The Latest Dogs, The Latest Dust

[Mattias!]

Hey y'all,

Pursuant to actually having something to demo for the Greenfire benefit in (eep!) a month, I wanted to get the latest iteration of The Dogs & the Dust polished up...so here's the result of that! As usual I'd love to hear what you guys think!

The Dogs & the Dust Alpha Test v 2.4:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzWBogTmxTtxZTZvaWV2eFdBc0k/view?usp=sharing

This is just the core rules, of course. Vehicle and campaign supplements are still in very rough draft form.

Also, if anybody has ideas for what kind of scenario I should run, I'd love to hear that too. What kind of game tends to work well in a demo situation? This is my first time demo-ing anything to strangers, so I'm not 100% sure how to approach it.

[jlopatin]

After running hundreds of demos at various events, I have some thoughts:

For demos, you want to streamline things a little to give people a taste of the basic mechanics while also getting them excited to play a second game... With that in mind, I'd suggest an exciting yet simple narrative mission. Don't necessarily balance the 2 forces... Give the demo player the power, and also, as the demo runner, play to lose. Don't just hand him the game. There is an art to making the player feel like they won an exciting hard fought victory. Generally, If I start to really kick butt when playing a new demo, I'll roll dice behind something and fudge the rolls in the player's favor. I think it is a really important aspect of getting someone excited about the game.

The scenario can be set up on a smaller play area, so the action starts faster, too.

You can of course balance this with more standard playtesting... At the event, I'd plan to have a short demo scenario that lasts 15-20 minutes MAX, but also be prepared with a more standard scenario, because there will be interest, and you will have time to get some longer games in as well. Treat the longer games normally.

This is a good point to bring up in general about the event... It's a DEMO event, so plan your games accordingly. we want people to get the chance to try as many new things as possible. Keep your scenarios and warbands small to compensate for this.

[Mattias!]

Thanks for the tips Josh! That's really helpful. Also having a 'demo length' and 'full length' scenario prepped is a really good idea. I'll keep that in mind as I go about designing.

MSD