It reminds me of knitting in some ways. I was explaining to Josh the other days that the ‘good’ knitting patterns are test knit by someone who is not the designer and who has to carefully watch that they knit to the pattern and don’t subconsciously adjust to fill in gaps in the pattern.

Much like playtesting.

But they also go through a technical editor who does a paper exercise ensuring that the pattern is logically correct, technically accurate, uses consistent terms and symbols etc. Usually a knitter who has done design

This I assume is like the copy-editing stage of a game where you have someone looking for logical inconsistencies, typos, areas lacking in clarity. This job sounds kinda like my hell ( I will always pay someone to do it on my games – probably always the same person if I can get him!) and the bigger and more sprawling the game with more and more cross -references then the harder this will be for anyone (no matter how good) to get it right. Pretty sure my favoured copy editor will kick my ass sideways when/if he agrees to edit the game I’ve got going out to playtest on Friday.

But I feel you, I buy all my games digital and then upgrade to print when I’m definitely going to run them (unless it is a KS dear to my heart) I can’t run from digital copies at all. If I can’t stick post it notes and underline bits then I’m not going to be able to run it.