I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to look beyond my regular gaming group to get playtesting done. Don’t get me wrong, the friends I play with are awesome, but with difficulties with scheduling and sometimes a lack of enthusiasm in general, I’ve had a hell of a time getting more than two or three playtest sessions done in a year, and that’s nowhere near enough for whipping a game into shape. Although I’m still going to keep gaming and where possible playtesting with the usual suspects, I’m also going to start trying to run online playtests via Skype and IRC, and solicit external playtests as well. (Also, any advice for online play in general?)
The upshot of all this is that if you, one of my dear readers, is interested in playtesting one my games, with me online (I’m in the Pacific time zone BTW) or on your own, do let me know. I need to do playtests of both the games I’ve been designing–Adventures of the Space Patrol, Slime Story, and Raspberry Heaven (though the latter too will take some ingenuity to play online)–and some as yet undisclosed games I’ve translated and am working towards publishing. I’m also definitely willing to reciprocate with playtesting, though my ability to organize my own in-person playtest sessions is severely limited as I said.
Update: Thank you for the advice and volunteers! I’m going to work on getting the various games fully ready to playtest, pulling together the means to actually play online (Raspberry Heaven and Slime Story will require doing something clever with VASSAL or similar, and most of the games I need to test will require some kind of dice bot), and advertising in some other places to pull together at least one or two more people to form an online playtest group.
Yaruki Zero Games 
IRC will go slow. It takes FOREVER to do stuff and a short game will take about 3 x as long. Skype might be the way to go here, and in the case of Space Patrol, have the character sheets on a seperate web page so everyone can look at them.
I think you have a wonderful chance to do some playtesting at A-kon as well. Have a small feedback form for the players handy, of course.
Would there be a place for you to put this request on RPG.net/story games?
I have a friend who was looking to run a game on Google Wave. Apparently it’s pretty good to use.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Google-Wave-RPG-Games-Shadowrun,news-4989.html
Used to use OpenRPG took sometime to set up but having all the stuff in one place (maps/minatures/character sheets/NPCs/chat/private chat and dice rolls) the main site is long since dead but it’s still on sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/projects/openrpg/
However even with all that it’s still a slow process getting through a session. The less dice rolling the better.
Hey Ewen,
Loved your work with MAID and I’m definately interested in playtesting some games with you, though most probably offline with my group as I’m located in Asia (time zone GMT+8)
When you’re ready, send me an email. :)
I had a thought last night, probably the best way to play online would be via Teamspeak or Vent.
I’ve got a weekend of Maid RPG and Call of Cthulu lined up. Maybe some home grown gaming to round off. In theory I run a gaming session every other week but we’ve missed out the last few sessions.
I would love to help playtest your games! Unfortunately, none of my friends are nearly as interested in the light-hearted, anime-inspired stuff as I am, so I can’t form an external group, but I’d be glad to play over Skype for sure. I’m in the US central time zone.
My Skype handle is clydesdale4437. Fire me a friend request. I’m pumped to play!
I don’t know if you are still looking for folks to help you with playtesting but I am very interested in helping out with Slime Story. =P