique. In recent times, I have been providing it privately. It is easier to be honest and uncompromising about a thing when you're not bundling it with a bunch of prying eyes.

For once I agree with Shreyas.

I'll also note that I've noticed of late that my playtesting style (when I actually got to do it) has changed. Back in the day when I was playtesting for White Wolf or Wild Talents I was brutal on the system and the prose. I would not try hard to figure out what the text was trying to say, I would take everything at face value and do exactly what the document actually said. I wouldn't explain things to my players who'd read the document to make sure we were on the same page, I'd have us all read it and then come together and play to see if what was supposed to happen happened. I would give no benifit of the doubt, and even when something wasn't "broken" I would write down very specifically everything I didn't like, thought could work better, or was at all confusing. Dennis Detwiller once told me I was more brutal than an angry thesis commite (or something like that). He also told me that I was one of the best playtesters on the project.

I noticed, while reading over In a Land Called the other day (comments are coming Tim! I'm slow, I know, but they'll get there) I realized I wasn't doing that. I was giving the text the benifit of the doubt. I was trying to figure out what things really meant. Now, to be fair to both Tim and I, ILC isn't exactly almost ready for print -- but I was still doing more work to bridge the understanding gap than I would have in the old days.

When I did a very short stint of idea/process testing for Full Light Full Steam I was a little more rigorous, becuase I know Josh and know that he can take it when I tell him, "this part here makes no fucking sense." In that case I did the whole thing Josh asked me to and made it work, but also left notes all through telling Josh where I found the system difficult, underexplained, or over-stressed or whatever. Josh seemed to like what I had to say, told me I was all useful and everything, despite the fact I told him he needed to change a good number of things and wasn't always sweet about it. (I can't claim any credit for the awesomeness of FLFS, however. It went through severl cycles after me that were all even more helpful.)

There have been a few other games that I've been looking over playtest documents of recently and found myself going, "Oh that's rough, but I know what he means so that's good enough...." and then having to slap myself in the face. When you're playtesting you're not there to be nice, you're there to be a friend. The kind of friend who tells you when you stink and need to take a shower.

Now, talking about a published game is even rougher because we know there is money and serious pride on the line. So private for personal talks may be best. I know I've had a few one on ones with folks where I've been able to get points across that may not have been doable in public because they know that in private they're not under attack, at risk of losing sales, or likely to lose any respect. So, yea, private.

However, all of that isn't even the full issue that I was getting at in one of the linked threads in the first post here. There is also an issue not just of criticism but of honesty about what games do and are and are not good for. You know when I started seriously looking at Burning Wheel? When Luke told someone it wasn't the game they were looking for. I respected his honesty and his ability to objectivly look at his own work and know what its strengths and weaknesses were. OTOH, I've seen lots of well meaning fans of a system pimp it even when it is obviously inapropriate, even when someone has said they don't like the system, and then go on to tell them how they are wrong about not liking it.

That too is part of being able to think critically about our games and the games we like. Recommending PTA to someone who tells you to your face that they like critical hit rules is not doing PTA a favor.

I think that gets to be where I start to overlap with Alex. Once a game is out, once you're responding to people asking questions about it, you still have to have some objectivity and honesty. Both about what is good in the game and about what might not fit their play, about the issues other people have had with the game, and about what the game should not be used for. Be honest about what you like about the game, but don't be an apologist.

where exactly does that get you and everyone else on the outside in making informed choices on what to buy or play?

Well, the thing is, this has very little to do with critique. You need to take someone's desires into account when you inform them about games, right, so if they say, "I want an extremely light game without any setting, is Burning Wheel a good choice?" you say, "It's the wrong game for that goal because of X Y Z. I suggest maybe Shadows, because of U V W." I don't need to dump on a game in public to help people make good choices.

Thomas,

Any system can be judged by whether or not the system meets is stated objectives. Criticizing a system against its stated objectives can be done, but (as you say) is often a waste of time. Both are different than criticizing the objectives themselves, which can also be done and can also be useful.

If Matt says "I want Nine Worlds to do X and Y" and it doesn't, you tell him it doesn't and you tell him why. Simple. Even if it is a "doesn't for me" then it can be helpful because we are not unique snowflakes and any problem we have with the system not doing what Matt wants it to will be a problem someone else will have as well.

Yo can also criticize the objectives themselves with greater and lesser degrees of cognizence depending on your relation to the person, game, and knowledge of their goals. I'd probably have some criticism of a game that had a goal of "help guys score with drunk chicks at cons" for an easy and cheap example.

Really, its no different than criticizing any creative work. Did "The Departed" do what it wanted to? Are you complaining because it wasn't funny enough and is that relevant once you realize it isn't a comedy? Is it even worth the sound and fury to remake a movie that had a masterful orriginal?

And so it goes.

Not to jump on the Disagree With Thomas train here, but I actually find indie RPGs to be better suited to be objects of criticism than most other aesthetic works, since RPG books typically tell the reader what kind of play the design should produce. If the book says the game provides "fast paced wuxia action!" and then restricts exactly how far your character can jump and combat always grinds to a standstill, the game is obviously not living up to its marketing.

I think perhaps RPG criticism, as a "field," has historically been really really bad at identifying what a given RPG is attempting to accomplish -- it's all too common for gamers to assume that their roleplaying is all roleplaying and judge all books by the measure of their praxis -- but I think that's an opportunity for improvement, not an insurmountable obstacle.

Posted By: Thomas RobertsonSo the problem here is that the game does not (and can not) provide all the tools necessary for play. Which would be a problem in other media except that we have baseline competency expectations. You can read, you know how to watch tv and film, you know how to listen to music. We don't have such an expectation for roleplaying. What would minimum competency look like? What can we really expect players to be good at and what should designers be expected to provide?

But of course there are a lot of books and films and music out there that produce very similar questions. Questions which are then dealt with by critics, who write about the works with that larger dialogue in mind, or (even) solely to make a point in that larger dialogue. I would say, for example, that reading any poet worth their salt will almost necessarily involve learning a new way of reading. Others might disagree. Jazz is notorious for producing these kind of 'well you just aren't listening right' responses. Complaints and debates over 'difficult' works are ongoing, critics complain equally about films being excessively dense and excessively facile. And, basically, everyone has to find their own place.

I guess what I'm saying is that not only is criticism already happening, but what you describe is, in fact, criticism -- moreover, your description itself is in part stating a critical position. Or at least, uncertainty about what critical position is best. So maybe I'm casting my 'criticism' net wider than you'd like, but my intention is to be optimistic, not dismissive. I think your points about how reviews are handled is good -- but reviews of specific works are only part of a larger dialogue.

And I think that anyone who answers a criticism that a game asks too much of its players with the claim that players should just fill in the blanks is obviously missing the point; on the other hand, how many reviews articulate the issue that way, and how many just flatly say "this game didn't do X"? It's the same kind of difference you see between some random radio jock saying "this movie sucked!" and Roger Ebert writing a full-page explanation of the weaknesses of the movie. The latter deserves a much more considered response. The latter is what we are presumably hoping to encourage. But while it's true that Roger Ebert probably knows a lot of fancy film words, what makes him a good critic has more to do with a lifetime spent watching and writing about movies than anything else.

Equally important is the fact that when he wrote about film in that way, people were willing to respond in kind. They didn't (all) shout him down and they didn't (all) nod sycophantically. So a space for criticism and a healthy atmosphere about it is also important, which I think is part of what people are concerned about. Or maybe they're concerned that other people's concern about potentially being seen as 'mean' is stopping them from giving honest feedback. I have to admit, posting a scathing critical review about anything on Story-Games would seem entirely against the character of the board -- quadruply so if it was the game of a board regular. It just doesn't seem to be in line with the goals of the board.

Here's basic agreement with Paul's point. Yes!

Paul,

I can support all of that.

I'd add, however, that public help in development does require the "critical playtesting" skills that I was talking about. I've seen a few games that were done partly in public over the last little while that didn't get the stuff they deserved because, basically, everyone was playing to nice and to light.

If you don't feel you can criticize someone's work who's your friend, don't worry, some unwashed sleazeball like myself will take a big dump on it, I don't know them from Adam.

Christian,

It's hard to find me these days. I've managed to NOT playtest Blisstage and only partly playtest FLFS in short order. I often volunteer with the best intentions, then find that I don't have time to do a proper testing and so end up not doing one at all.

Which, I think is a mistake. Because some feedback is better than none, even if it isn't the best it could be.

Hey, Brand.

I'm a little different from most forgie designers in that I like non-play feedback as well as play feedback. So, if you've only got one, send it over.

yrs--
--Ben

Just to clarify, what exactly IS an "ashcan" copy?

To answer Thomas, everyone has a different perspective, a different angle, so what we need is a corpus of reviews. Not a dozen reviews of say Nobilis, but 50 reviews of one Dan Davenport, that way you can get to know his tastes, his assumptions and so on and so forth.

What we need is not wide, but deep, we don't need critique, we need criticizers.
We replace that by exchanging ideas with those who review/critique on message boards, but those who come only for the reviews are without that.

That's my two cents, aside from, Mr. Walton, that's playtesting for you to give, but it does not translate into easy playtesting for us to receive.

Thanks :)