A handful of rules follows. I have incorporated these to regulate our in-house playtesting after I found some of the testers regularly violating one or all of them. I consider these essential to quality playtesting, so I posted them permanently in our main playtest room. If any testers violate these rules (and are unwilling to stop on warning), we will not ask them to return-employees who violate them will be terminated. Playtesting time is too valuable to waste on these antics.

I present them for your perusal and comment. Some might find useful ideas to help regulate play at clubs, etc. Naturally, some might want to take this framework and adapt it to their method of play (or the opponents they must deal with).

1. The Game is what is important-nothing else is. Too often, playtesters became embroiled in supporting issues that they consider important because it supports 'their' side rather than for the game's sake. We do not need partisanship in playtesting.

2. Cheating is never OK. Besides the obvious forms of cheating (lying about dice rolls and moving further than the movement allowance of units...) which are an anathema to any true gamer, there are more subtle ways of cheating. Some of them apply directly to playtesting. For instance, envision the following rationalizations and think of their impact on successful testing: "I don't like that rule, so I won't follow it..."; "I'm getting beaten badly--it's OK if I squeeze a little more..." and so on.

3. Allow the enemy to move in peace. This is one of my pet peeves. I do not like to have the enemy player watching over my shoulder everything I do. As long as you can trust players to follow these rules, there is no reason to watch the enemy move like a hawk. It is especially annoying to see this "attentiveness" in games where the rules preclude knowledge of the composition of enemy stacks. With the enemy watching over your shoulder, you cannot even look at the contents of your own stacks without prying eyes noting the positions of things they should not know about. I suppose one could start picking up each stack and looking at them clutched up close to one's face or under the table-what a waste of time. Wouldn't it be better just to leave the table and let the enemy move in peace?

4. Ask your opponent if anything is questionable. It is a waste of playtest time to keep questionable items under wraps until the game crashes because of them. It is better to say, "Hey, I can get away with this ... should I be able to?" and fix the problem before it ruins the test. The worst case is when the playtester abuses something that should be there and invalidates the entire test with something he could have pointed out when he noticed it. Tied into this (for playtest purposes) is that playtesters must look up the rule wording on whatever comes to mind. In that way, I find things that players assume are OK but are not mentioned properly in the rules, or things that the rules do not allow if taken literally.

5. Mulligans are always OK. We do not need to prove that players will lose if they forget things, etc. A mulligan is in order whenever the enemy looks up after realizing "Gee, I forgot my Supply Phase..." or whatever.

6. Win for your side-but never let competition interfere with testing. I have seen testers more concerned about their reputation as gamers than about the game design. These are folks who would violate some or all these rules just so they can say they won. Furthermore, some are less than forthcoming when I ask design questions of them-"How is your supply situation?" for instance. As the designer, I need to know and I need to know the straight story. The player too worried about winning will think I am probing for information I can use against him in play (Yeah, right ... ) No one will care how "great" a player he is if the game comes out badly because of it.

7. Remember, you are not "playing the game"; you are "playing to test." Playtesters must push the game and its rules to the fullest-not just go along for the ride to have fun. If they do not push the game's system to find its boundaries-its 'envelope'then they are wasting time.

Playing a game as a playtest is not a vindication of one's standing as a player. The only thing that is important is the quality of the product generated when the game is finished. Period.

(Remember: Good Planets are Hard to Find... Please Recycle)