Protospiel Michigan 2024

Welcome to Protospiel Michigan!

Protospiel is an event where you can bring a board or card game prototype to play with other designers, play testers, and publishers. It's a great way to break your game and to fix it. It doesn't matter what level of polish your game has. Many games are made right on the spot at Protospiel using the free prototyping materials provided by The Game Crafter. But there are also many games there that are just doing final testing just before they are published or put out on Kickstarter.

Location, Location, Location

For 2024, we're back at the Morris Lawrence Conference Building at Washtenaw College College- conveniently located right in between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti!

Reminder: You can order GrubHub or the like (or just get take out) delivered to this space and eat here! But also feel free to ask organizers for restaurant recommendations if you want to dine out.

Who is Protospiel for?

If you want to play games in any state of development, then Protospiel is for you. If you want to get your own designs played, then Protospiel is for you. If you are looking to come to promote a complete (or released) game and never play anybody else's game, then Protospiel is not for you.

That said, we're running a family friendly shop here. Games with explicit adult themes and the like are probably best playtested elsewhere.

Game Designers

If you are a game designer looking to get professional level feedback from other designers there is no better place to get that feedback. With dozens of other designers in attendance you'll have the opportunity to play test your designs many times through-out the weekend. And the friendships you'll make will last a lifetime.

Game Players

If you're a gamer who likes to try out new and maybe/likely broken things, then Protospiel is also likely the best experience you'll have. You'll get to see dozens if not hundreds of new designs in a single weekend. Plus you'll get to shape them before they hit the shelves of stores or the pages of Kickstarter.

For more information about Protospiel in general, check out protospiel.events

What is Protospiel Like?

Reader, Protospiel is delightful. If you're a designer, a decent rule of thumb is that you'll spend about 30% of your time getting your game prototype(s) playtested, about 50% of the time playtesting others' prototypes, and 20% of your time networking, making friends, learning, and getting inspired.

The Protospiel Golden Rule is that you should try to put in as many playtesting hours as you get from the community!

What if my Game Isn't Finished Enough for Protospiel?

No Game Is Too Unfinished For Protospiel.™

What if I made a Tabletop RPG or a Giant/Event game?

That's great! Protospiel is mostly geared towards for board games, and most playtest sessions run under 90 minutes. You will want to be very clear with people upfront if you expect your game to run 2+ hours. For a successful TTRPG, we recommend preparing a one-shot adventure with pre-made characters and rules references on hand. For big Event games, you'll mostly just need to expectation-set. In either case you should also be very clear about what kind of feedback you're looking for- it's possible that your playtesters will opt out once they feel like they've provided that. Time is precious at Protospiel and big long games are a commitment.

Badge Prices

An all-weekend (Friday-Sunday) badge costs $60. A single-day badge (Friday or Saturday only) costs $30. Publishers get in for free. (Email is us if you're a publisher!)

You can buy tickets here!

COVID Precautions

There is no longer a mandate for vaccination for this event (nor do we anticipate one). Free masks will be available at the front desk for anyone who would prefer to wear one and doesn't have a mask handy.

Publishers

This year we're excited to have Friendly Skeleton as a visiting publisher!

Friendly Skeleton is looking for games that are:

• Affordable
• Easy to Play and Learn
• Representative of everyone

Academy Games will be returning to Protospiel Michigan this year! Academy games is looking for:

• Medium weight strategy games
• Euro games

Amigo Games is another returning publisher!

Amigo Games is looking for:

• small family games
• children's games
• special focus on card games

We're excited to announce Chaosium is as a first-time visiting publisher!

Chaosium is looking for games that can tie-in to its classic TTRPG lines (Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, Rune Quest, 7th Sea).