Adventures in Playtesting (plus: Download BSW!)

Once more into the Demon Mine of the Nine-Eyed Freak!

Back in March I spent an amazing four days at GaryCon 2025, running 6 games of Beefy Shotgun Wizards (download the quickshot here for free!) and one brutal session of Viking Death Squad (someone finally killed the Nexus One!). Then last week I had the chance to run 2 more BSW sessions for some close friends, including the rollout of my newest dungeon. The experience and feedback has been amazing so far.

I ran Demon Mine of the 9-Eyed Freak 7 times and every single session was memorable. Spontaneously cast spells included Rathu’s Ridiculous Bolt of Fuck Off, Tim’s Kung Fury, and Emperor Diamond’s Bowels of Siracha. Some of my favorite moments included Andy Ravage rolling the sequined jean jacket on the d666 table, Jolene the Unvaporized being the only thing in the boss room to survive a mini-nuclear blast, and Caesar Sosa decapitating the Maze Master in a single attack. 

The most common piece of feedback was that the game was fun, quick, easy to pick up, ridiculous, and full of tension. It isn’t a game you’ll want to have a ten year campaign in, but it’s a great palette cleanser between campaigns and a place you’ll want to revisit a few times a year (possibly with a few pints of beer and some whiskey). 

The toplines from the feedback included:

Initiativeless combat kept up momentum. Players in BSW do what they say when they say it, with enemies interrupting as-appropriate. Players picked up on this intuitively and it went smoothly. On the negative side, players who weren’t as assertive at the table always went last, and some players were disappointed when enemy actions interrupted moments of potential synergy between characters. 

I loved this feedback, as it reinforced why I made the design choices but also offered great tidbits for DM advice to prep the players. BSW is supposed to feel urgent and immediate, and that extends to jockeying for position in combat. Spelling out that players can (and should) propose combos moves is also a good DMs note.

People love rolling loot! While there was some confusion about how to roll on a d666 table, folks never got tired of big loot rolls and it didn’t slow the game down. Every time a room is cleared, players roll Think (d6s equal to their Think stat) against the difficulty rating of the room and roll once on the loot table for each success. 

I was concerned that 6-10 loot rolls per room would kill momentum, but that wasn’t the case. Having a d666 table with 218 zany options kept people excited to roll and to hear what others found. A garden gnome with an erection or a pair of aviators was just as fun as a super shotgun or highlander sword. 

Think was king and Save was disappointing. Fight and Shoot were big shiny stats, but folks who invested in Think early were flush with gear most of the session (until the 9-Eyed Freak started vaporizing loot piles). Unfortunately, because loot acts as a kind of hit point it also meant that Save didn’t shine. I have to think on how to change this dynamic as I’m keen to have a system with no automatic dump stats, and Save just doesn’t pull it’s weight currently.

The Tower is pure gold. I’ll go into more detail with my next post, but the Tower in BSW is a jenga tower that represents the passage of time and gear that’s uninteresting to track. When you move room to room, try to solve problems without violence, or face certain foes you’re forced to draw a block from the Tower. If the Tower falls, everyone dies.

It worked like magic. Nearly every session had people biting their nails by the final room, with players shouting, “don’t use the eraser on the table!” for fear the pressure would cause the tower to fall. My goal was to create a physical manifestation dungeon crawling tension and it worked beautifully.

The damage system worked as intended, keeping the impact of violence varied but also intuitive. In BSW, you have save slots (fine, they’re basically HP), inventory slots, and dungeon wretches. You take hits in combat and hits deal damage. You can sacrifice a dungeon wretch to absorb a hit or damage gets assigned to save slots and/or destroying gear. Some special attacks give an injury which fills an inventory slot (preventing gear which can absorb damage from being carried) and other special attacks cause wizards to lose stat point.

The system was easy in practice and folks quickly caught on without asking me to repeat myself. Almost anything on the sheet can be impacted by violence so there’s a lot of variety but also agency. 

The game starts quick and never lets up. The longest time between me starting the rules explanation and the first action of the game was 10 minutes. Not everyone fully grasped the rules, but with an easy first room just about everyone had made a successful attack and searched for loot within 20 minutes of the game starting, and from there things sped up.

Changes I integrated during playtesting due to feedback include:

• Everyone starts with 6 HP rather than Save # of HP (I may change my mind on this)

• There’s a standard 1, 2, 3, 4 array now people can take for stats. Everyone still chose to roll, but now they have a choice

• Wizards with 7-9 and <6 cumulative stat points get gear bonuses. This is key for fun con play

All the players were amazing, and 80-90% of folks stuck around for an extra 10-20 minutes after the game to talk shop and give me feedback. It was an overall incredible experience and I can’t wait to run more BSW at GameholeCon in October!