Paper prototypes and playtesters

I’ve always had my weird little projects. In the past I’d spend most of a day making a prototype for a game from paper and tokens. Today I just write a long prompt and wash the dishes while Claude builds the prototype. The cool thing is that the playtester doesn’t have to be a finished, polished system with all the rules set in stone. The system just needs to provide a basic set of affordances so I can work out the specific game constraints.

For a long time I’ve had a strategy game in mind, and I’ve built prototypes for it before. But today I just whipped up a tool for playtesting the basic mechanics. I described the mechanics that are settled, and explained what aspects of the game I’m still testing and tweaking.

My access to Fable 5 has been extended another week, so I might just spend that time making prototypes and playtesters for old ideas.