The Board Game Design Course

If you’ve been following along with me over the past number of weeks, you should have at least one game of yours on Tabletop Simulator (TTS) and ready to playtest.

If you’re not ready yet, check out this article to get you started fast.

But how do you find other game designers and playtesters to play your game?

Rather than thinking about what others can do for me, I like to flip this idea on its head and think about what I can do for someone else. So, I start by asking if anyone else has a game on TTS they need to be playtested.

When you start by offering to help others first, you’ll often find that these other designers will be more than happy to playtest your game as well.

It’s part of the law of reciprocity. If you do something nice for someone else, they most likely will want to return the favor. And quite often, someone will do even more for you than you have done for them. Nobody wants to feel like they are in debt to another person, so many of us want to offer the same or even more help in return.

But this leads us to a similar question: where do we find other designers who need their game playtested?

Join the Board Game Designer’s Online Playtesting Group

I’ve been coordinating playtests among game designers who use TTS to help them find others to playtest with. It doesn’t matter where you live in the world, you should be able to find at least a couple other people you can playtest with.

Plus, I will be scheduling regular events here as well when everyone can get together.

There’s a Discord channel that will allow you to communicate with other designers and break out into individual rooms to create a playtest group. Then you can pick a game that someone has loaded up and join each other in Tabletop Simulator to playtest.

Click here to sign up for Discord channel and find other designers to swap playtests.

Find other gamers and game designers

Maybe you’re less of a planner and more of a spontaneous gamer. You’ve just gotten your game uploaded on Tabletop Simulator and can’t wait to playtest it with other people.

You could always post something in the chat within Tabletop Simulator, briefly mentioning the details of your game and the number of players you are looking for, and hope to find some takers. Even better, ask if anyone else has a game they would like to playtest first, join them, then you can ask about playtesting your game next.

You can also post a message in one of the Facebook board game design groups to see if anyone wants to set up a time to playtest games.

Invite friends and family

Do you have any friends or family who are into board games? Do any of them have Tabletop Simulator?

Even if they don’t, you might be able to convince them to join. Yes, there is a cost, but it’s fairly low when you consider the thousands of free board game mods that are available to upload (not to mention lots of awesome prototypes of yours they can playtest!). Licenses for TTS occasionally go on sale for up to 50% off as well.

You could even gift this to other people. Birthday coming up? It’s a great gift idea.

You can also buy a four-pack of licenses for the price of three. And when this goes on sale, it’s like buying four licenses for the price of one and a half. What a deal!

Getting other people you know set up with Tabletop Simulator accounts can also make for lots of great game nights. If other people are stuck at home and have nothing to do, invite them online to play a game. It’s such a great way to spend an evening.

How to set up an online playtest on Tabletop Simulator

If you’ve never run a playtest of your game with others on Tabletop Simulator or set up a table to host any game for that matter, I’ll show you how to do this in four simple steps:

1. From the main menu, select Create and choose “multi-player”

2. Name your server and give it a password. The server name should be something easy, perhaps the name of your game.

3. Ask others to select Join from the main menu and type in your server name to find you and your game. Give them the password and get them to join. Or, if you are friends with them on Steam, you can invite them directly to your table by clicking on the “invite” button.

4. Enjoy your game!

Are you facing any challenges with getting playtesters for your game on Tabletop Simulator? Just comment below and I’ll see if I can help.

Thanks for reading!