23 replies to this topic

[healey36]

Two more weekends of playtesting the Arras scenario yielded little improvement in player performance. This might end up being a heavily scripted scenario, or we may condense it down to just the final push. Another option might be to strip out all of the victory points for destroyed units and make it simply a matter of how many units are advanced off the southern table-edge. In eight sessions, the British have not come close to this objective.

 

Or, we might "table" this for now and move on to the last few scenarios we have planned. We just need to write them up from the notes and playtest them. We'll come back to Arras later...no way we're abandoning it. 

 

My play-testers are predominantly college kids. They're gonna disappear come mid-August...gotta get cranking.

 

  

[Peter M. Skaar]

It is true that the players don't always follow the "script".  I may have already mentioned that I had this happen in my Kharkov '42 scenario from about 10 years ago.  

Trying to tweak a scenario can be challenging but definitely rewarding when everything comes together.  I am curious to see how you resolve the issues you had in the Arras scenario.  I will be working on my Kharkov scenario or similar in the future to see if my new crop of gamers will find it interesting.

[healey36]

Maybe I'm obsessive/compulsive (certainly not in terms of tidiness, lol). This Arras scenario has driven me nuts for nearly two months, but now, at last, I think we've nailed it down. The playtesting has been ragged and uneven, but it is what it is. Everyone seems to have a different twist on how to proceed, so it's a bit difficult to judge if the "victory conditions" we've written are workable. The playtest results have been so divergent, but we think they are a fair measure of outcomes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[healey36]

Well, my ad hoc playtest group has disbanded with the members all heading back to university. We got through all of the scenarios we wrote except for the last three; one is almost complete and the other two are waiting to be written. I reached out to the local game venue to see if they thought anyone might have interest; their specialty seems to be the Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000 crowd, so they were unsure. I guess I'll go over there one Saturday and poke around, talk to a few people. I know they've run an occasional Bolt Action tournament, so maybe there will be some interest. No idea...don't know until you ask.

 

Off to Albany to visit my son this weekend. While I'm up there I'm going to have him proof the write-ups and give me some feedback. He's an avid board gamer and we've also played quite a bit of GQIII over the years, so it's not completely out of his wheelhouse.