Call for Playtesters: GURPS Social Engineering

[Bigode]

I am late, and must ask:

is there, even in theory, a position still open? Or is it too close to launch for that? Thanks.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Bigode

I am late, and must ask:

is there, even in theory, a position still open? Or is it too close to launch for that? Thanks.

I'm afraid the roster is full now. I waited till the inflow of applicants after the DI announcement slowed down, picked the second list, and then waited another day and picked one more person. Better luck on the next playtest!

Bill Stoddard

[Bigode]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'm afraid the roster is full now. I waited till the inflow of applicants after the DI announcement slowed down, picked the second list, and then waited another day and picked one more person. Better luck on the next playtest!

Bill Stoddard

Well, my best wishes to those involved! :P

[sir_pudding]

Now to try not to neurotically obsess about why I didn't get picked. Was it something I said? Is it my hair? Do I look fat to you? :)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

It didn't even occur to us to consider it, and now that you've raised the point . . . well, quite honestly, it still doesn't occur to me that's it's something we should consider.

I think that would be my view, too, speaking as an author. It's not necessary to spend effort eliminating every hypothesis anyone might come up with about different populations having meaningfully different responses to a product; there has to be some actual reason to suppose that this is so.

If we're talking about people who prefer hard copy to pdfs . . . a category that includes me! . . . the simple fact that a large fraction of GURPS material is released first, or only, on pdf pretty much ensures that most of them will have enough e23 credit. And, in fact, when I look at the list of playtesters, I see a fair number of have been active since the days when everything was hard copy, and not a few who have actually written hard copy books. So I don't think the sample is particularly unrepresentative.

If we're talking about people who never buy anything in pdf, simply because they find the format intolerable . . . well, they're not the target market for this book, or for most SJ Games books; I'm pretty sure they're a small population in any case, so excluding them wouldn't be expected to cause a lot of error. I'll note that one of the regular techniques of statisticians is to trim off the outliers, and people who won't buy pdfs are outliers in today's market. Not having them doesn't make the sampling unrepresentative.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Now to try not to neurotically obsess about why I didn't get picked. Was it something I said? Is it my hair? Do I look fat to you?

Seriously, of the fifty-plus applicants, I picked maybe 10 as automatic approvals, because they had such outstanding records that it would be lunatic to turn them down. With the others, I could have picked at random and gotten a fairly good list; the differences between you all were pretty marginal. But I couldn't cope with a playtest with all of you involved! So I looked for small good or bad points, while recognizing that relying on them might improve the average quality but by no means guaranteed that the people I picked were superior as individuals to the people I didn't pick. There were very few people I counted as having "bad points," and those were minor.

And I'm not going to discuss with anyone the reasons that I didn't pick them in particular. On one hand it invites obsessing; on the other, I don't want to suggest that I'm prepared to debate my choices. Think of me as an inscrutable divinely inspired oracle.

But don't worry about it. There'll be another playtest soon enough.

Bill Stoddard

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Now to try not to neurotically obsess about why I didn't get picked. Was it something I said? Is it my hair? Do I look fat to you? :)

The answer is very simple. If they'd picked you, they wouldn't have had room for me.

[sir_pudding]

Breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet! :) (extend short e sound not long ee, that is).

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Think of me as an inscrutable divinely inspired oracle.

But Bill, that implies that usually we don't think of you as an inscrutable divinely inspired oracle.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by whswhs

And I'm not going to discuss with anyone the reasons that I didn't pick them in particular. On one hand it invites obsessing; on the other, I don't want to suggest that I'm prepared to debate my choices. Think of me as an inscrutable divinely inspired oracle.

But don't worry about it. There'll be another playtest soon enough.

Bill Stoddard

Just wanted to publicly comment that it was nice to get a rejection letter and make it official. Just a nice courtesy that was appreciated.