Advice on playtesting heavy (war)games

I'd look for playesters among the reenactment crowds, like SCA meetings, rendezvous, and Civil War events. The last hardcore historic wargamer I'd met lived in a yurt, so fringe society and off-the-grid types. Maybe put an ad up at the library.

I have designed, with a friend, a 2-player arena style battle game that takes around 2hrs to play & have had trouble also finding play testers especially in the early stages.

The best advice I've heard but have yet to implement is to try & break the game into reasonable chunks/scenarios to test specific elements. Build the scenario so that you can take the players through set moves (e.g. Let's assume you just rolled X, or stack a deck of cards so you know what they will draw each time etc). That way they see the moves/options & learn those bits of rules & then you step back & let them have 2-3 moves themselves. Get feedback, go away & analyse it, come back with a refined scenario or a scenario for the next stage you want tested. Hopefully as the game progresses players know you care about the time they as putting in (by trying to keep it short to respect their time) & are serious about the feedback that they will start to commit to longer sessions to test how a&b scenario play when put together.

You might not be able to answer that yet.

I would be happy to help playtest, but it would be difficult to set aside more than 2-3 hours at a time.

Importing the game into Tabletop Simulator could be a useful exercise. Games can be saved and picked up again later.

Not to piss on your parade, but you're trying to get people to notice a game concept that has been done to death hundreds (thousands?) of times over. If your game lacks novelty, no-one's going to notice.

So to get people interested in playtesting, one thing you need to tell people is what's *special* about it.

Why should they use your system to move infantry and tanks around and blow up the other guys? How does your game stand out compared to one of the other many many many systems that already exist?

Wow. You aren't kidding about it being a heavy wargame. That is a beast of a game. I wasn't kidding about the SCA and reenactment crowds being a good potential pool of playtest candidates for such a game. If your town has a historic society, that may be a starter, or even a cork board at the museum.

There's a guy on here called The Professor. I remember having an exchange with him some time ago about games like yours. Aside from him being a very courteous and helpful user, I think that he is most qualified to help you. Consider sending him a PM.

I didn't need to. As soon as I saw mention of Spanish flu modeled into the system I knew that it was one of those classic mega wargames. Weeks of play doesn't surprise me at all. I can't remember what the term is for that size of a game, but there is definitely a niche for it. The closest thing I own is FASA's Prefect, which ties together three other individual wargames into one planet-spanning campaign. I have never had enough to table space to play it properly.

fgeo,

Good afternoon!

I've actually served as a developer and co-designer on a few games for both Decision Games (Strategy & Tactics and Modern War magazines) and Compass Games (The War: Pacific 1941-1945 and the Expansion Kit for The War: 1939-1945), so hopefully this information will prove helpful.

Most military war game publishing companies are very small, where the principal owners often have day jobs to support their hobby/passion.
I'd recommend reaching out to various publishing companies, especially the aforementioned ones. Here's the general process from what I've seen during the past 5-6 years:

1. Individual provides a synopsis of the game (the "pitch") to one or more publishing companies
2. The publishing company either accepts or rejects the game at the point of the premise. If rejected, try elsewhere; if accepted, move onto 3.
3. The publisher will find a developer (that's where someone like me enters the picture) to assist/work with the designer.
4. The developer reviews the rules, organizes play-tests, collects feedback, revises/recommends edits, and engages with frequency with the publisher on progress
5. Once complete, the publisher and the designer work out the details governing royalties, etc. (this is an area for which I have little information to pass onto you)

Again, I hope tis works well for you...please keep me informed of your progress and if there's anything I can do for you.

Cheers,
Joe

War games are a very specific audience and a hard nut to crack, but many war gamers are very open to at the very least checking out something new and fresh, especially if it's complex and in depth.

Professional play testing for something of that scale would be very costly. You could have specific portions tested, but that could also be done yourself, so it's tough.

I would check out any of the tabletop wargaming forums and participate in discussions there. Get some early advice on portions of your game and perhaps garner some interest in it for playtest purposes.

If you have a local gaming group that does wargames, they may have an interest. Finding them, however, is another story altogether. I am fortunate enough to have a large Axis and Allies community around that are happy to check out interesting new wargames and have no issues with games that take hours or days to play.

Tabletop Wargaming Conventions; go, demo your game and illicit feedback and/or play test interest from there. I don't know where you are, but there are a number of these run each year and they attract hundreds of avid war gamers.

Some publishers will be willing to look at a game that's not play tested, assuming you have done a decent amount of testing yourself. This is a long process, but The Professor detailed it better than I can. :)

Perhaps post your rules online so people can go through them and maybe catch something you're missing?