A final playtest?

Last week I went to a meeting of people working in peace education. I was the fun bit in a skill-sharing and networking day. They wanted an hour of something different, and I wanted one last playtest.

Well, it works. (Thankfully.) I brought four samples and/or paper copies, and we had a mixture of groups of three and four. Without instructions, I needed to talk them through the set up and the rules, which took about 20 minutes. Each group then set off, playing the standard game on the easiest setting. Two groups lost a player early on. All four groups won – although one group was only one turn away from losing. The games lasted from 30 to 40 minutes, meaning that they were all finished within the hour.

I’m counting that as a real success. I think a game should be easy on the easiest setting – and this game has quite a few variants to make it harder. Most people were able to understand what was going on, although only two people in the group owned any boardgames. This was my target audience, and they all said they enjoyed it!

(Photo from Quakers in Britain – either @DisarmQuaker or @PeaceEduQuaker. That’s me in the middle.)