Protospiel Rochester 2024

Welcome to Rochester's 1st Annual Protospiel Convention!

Protospiel Rochester 2024!

What's a Protospiel?

A Protospiel is a convention or event for game designers to playtest their games-in-development.

Fellow game designers and game players play games that are being developed. Designers are looking for feedback (either in a specific area or more broadly) that will improve the game.

Our goal is to offer a supportive and co-operative environment that improves the quality of your game. We all like when awesome games hit the market!

Games at all stages of development are welcome.

• If you have something that's vaguely playable, we want you to bring it!
• Is it nearly done and just needs more eyes on it, we want to see it!
• If you just thought of it while here, grab some parts-and-pieces and scribble down some rules, we'll see where it goes!
• But...If it's published and available for sale, please leave it at home.

How Is a Protospiel Structured?

Each Protospiel has its own style, but they all are intended to provide game designers with an environment to help improve their games. With that in mind, we will gather information on what type of games the game designers are bringing. Yes, you can bring more than one!

Game Designers can list their games on the Game Prototype page. Play Testers can use the same page to see what games will be available to play.

There will be some open tables for people to sit down and play/talk/demo their game, or just take in the experience.

Note There will be feedback forms on hand, but we suggest designers have their own form that is tailored to what they want to know about the most.

One last thing, we will have an "Artists' Alley" where local (or not so local) artists can have samples of what they can do. There will be nothing for sale, but it should be a great networking experience.

Remember, doing work for "exposure" doesn't feed an artist or put a roof over their head. Treat them like any other professional you work with.

Other than the above, there's not much structure to the event.

Schedule

Badges

Protospiel Rochester will have three types of badges that can be bought for a single day or the entire weekend:

Tabletop.Events fees will be added to all badge prices. Note: By purchasing a badge, you are agreeing to the Policies of this convention.

Additional Badge Information

• Designer Badges have no reserves on table space. We will have up to 25 tables setup. This should allow for 15 to 20 games to be going on at any given time (we want to have some left open just for relaxing). We ask that for every hour you run a game, you also play someone else's game for an hour.

• Player Badges allow you to come and go as you please for the day the badge is good for, or the entire weekend with a weekend badge. You are the awesome person we need feedback from and we hope you'll provide plenty! Be aware, if you play a game on Friday, it could be completely different by Sunday. Game designers can often update games in an hour or two. That's why your feedback is so important.

• Artist Badges come with one (1) or two (2) 4-hour blocks to use a table in the Artist's Alley. That's in addition to you being able to join in the game play! But about those tables! We will have tables setup and assigned in an area across from where the game hall is.

  • If you buy a single day badge, you get one (1) 4-hour block.
  • If you buy a weekend badge, you get two (2) 4-hour blocks.

We recommend some sort of contact information (business card, QR code, etc.) and some samples of your work (illustrations and then scaled to "playing card" size prints).

This is the schedule we'll be following. There's a 1-hour period between blocks, but if you are in the same space both blocks, you can keep your samples in place.

Note: Due to the limits on the table space, we'll have a limited number of Artists Badges available.

Sponsors

Please reach out if you are interested in being a sponsor!