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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andre" data-source="post: 1924150" data-attributes="member: 25930">It depends on what you're testing, but here are a few basics we've encountered:1. When testing new races, always create characters and run them through an actual adventure, with both combat and roleplaying encounters. If the race has an LA, make the character at least twice the level of the LA (so a +2 LA race should be minimum 4th level). This helps avoid the "paper tiger" syndrome of so many races. When we ran several new races through adventures, we generally found that the estimated LA's were too high, which is easy to do when following the standard guidelines. BTW - I've found that the short adventure published by AEG worked well for this. Dungeon adventures also work well. 2. Pretty obvious, but generally limit yourselves to Core books only, with very few exceptions. If your adventure only works if the party has access to a feat or spell from a non-Core book, some groups will have problems. 3. If it's an adventure, run a standard four character party through it and keep lots of notes of what happens. Did the players do something unexpected which derailed the adventure? Is there an item or spell that completely breaks the adventure? Does it have a mix of roleplaying and combat? Were any npc's especially memorable? Most of all - did the players have fun? After each session, have a recap with the players to solicit feedback. This is an especially good way to garner extra ideas that you may not have thought of. As an example, my group is testing a module. We didn't like the hooks at the beginning (basically it was a railroad). We went along with them, but after the session ended we started throwing out all sorts of ideas building on the general situation. The writer got a ton of good (and not so good  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ) ideas in a short time.4. If you're designing crunch, test, test, test! Start with the Core rules, then branch out into any other books you have (this is an exception to 2. above). Have the resident expert munchkin (every group has at least one) try to "break" the rules. Don't wait until it's published and reviewed to find out that your nifty little feat makes a character unbeatable or unplayable.5. This is the most difficult part but, if at all possible, get at least one other group to test the material. Each group has its own tendencies and its easy to develop tunnel vision about new material. For instance, my group has never used the scry/buff/teleport technique. Same with abusing polymorph self. This makes a big difference in our experience with an adventure vs another group's.Slightly off-topic, but consider thinking small when you start out. Sure you may have hundreds of pages of ideas but, as a consumer, I'm more likely to take a chance on something new if it's small, focused, and cheap. Mimicking Phil Reed's "Dozen" series might work well, at least while you're learning the ropes. Good luck!</blockquote>

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