Here’s a little snippet of my Civil War sequel, the Peninsula Campaign:
Peninsula Campaign
“You know as much as any of us about the difficulties we had last summer attacking Richmond directly. Since then, the rebels have entrenched and fortified the northern approaches to their capitol. They appear to be quite thoroughly prepared to repel any advance from that direction. That is the reason for a seaward approach, moving up the peninsula toward Richmond from the lightly defended eastern side. When we get within range, the engineers will set up siege guns to pound the city into obsequious surrender.”
Hooker takes a drink before continuing, “General McClellan arrived this morning to take command of our Army of the Potomac. The Army is to be greatly expanded in the coming days to well over one hundred thousand strong. It will be only a matter of days until the first units begin to depart. I want you to take every step to prepare your brigade for this journey.”
“You would do well to meet with your new subordinates. Of course, they may be somewhat reticent to fully support you since you were just promoted over their heads, but you must eliminate that notion as soon as possible. Let me see here,” he consults a paper on his desk, “Colonel Blaisdell of Massachusetts, Colonel Marston of New Hampshire, Colonel Small of Pennsylvania, and your own man, Lum.”
General Hooker puts down the paper and looks at you, sharply. “There is one more thing that I will say, and then I will let you attend to your new command. You answer directly to me, now. You can be my ally, or my enemy. I can pull strings for you and advance your career, even to Brigadier General, or I can do the opposite. If you want to advance, you would do well to fall in with my views and my way of running this division. Do you understand me, Colonel?”
*choice
#“I expect no difficulties, there, Sir. I know who I answer to.”
#“I understand, Sir.”
#“I will do whatever is best for the Army and the soldiers under my command.”
When you start to worry that your work isn’t good enough or no one’s interested, please check out the “Top Rated” section of the CoG omnibus app and remind yourself that you have two games in the top five and a legion of loyal fans who hope the Crème de la Crème series keeps going until the sun expands in five billion years and burns our planet to a crisp.
This lists remind me why am I so terrible tester. I try to follow those but as tester my mind goes bad and turn to goo if you forces me to do a schematic and all that.
I missed old times when betas were not so like do my taxes. I suppose they are more effective this way. But I can’t give feedback like doing taxes
I think that is part of why authors have trouble getting the feedback they need.
I don’t “require” people to answer my questions, but I do state that they are concerns I have and would explicitly like feedback on these issues if possible.
I understand that is efficient. Sadly my mind is the chaos incarnate. So many times I don’t waste writer time sending my opinion due it is not tidy and in bullet points. Now forum needs more modern testers
Just for the sake of clarity, because I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying: author asking feedback about a specific part that they’re concerned about (like, asking “is this character too annoying in this chapter?”) prevents you from sending feedback at all? Did I get this right?
I give feedback like role player focus point by point in what I picked why I picked it up what I think is too much or too little.
Then if game is not corrctly tracked I comment where stats shifts in.flavour text because fair math or coding is not well done.
An example a game was poorly balanced and in same chapter I passed of being a professional lockpicker to being too clumsy trying open a easy closed door.
I can give you like five pages of feedback for only a chapter as I go choice by choice sincerely point out absolutely everything that I feel do or thing is bad.
If you make me generic question and all that to say in a paragraph I am incapable of doing it.
Reason why I don’t do betas anymore except for very select people Like Havie. Because I know he or Jim won’t mind 4k feedback notes.
Most writers won’t want feedback like mine so I don’t make them lost their time.
Hmm. Now I’m wondering how much I’ll limit my potential feedbackers if I show that list of “these things I especially need feedbck on” if I ever get that thread out…
Limiting is good. You have to ask and demand the type of feedback you want. Because the important of a beta is helping the writer to publish the best possible product.
And as Tester one has to know our skills and if we are compatible with the style that writer wants.
A fossil like me is not practical as tester because no writer wants to read a big text point by point as needs too much time for what it will bring to the table.
I got over a little hump in my WiP today! It was a scene transition that has been giving me hell problems, and I finally sorted a way through it that I don’t hate. I know I could just skip around and come back to it, but it’s so hard for me to focus on any other part when I just keeping thinking about something “behind” me being left undone. It drives me up the wall even when I’m doing traditional work; I can’t even think about how crazy it would make me knowing I’d be leaving code stuff undone. But now I feel like I can finally stop rewriting this one section and move on to filling out what comes next and I’m feeling so happy and relieved.
@AletheiaKnights I appreciate that so much, thank you I have dust in my eye…
About feedback etc, I love to have all kinds. The structured questions are especially helpful if I’m unsure of something in what’s being playtested (eg if I’m not sure whether the pacing is working). I’ve also heard from some testers that they like having questions to answer as it helps them think of what to say. I also love getting player feedback as they go.
When Fay playtests for me, she simply writes down any thoughts she has as she goes (probably similar to how @poison_mara does things), it isn’t structured but is incredibly useful (and nice). So she made me a very big document with things like:
OOF THIS HITS HARD, nice
Slight repetition here
So, this moment actually feels like it falls flat for me. The previous scene is fun. But the scene seems…shallow, maybe? I think it’s some combination of the following factors: [redacted]
The choice that led to this, I had NO idea what was being tested for anything!
I really like the moments with Catarina and her friends so far!
For me, playtester feedback doesn’t have to be any particular format - what I like to hear is feedback that the player feels good about giving.
I have dust in my eye…