Aegean Playtest
Last weekend was UKGamesExpo in Birmingham. It was my first time there and I dove in head-first with a playtest of Aegean, the Greek myth inspired role-playing game which I’ve been working on for the past couple of years.
One of the key features I want for Aegean to distinguish it from other RPGs, is the city management rules. There should be a home base which the characters are invested in and have to invest in as players — it should grow and develop as the PCs grow and develop.
I had two playtesters with me for around two hours. We went through city creation and several turns of the city management rules. This section of the game is much closer to a board game in approach than a traditional RPG and focusses heavily on resource management and usage.
It was quite stressful initially but, ultimately, worthwhile. I’m comfortable running RPGs for complete strangers but, when it’s your own game, it feels that much more personal and the stakes feel higher. The players picked up the rules quickly, enjoyed messing around with their burgeoning trade empire, found a few holes in the rules, and offered plenty of feedback. I have a lot of notes which I need to go through before I write up the full rules and complete this section of the game.
Many thanks go to the volunteers working for Playtest UK who talked to me about Aegean and found playtesters. They’re really focussed on board or card games so having an RPG there was unusual for them, but they handled it brilliantly.