fresh off a covid test you'd think I'd be focusing on how much my nose hurts BUT NO I'M MAKING A SLIDE DECK buckle ups buttercups

You don't have to playtest. It helps. But you don't have to do it. And if somebody in the space, someone powerful with a lot of influence, is talking about how your work is less valuable if it hasn't been playtested, you don't have to listen to them.

Not everybody has the resources to find and hire playtesters, and not everybody has the *social* resources to find people who will playtest their game for free.

Playtesting can help! But it's a tool for making your game better. That's it.

But I'm not done!

You don't have to do layout either.

Layout can make your game easier to read, can make it more visually pleasing. It's a tool. But anyone telling you that you *have* to *do* it is lying. You don't have to do it.

It helps. But it's not a requirement.

BUT I'M NOT DONE!

You don't have to do art either.

I love art! Art is great.

But if anyone ever comes out and says that a game isn't complete without art, they're lying. Not everybody has a budget that can support art, or a following that can sustain a crowdfund to build that budget.

Art can help. You don't *have* to do it.

This isn't me saying "Don't playtest/do layout/do art", this is me saying that the way a lot of advice in this space gets framed tends to be in the vein of "This is the way" instead of "this is a thing I've found helpful", which is harmful for a number of reasons.

Let you in on a secret: none of my games were playtested before release, with the sole exception of Cracks in the Mirror.

All of them are great.

Would they be better with playtesting? Almost certainly.

But I don't have the bandwidth to do that, nor the budget to pay for it.

I happen to be someone who likes playing with layout and graphic design tools, so my games are gonna be very layout-forward.

But I'm also the one who wrote a whole thread about doing basic layout in Google Docs. It's just...it's not necessary.

Telling folks they have to do playtesting, or have to do XYZ...

it's kind of like saying "You have to have daily status meetings with everyone on your team."

Does it help? Sure. Probably.

If it were a requirement, most of us wouldn't be able to do it.

So questions like this one might seem harmless, but they're not. Because they're *meant* to reinforce the existing paradigm, and entrench people's expectations.

This question doesn't grow the pie, Dan. It just makes the pie more expensive. https://twitter.com/ZweihanderRPG/status/1330884172559355909