Episode 258 - Interview with Heather Newton

Intro: 0:00

Recent Games: 0:44

Interview with Heather Newton: 6:34

Outro: 44:55

Bloopers: 45:59

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Games mentioned this episode:

Escape Comics: The Alien Ship: 0:44

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[00:00:06:22 - 00:00:44:14]

Crystal: Hello and welcome to Episode 258 of Board Game Blitz, a podcast about all things board games that you can listen to in less time than it takes to figure out why your microphone isn't working in voice chat. Board Game Blitz is sponsored by Grey Fox Games. This week, we're speaking with Heather Newton, the founder of Protospiel Online. First, we talk about Escape Comics: The Alien Ship. Then, we chat with Heather to learn all about her organization and her experiences with the game design community. Now, here are your hosts...

Ambie: Ambie

Crystal: and Crystal, with special guest

Heather: Heather Newton.

[00:00:44:14 - 00:02:34:00]

Ambie: Recently, I got a review copy for Escape Comics: The Alien Ship. This is currently on Kickstarter. This is a Kickstarter preview copy, but this is a escape room game in a comic book designed by Douglas Beach and Evan Duxbury, art by Maria Beckvar, and published by Jumping High Five Games, 2026 published, it's on Kickstarter. I played through the escape room game by myself, but it says it's one to four players, 90 to 300 minutes. I actually played it in four different sittings because I was just like, it's one of those escape room games that's not, there's no timer or anything, so you're just like playing it. It looks like it took me like an hour and a half total.

Crystal: Okay.

Ambie: But the premise of the game is there's a comic book. So this is a comic book. I'm going to like show on YouTube a little bit, not too much because it's spoilery, but it says stop at the beginning. And on the pages, it says like, don't continue without reading something. And then it has like a comic, like graphic novel type comic, and then it will say stop for each riddle. So it's a linear escape room game with riddle puzzle things as you read through the comic. And then like, once you've solved it, then you can continue reading the comic. The way the puzzles work is very reminiscent of Exit games. I think there's also like 10 riddles, just like in an Exit game. It has a decoder disc like Exit with symbols on it. And then it has hint cards for each riddle, multiple hint cards, which is nice. Like it goes step by step hints, which I always appreciate. And then there's answer cards. So like they decoder get a disc like an Exit game will show a number and then you go to the answer card and then you go to the symbol and go to the answer card that's showing and then it's either wrong and you get a penalty or it's right. And it says like, you can go to the next page. So it has a score. You start with a hundred points and then you get minus points for penalties or guessing wrong and stuff. So there's no like time limit in the score and you don't have to keep score. It's like just for fun.

[00:02:34:00 - 00:02:37:05]

Crystal: Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the case of a lot of the escape room games, right?

[00:02:37:05 - 00:03:23:24]

Ambie: Yeah. And then what's different from like Exit games other than the comic, which is kind of neat. Like you get to read a story, like it goes with the story. The riddles also go with the story. There's also these envelopes in the box. This is a decent sized box. I'm not sure what size. It's bigger than an Exit box.

Crystal: Smaller than Ticket to Ride.

Ambie: Yeah. Ticket to Ride. Yeah. Somewhere between. But yeah, like each riddle puzzle that you're doing, there's envelopes in the box that you'll be opening up and it has components in there. And so it has different components that you're doing. All the puzzles are different, which is neat. There's like, you're using multiple things and sometimes you're different types of puzzles. I don't want to like say all of them. Some of them are like transparency or like putting things together. So I enjoyed the puzzles. Some of the puzzles I enjoyed more than others, but that always happens with escape room games.

[00:03:23:24 - 00:03:30:09]

Crystal: Yeah. If you ever came out of something like this and said, I liked every puzzle the exact same amount, that would be stranger.

[00:03:30:09 - 00:04:27:10]

Ambie: Yeah. And then some of the puzzles were a little bit unclear for me, but I think this is a traveling copy. So other people have played it already. Oh, and on that note, it's reusable. So like, you know, with Exit, it's destructible, but this one, everything does not get destroyed. There's no like cutting or anything, but because the pieces in the envelope, it already has like pieces that are already different things. You don't have to like cut things because like Exit's a smaller box. This has components unlike Unlock where it's just cards and stuff. Like this actually has physical puzzles that you're doing, which is fun. So like, I felt like it was very similar to an Exit feeling, but it's reusable. So you can like pass it on to other people. Also, the comic made it feel like more of a single player for me. Like, I don't know if I would like playing it with other people because like I like reading to myself. Like if I'm reading a comic, I would want to see the comic, especially with like the pictures and stuff. So I would either like pass the comic around or like read aloud, like a teacher showing it to everyone. I'm not sure how it would work with multiple people.

[00:04:27:10 - 00:04:31:15]

Crystal: Yeah, it feels like you'd have to be like a kindergarten teacher, like holding it up right as you read

[00:04:31:15 - 00:04:51:09]

Ambie: Yeah, or just pass it around. I mean, it's pretty quick to read comics. So I was thinking about playing it with my kids, but I ended up playing it just here like while I was editing and different breaks, which is also nice because it's a book. You can just like put a bookmark in there and you know where you are at because it's a linear escape room, like one puzzle after another. So it was very easy to do it in multiple cities.

[00:04:51:09 - 00:04:58:12]

Crystal: That's awesome. And that's unique. There's a lot of escape room games where if you walk away and come back, it's like, oh, God, what was I doing?

[00:04:58:12 - 00:05:23:19]

Ambie: Yeah, for the difficulty, I think it was on the easier side. I feel like it could be like a family one. The comic did have a little bit of like, I was kind of like worried. I didn't do this with my kids because there's some violence and like gross stuff in the comic. It's not like it's still like family friendly. I think it's just like my kids are six. They're a little bit young. Maybe I don't know. I probably could have read it to them, but I also just wanted to do it by myself.

[00:05:23:19 - 00:05:28:11]

Crystal: Basically, if you're a parent, you'll have to make that decision, you know, for your for your own kids.

[00:05:28:11 - 00:05:35:28]

Ambie: They did help me with one of the puzzles. One of the puzzles was actually like a jigsaw one that was kind of hard. That one was one of my lesser favorite ones.

[00:05:35:28 - 00:05:47:02]

Crystal: Oh, gosh, don't tell me this, I already don't like jigsaw puzzles to begin with. And I'm bad at them. So now I'm at least dreading one of the puzzles when you give this to me.

[00:05:47:02 - 00:06:30:11]

Ambie: But that one, like my kids tried to help me, but then it didn't work very well. Multiplayer with that one specifically, too, because there was another part to it. I don't want to like give away too much, but like, yeah, it seemed like one person more could see it better. And so like for some of the puzzles, also, they're more like one person seeing it at a time, because it's like a perspective thing or something like you're looking through something. So I personally would play it one player, I think. Well, yeah, that's Escape Comics: The Alien Ship - escape room game with a comic. It's on Kickstarter now. I'm not sure how much it is going to be. So yeah, I'm not sure like value wise, because it's a escape room. It's similar feel to an Exit game, but it's probably going to be more expensive because it's like reusable and it has like physical components and stuff. But it was fun.

[00:06:34:14 - 00:06:44:15]

Ambie: Today we are with Heather Newton from Protospiel Online. And by we, I mean I, because Crystal is unfortunately sick and couldn't record. But I will try to run the interview without her. This is Heather.

[00:06:44:15 - 00:06:52:01]

Ambie: Heather, can you introduce yourself?

Heather: Yes, hello. I'm Heather Newton. I'm the lead organizer for Protospiel online. I've been doing that since April of 2020.

[00:06:52:01 - 00:06:55:15]

Ambie: And how did you get into the hobby of board gaming?

[00:06:55:15 - 00:14:17:21]

Heather: Early in the time that I was dating my now husband, we ran a murder mystery party, like box kit, one of those Bepuzzled murder mystery parties, you know, looked inside the box and what it did for me was just generate a lot of ideas of more fun things we could be doing while playing the mystery party. So this one was like an Italian restaurant themed one. And it did come, it was a kind that came with recipes and then scripts for the six required characters and two optional characters, which you would know were not the murderer. And so each of the, I think just each of the required characters, or maybe I did it for all eight, I made up a little activity themed around that person. Like there was a priest who was a little bit of an alcoholic. And so I had a bum wine tasting, which is where you drink very, very cheap wine and decide which one is the best things like that.

And I had made also when I was in college, we played a game called Assassins, which I don't know if you're familiar with it, but it's a last person standing circle where I'm given a hit and then that person has a hit. And if I hit my hit, I get their hit. So only one person will be standing at the end and we would play with water guns like around college. So it turned out to be a getting to know you sort of thing because you would ask other people where to so and so work, what classes does so and so have? And then you'd go hunt each other down and like get each other in the quad with squirt guns. So I developed a way at this party to play that game in one location in one evening where I hid quote unquote weapons around my house and gave each person like a little pamphlet that had a picture of the weapon. And I said, you have to find the weapon. And then it had like a little diagram of my apartment and what the zones were. And you have to get them into that zone and then quote, kill them. And then you'll get their piece of paper.

All the things that weren't the murder mystery party, which was just basically sitting around reading a script. All of these other things were like what, you know, my boyfriend at the time, he was like, how did you feel about that party? It was like everything that came in the box was kind of boring. Everything you made was really fun. Like you'd be really good at this, you know. So I started trying to make a printable, no physical inventory product that I would sell online. One of the things that I hate the most about hosting murder mystery parties is how stressful it is to manage the guest list and really make sure that everybody who has said they're going to come is really committed to coming because a lot of them are written in a way where even you as the host, you don't know who the murderer is so that you can play and solve the mystery together. And so if any person who was assigned a character backs out, it may just remove the person who was the murderer for you to be investigating against. Right. And so it's important when you get invited to a murder mystery party to make your yes, mean yes and your no, me, no. And I would say like in life in general, it really bothers me when people's yes doesn't mean yes and their no doesn't mean no. So the murder mystery party just like amped that up even more where it made it so everybody's disappointed in this person, not just the host if they don't show up. And that is exactly what happened this time that we hosted it too. And like,

Ambie: Oh, no

Heather: people felt really bad. They were like, our family just showed up unannounced. Like they didn't tell us they were coming and we can't really stay for the whole thing. So they're like, we'll come, we'll come and eat dinner. But then we have to go, you know, and they felt horrible and everybody felt bad about it. You know what I mean? And it's like, this is not what parties are supposed to be. They're supposed to be fun, not like a stressful meeting. I was working on making a murder mystery party where the murderer wouldn't be decided upon until everybody was present, which would use like cards to randomize who the murderer was. And so I made a print and play with cards. And back then, this was like 2012 or something like that. It was just so miserable making the double sided cards and cutting them out. There were all these, you know, like the scene from Office Space where they want to beat the printer with the bat.

Ambie: Yeah.

Heather: You know, it's like, yeah, yeah, I totally relate to them and the printer. And thinking to myself, like, if I wanted to sell this, I wouldn't want to inflict this on my customers. You know, I don't know how to give instructions good enough that it wouldn't be frustrating to print at home. I could have done something where I was like, here are the instructions, take it to a print shop, give them these files and these instructions or something like that. I was kind of thinking about doing that. But as I told people about it and research things, I learned about The Game Crafter as a place where you can just print cards, which I'm sure, like now that I say that, you know, you've probably heard of The Game Crafter. A lot of people have now heard of them. This is 14 years later and they've been on the scene for a long time. Right?

Ambie: Yeah. I remember using them way back in the day.

Heather: I think they were pretty new. I don't know what year their company started, but I think they were like relatively new on the scene when I discovered them. I started listening to The Game Crafter podcast because from finding that website, I think I found out about the podcast and on that podcast, I think was the first place I heard about Protospiel. And my husband, Will, and I decided to go as play testers to the Madison Protospiel, which is the one that The Game Crafter runs themselves. It was just so brimming with creativity. I think I just felt a strong affinity to the designer community and culture, you know, the game designer culture around that emerges from Protospiel. It's got a very collegial sort of summer camp for adults, family reunion kind of feel. It's very like nothing is scheduled. It's a free for all. Everybody, it's like open tables. Grab your table, use it until you're done, then get out of the way. But there's no sign up sheets. It's not highly, highly organized. It's just we trust you, you're adults, test your game for as long as you need to test it. You have as much time as you need to talk about it afterwards as you need. Nobody's looking at their watch, like running to a meeting. It was the first board game of convention of any kind I had ever been to.

And then like later on, I did a little bit of booth work and attended some of the bigger conventions and I see how very different they are from Protospiel. They're a lot more go, go, go exhausting. I feel like a Protospiel weekend can actually be quite relaxing. It could feel like a retreat depending on how you approach it, I suppose, but not having a schedule and just being able to kind of spend as much time talking and getting to know the people at the table as I wanted to. Yeah, just had an affinity for a lot of the people that I met there. And also, I have done a lot of online business learning. And by that time, I think this was in 2015, I had become a web developer, a front end web developer and knew things about like email marketing and those kinds of things. And had been researching how to have an online business for the sake of the murder mystery party project. And a lot of the people at Protospiel were like, I have a really great game idea. And I feel really not up to the challenge of making it a real product somehow. You know what I mean? And again, my husband was like, these people need you. They need to know that you know, you know, like, yeah, I feel similarly, I, you know, that thought crossed my mind. Some of the people that I talked to, like I play a game, I was like, this is a really good game. This feels like a finished game that people should be able to play. But the person who made it was like, Oh, no, I don't want to do anything related to business. And so it was like, Oh, only at Protospiel will this ever get played, basically.

[00:14:17:21 - 00:14:22:19]

Ambie: I haven't actually been to Protospiel. So this is not Protospiel Online, just Protospiel.

[00:14:22:19 - 00:14:25:26]

Heather: Yeah, like the site that I went to at first. Yeah.

[00:14:25:26 - 00:14:34:08]

Ambie: Okay, so then that was, was it mostly like designers with prototypes or like other people come also just interested in playing prototypes?

[00:14:34:08 - 00:14:59:03]

Heather:  It depends on like each location because Protospiel is a network of organizers and there's a different kind of team for every city. And each of them can do things whatever way they want to. There are really no hard and fast rules, but there are things that like are frowned on. But if you know, people will be like, why are you calling it Protospiel then such as like, if you tried to have scheduled tables, they'd be like, that's not really the Protospiel format.

[00:14:59:03 - 00:15:00:04]

Ambie: Oh, okay.

[00:15:00:04 - 00:15:03:20]

Heather: For example, but they also hate rules. So they won't actually make those things as rules.

[00:15:04:25 - 00:15:08:01]

Ambie: It's weird that board gamers hate rules.

[00:15:09:21 - 00:18:10:08]

Heather: Well, I think they want it to be really approachable to be an organizer. So they won't. What's funny is though, personally, I think that just like a board game design contest, for example, you're given some parameters and that can spark creativity. So I find that boundaries actually help something feel manageable, because I think some people come, their city doesn't have a Protospiel and they'll find a way to talk to us, somebody in our, in the Protospiel network circle about it and be like, what do I need to do? And people will say, you can do whatever you want. And I'm like, don't tell them that because they want to say you can do whatever they want, because they don't want to have to enforce the rule, right? They don't want to have micromanage them. But I think that the boundaries help people see the vision for it and feel comfortable that they are doing what the other organizers would want them to do for the brand name and such.

But all that aside, I guess, like for me, and I'm not able to be the arbiter of this, but for me, I would say, yeah, nothing scheduled is something that makes Protospiel feel the way it feels. Having designer badges and play tester badges be separate prices is something that is part of the standard way Protospiels work. So to be clear that play testers are welcome, and it should be very affordable for them to come, but not free because they still take up a seat and they're still overhead to running a convention, right? But cheaper than a designer. And yeah, designers, you need to go with the vibe of when you feel ready to test your game. You can also bring as many games as you want, different titles. You don't have to say in advance which ones you're going to do. But all of the Protospiels tend to use Tabletop.Events. I did it first for Protospiel Online. I don't anymore.

But Tabletop.Events actually was developed by the same people that developed The Game Crafter, and they developed it for using for Protospiels, but it also has it has ballooned into being used for a lot of other kinds of conventions where you do have set times for set games. And a tool that they added, I don't think they launched with, but I think they added at people's requests was a place to kind of put your flag in the ground and say, this, this, and this title are the ones I intend to bring this weekend to Protospiel, so that people could then thumb them up and be on the lookout for you and like look through them and go like, Oh, that one sounds really interesting. And that that designer's name is such and such. Okay, I'm going to like keep an eye out for that badge and ask them about that game. But it's just a list of game titles with no specific times that they'll be played. And just no scheduled events is something that a lot of people newly coming in, where they will think, well, a convention should have panels or something like that. Panels tend to be I don't like it when they happen at Protospiels. I don't think panels necessarily are a bad thing. But I think that they they make it so you do have something on your watching your watch to go do and they make people rush the feedback or the reason I like Protospiel so much is that it's you can be present with the people you're with and finish the conversation and then move on to the next one or take a break.

[00:18:10:08 - 00:18:21:27]

Ambie: That makes sense. Yeah. When I go to conventions, just like normal conventions, I like doing open gaming because I didn't realize now that you've put that into words. Yeah, that makes sense. Like, that's, I think, part of why I don't like doing scheduled things.

[00:18:21:27 - 00:19:15:19]

Heather: Yeah, it feels like work. It feels like making a meeting to me. I also hear other people say I get stressed if I don't have stuff on the calendar because I'm afraid of going to this convention and then just kind of like, derp, derp, derp, I don't have any friends, you know, feeling that way, feeling like I wasted my plane ticket or whatever. Yeah. And some people will never like the Protospiel model because they don't trust themselves to get their game out on the table if they don't have a deadline, a time when they have to do it. One thing about Protospiel though is like, I think people get in their mind, get it in their mind that it'll be like that. If they come for the very first time as a designer, they come sort of amped to market themselves or market their game to everybody or they get the impression that that's going to be the expectation. And you can do that some, if you camp on a table with a sign, people do not like that and don't do that at a physical Protospiel. No, no, no, no.

[00:19:17:06 - 00:19:57:20]

Heather: You will make, you know, maybe somebody, if they know that you're new, they'll say something gentle to you, but if you dig in, you'll make enemies. So don't do that. That's not the idea. But people are very, very encouraging. And this is something that has, I'm very happy to say come in to the online format that we can run is that people get like, no, I want to play that. Like if you listen in advance, people will come out, come and ask you like, Oh, that game about that quirky, weird thing. Like, I'm super interested in that. And they will actually ask the designer, please post it so I can play it. And then the designer is like, wow, I just I felt like people thought my idea was fun. And we're like, I got to feel being sought after and it felt really good, you know.

[00:19:57:20 - 00:20:03:27]

Ambie: That's so neat. Yeah. So when and how and why was Protospiel Online created and started?

[00:20:03:27 - 00:20:53:19]

Heather: The origin story is kind of it was a little bit of a traumatic situation to be told. So I had been going to Protospiels in the Midwest. And I live in Colorado, about an hour north of Denver. I had been flying out to go to these conventions that are like, I think the biggest one, the one in Madison might get up to like 300 people. And it's probably the biggest one because it's run by an actual, like people who have an actual business. Whereas most of the others are run by people who are volunteering to do it because they just really want to have a Protospiel in their town. And they almost run it like a party for themselves. Once a year, you know, I mean, like if they break even, they're fine with it, basically. And maybe they're even okay with spending $500 on it, you know, like, because they enjoy attending it. And I'd fly out to them and get a lot of like, wow, you flew out to this, you know,

[00:20:55:18 - 00:22:22:00]

Heather: really kind of small convention, right? And also in my area, I was involved with something called Colorado Game Designers Guild, which I actually have stepped away from really being trying to connect with that. It's very based out of Denver. And I don't, especially after the pandemic and stuff, I never really liked going down to Denver more than I had to. So I've not been very involved in it. And it's kind of it's kind of limping along. So I'm mentioning it on a podcast, you can look it up if you want to, but I can't really speak to like what it could offer you. But it does still exist on Facebook. But being involved in that, there was a lot of effort to like band designers together and have them have presence at local conventions. And it was coming up a lot that people quote, we should have a Protospiel, but then they would they had a complete misconception of what a Protospiel was, they thought of it as like a designer room at a convention. And I would say also, this one is a little contentious, like there are Protospiel, the way they do it in California, they bolt them onto bigger conventions, and they make them a room at a convention. I wish we had another name for that. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But I think it's a very different experience than going for a weekend and only doing design. Because if it's a room at a convention, the pluses are that more play testers, just gamers will play test your games because they'll be there anyway. And you don't have to take on the responsibility of paying for the whole venue. I think the big reason they do it in California, and I think California is a more expensive place to on conventions too.

Ambie: Yeah, I'm in California

[00:22:23:28 - 00:25:45:23]

Heather: Yeah, is that the main convention is the one that's on the hook for the space fee. And they I think they give it to them, you know, don't quote me on that. But I think they're able to just get it basically for free or very cheap, the space for the designers. But because another convention is going on at the same time, same reason I said it's Protospiel format should not be to have panels or design contests or shark tank things or whatever going on at the same time as a play testing, is that it asks for a very different kind of brain space than play testing does. And it makes people shift back and forth between them. So if it's a room at a convention, designers probably also have like meetings that they have on the calendar that they want to get to, and there's going to be more of a rushed like feel to them. Like I've never been to one of those Protospiel, but I've been to Unpub at PAX or whatever. And it would be a very similar kind of feeling. But just I think Unpub, the biggest difference that comes across to me is that not absolutely a rule, but it's a little bit more expected that your game is closer to ready for the market because it's targeted more to have a higher density of play testers gamers than designers. Protospiel has both of them, but the ratio is probably going to be like 80 20 designer to play tester. Whereas at Unpub, especially the Unpubs that are at big conventions full of gamers, you know, there's a lot higher chance that most of the people playing your game are going to just be players. I think designers like to play with each other in the after hours basically of Unpub. Whereas that's what the whole time at Protospiel is more like all that said.

So that that's like the landscape of things I'm living in Denver. People are saying they want Protospiel presence in Colorado. And I'm like, I would be so sad. Honestly, if they were calling something Protospiel that didn't feel like Protospiel, you know what I mean? That I didn't even want to go to. So somebody who was had been from the Michigan group moved down to Colorado. And him being around here made me feel a little bit more confident too, that I would have somebody else that just knew the model and I didn't have to like debate them about it. They know just because they've experienced it. So they joined my organizer team and a couple other people did too. And we determined we were going to host the very first Protospiel Denver. We did that on March 12, 2020. And like that was the day that they closed schools in Colorado from the pandemic. So we already were like setting up the tables. There was rumblings of a pandemic. Like I tried to buy hand sanitizer for our tables and there already been a run of it. So I couldn't do that. But I learned how to buy some other ingredients and mix them together to basically make hand sanitizer. So it was like aloe vera gel and IPA that I like mixed together. And I made all these little bottles of Protospiel branded hand sanitizer actually I like printed out the labels and like taped them on since I had to make it anyways. You know and talk to the hotel about like okay we're not going to have table class we're going to have like just bare tables and we're going to have like Clorox wipes on all of them. Because at very first when people were talking about this it was like they believed it was spread by like surfaces. So that was the headspace I was in getting ready for this convention like we're going to do it but we're going to send a lot of like boundaries about like don't come if you're sick. If you have any symptoms or anybody in your house has symptoms don't come. But we were already past the I had paid the hotel I can't get a refund deadline.

[00:25:45:23 - 00:25:46:28]

Ambie: Oh wow.

[00:25:46:28 - 00:29:01:21]

Heather: It was too unclear what was going on I think for the hotel to have given me the refund like maybe I would have eventually gotten a refund but I just did not feel sure about that. So I said I'm not telling everybody not to come and giving them all refunds because I already spent that money and I don't just have that money laying around right. But I'm going to have boundaries about like don't come if you're sick use hand sanitizer and do the elbow bump or the foot bump instead of touching people and all of that sort of thing. So we were communicating all of that and then they closed schools. That was when it got real I think and I know I was calling my husband before you come over here like down to Denver go to the grocery store and get some frozen food. I don't think this is going to be okay you know what I mean. So it was quite a scary weekend but it was interesting we worked all together because people had already shown up by the time we really knew what was going on we already had been together so canceling made no sense. If we were going to get sick from each other it had already happened basically. So a couple of my organizer team went around to each table and had like an eye to eye conversation with like every single person there like do you want us to close and they were like no please just like let us stay together we're already together you know. So we finished out that weekend but we stopped letting new people come in at like noon on Saturday I think. So if you had already been there you could stay otherwise nobody knew we would give a refund to anybody who hadn't shown up by like the morning of Saturday.

Then the reality was settling in that we were living in a pandemic world and there were several people who couldn't come because of the pandemic just long story short you know the pandemic it hadn't happened they would have been there that I felt sad about you know and I wanted to do something for them. So one of my co-organizers Zach Hoekstra was a developer and Brandon Barron who I think is a co-organizer he moved away again to Cleveland and I think he's a co-organizer in Cleveland still for their Protospiel but Brandon had a lot of knowledge about Discord and I had used it a little bit so we put heads together and figured out how we could run an event inside a Discord server.

Then it turned out that Tabletop.Events the website builder that we had used to do our tickets for Denver was in really big financial trouble because of this massive cancellation of all conventions. So they were doing a fundraising convention called Con of Champions and were kind of like please don't also market another convention at the same time as this and so I talked to a few people like I really want to do this for my local people we've gone a lot of way down the road of figuring it out I want to push through that but I also don't want to do anything to get in the way of their fundraising right and another friend of mine in the Protospiel organizer circle was like what if you make it invitational only then you're not marketing it really but you can like run it and figure out how to do it and everything and so that is what we did and we gave we charged like ten dollars at that time it was just kind of an experimental thing and gave all proceeds to Con of Champions so we became like one of the bigger like a bulk donor to Con of Champions which they only ran one time just as that one fundraiser and the happy ending to that story is that Board Game Geek bought Tabletop.Events and they run it now all that software survived the

[00:29:03:14 - 00:31:24:12]

Heather: pandemic yeah and everybody can still use it so yeah we ran it in April and learned a lot about how it really takes a person being sitting in a voice channel to keep things running. A human using their voice and their camera is what felt welcoming to people and so like actually Zach and I did the bulk of like sitting in the Looking for a game channel and we kind of looked at each other we're like that's way too much for two people to do like we need to get a crew of moderators if we do this again but like at the end of the weekend like lots of people would participate and we're like please don't stop doing these I need another one of these right so then we started looking into what it looks like to keep running it and if at first I ran it four times a year through 2021 it was four times a year and I dialed it back to three times a year starting in 2022 yeah we had it open for the first time to the public in July 2020 and that time it was actually quite close to the model that we do now which is that there is a moderator in Looking for a Game all hours of the day we have some people who are international who will moderate and I just have a shift sign-up sheet and we make sure there's at least one person to talk to live in the server 24 hours a day support international people and we've built up a really cool team of very like friendly welcoming kind people to be in like the LFG channel.

We also learned from that first one we need two channels- we need a place to send people away if they want to goof off and then LFG is for matchmaking so we have some called coffee talks because at a lot of in-person Protospiels they will say if we make proceeds above what we need we're gonna buy a coffee cart so an homage to the way Protospiel is we have coffee talk as the goof off channel where we send people to just they can just they can discuss whatever they can goof off or they can talk about their struggles as game designers they can swap stories about trying to get their games signed or making prototypes or whatever sometimes in that channel you know that's a good place for somebody to do okay share your screen and show like what what's become most popular is the way to play a game online at Protospiel Online is Screentop.gg which can be a little intimidating for people at first but usually if you get like 30 minutes on a call with somebody who totally knows how to use it and just like looking at your screen going this is what this is this is what this is you know so sometimes that'll, that'll end up happening kind of spontaneously in our coffee talk channel at Protospiel Online

[00:31:24:12 - 00:31:38:08]

Ambie: Cool I hadn't heard of Screentop.gg. I don't really play games online um yeah but so like people would join the discord and then they look for a game if they're in the looking for a game and then they find a game and then they go play in a separate channel like a bunch of channels

[00:31:38:08 - 00:39:47:27]

Heather: Yeah we use a special discord bot that makes tables appear only when they're needed so oh that's neat it looks like a voice channel if you're used to what a discord looks like it has kind of the symbol for voice channel but we name it like create new table and it's a voice channel but it's a voice channel set up to be read by a bot and the bot will kick you out of that channel immediately when you click it and put you in the channel it creates and we kind of learned this also from the first Protospiel Online we did invitational with just a few people we just kind of co-opted what felt natural for matchmaking and what we ended up doing at first we used to do like a screenshot I made a spreadsheet and people were to take a screenshot of the spreadsheet and post the picture and that would describe their game and then putting a thumb on it is what meant I want to play it at this point we've gotten way fancier and it's a form you fill out and it posts a structured searchable post with like high point details of your game still people put their thumbs on the post and the moderator can see that so the moderator will say this to everybody okay if you want to play your game use this form to post your game if you want to play test for other people pick one thing to put your thumb on and when we have enough thumb based on the the request that the person has made... One of the things that's going to be in the post is like how many players like two to five you know what I mean so the mod will sort of know and they'll say to the designer okay we've got two is that going to be enough for you want to wait a little bit longer whatever and then whenever they do have enough players and those players will be like live in the channel like waiting to move down to a different channel they'll say okay Ambie go start a table down in and we have like seven different halls which I named after 14ers in Colorado because that's the way their halls are always named at convention centers around here so that ends up being kind of our memory of being in Denver I guess is like you know go down to Longs Peak hall and start a table so they'll be the one who clicks the thing that makes a voice the temporary voice channel and then once that's happened they say okay play testers go and follow them into the table that they made and they hang out together just like at a in-person protest field and hang out together as long as they need to to play as much of the game as they want to because that's another thing about you know being a designer and getting play tests done is you might not need a whole game to learn what you need to learn for your next iteration and it takes a little bit longer to play online because you have a sides of like oh what does this button do and how do I shuffle the cards and all that kind of thing that you wouldn't have in person.

Screentop has been much much snappier than before in the early days Tabletop Simulator was really like the only thing people used that became untenable for various reasons I don't- I just think like that could be a whole episode in and of itself but since the time that Tabletop Simulator has stopped being an option for Protospiel Online since we've taken it off the table as an option we get so many more play tests done it's like so much snappier one of the biggest things about Screentop that is much much much much better than Tabletop Simulator like I feel like any platform that doesn't have it this way is just making problems for designers anyway is that you do not have to pay for it to be a play tester you do not have to install anything in your computer you play tester

Ambie: Yeah

Heather: You can just click a link and you are playing the game. The End. You know and I think it kind of just needs to be like that so that because you're already asking a lot it's already uncomfortable to ask somebody to play a game that's not finished and then you're asking them to also like take on an expense you know what I mean like even if it's only ten dollars once but the first time you're asking them they're like I have to pay somebody to be able to play your broken game you know what I mean like it's just kind of like a non-starter but it's also much snappier like you don't have to worry about camera angles in um Screentop.gg. It's a flat surface

Ambie: flat, okay

Heather: It's more like Board Game Arena looking except the rules are not enforced it's still a complete sandbox which is what you really need to have for play testing when you haven't decided the rules yet yeah but I now... Something that they developed at Chicago was Protospiel Bingo and I worked with them to do that for Denver for the first time we did Denver and we like giveaway prizes when people get a bingo because you can't just walk up to the table and get the prize at Protospiel Online we do a limited number of prizes and what you earn by playing bingo is entries in the giveaway so that's something that like Crystal has helped with our giveaway live streams that's what that is bingo and other metagame activities that I've created sort of like back from my I gotta have metagames at my parties right it's fun yeah so I've had bingo since like the very beginning because I was already doing it for Denver but I've made it in a different way with like a web-based tool that was already built called Bingo Baker. It will make like a randomized bingo card for everybody and it has like different things that like like the B column is theme I think for genre or you know whatever and then like the end column is designer I remember that like things about the designer things about the components is oh like format and mechanic are kind of like squishy but like I've said like co-op is a format because it's like very it kind of expects the whole vibe of the game like format is kind of things and then mechanic is like uh you know worker placement or whatever push your luck those kind of things. So I've developed over time bingo has gotten more and more like things added to it. I have a special website now with, I've built a different way to list your prototype and people can tag their prototypes with things that are on the bingo and I also use that to develop social media content about puzzles that use the names of games that come to Protospiel. I'm kind of a little bit on the hiatus but that's called Minigame Monday um I'm gonna look for a new way to make it rather than live streaming every single Monday. That was kind of becoming a little for me but I have a plan it will be back for anybody who's listening to this and has heard of or seen any of the Minigame Monday content on Protospiel Online social media but yeah I like highlighting the titles of the prototypes that get brought to our event and the people who are the designers of them in the social media content that I make so yeah.

But um bingo yeah it used to be... I would play bingo and it's a 25 square grid and I would be able to get like 11 games done in a weekend and pretty consistently for the past like year and a half I have gotten 25 or more games I've gotten the blackout bingo because I go to my own convention and I play test games wall to wall to wall that is what I go to do and that is most when I do play tests for people I get a lot of feedback that you know having me as a play tester can be a major confidence booster I'm good at being very encouraging like my belief is for a designer coming to Protospiel their goal for the game is what is most important to me I'm not going to sit at somebody's table and be like you know what your game should be like or this other game is better blah blah blah I might say I might say like if you want it to do this I know about such a game that you might want to like at least watch a how to play maybe you don't have to play it you could read the rule book and watch a how to play to get an idea of how it works see if that sparks an idea for you or but I am a gamer I'm a gamer more than I'm a game designer. I would say I'm more like a experience designer is how I describe myself I've got a party planner right an event planner um which is a type of experience like a board game is a type of experience but board game specifically I haven't been working on designing one since 2019 since even before the pandemic. I had kind of decided oh a board game is not what I want to make for the murder mystery party if I do something with that eventually it's going to be more like a easter egg hunt for grown-ups. I hosted one like that and it was really fun for everyone. I just let go of the idea of that the host needs to be able to play I think that my the thing I want to create is for the host to be empowered to create a really fun experience that they're having fun creating the experience not playing it themselves and when I took that away like I got a lot of feedback that I should make it so the host can play or nobody's going to want it and I kept trying to do that and it kept being just like a miserable experience to host until I just let go of it and yeah then it was like five stars across the board from my feeling as the host and as my guests feeling you know the way that they responded to it so I realized I don't want to make a board game from that I still make a lot of experiences

Ambie: Those sound fun too

[00:39:47:27 - 00:40:02:15]

Ambie: All right well we are a short podcast and we're running out of time even though we could talk about this for a long time but um let's say one of our listeners or many of our listeners uh have an interest in designing games but they have no idea where to start what would you recommend to them?

[00:40:02:15 - 00:43:16:05]

Heather: I would say the Break My Game discord server is a great place to join off the bat and just ask all your questions there's I think like 6,000 game designers in that discord server and I know it's run by people who really want to help designers get started in a way where they're not going to be taken advantage of they're not going to get overworked and feel discouraged you know what I mean so that's a great place to talk to other designers also yeah look up Protospiel events on you can go to Tabletop.Events and just search for anything that's a Protospiel to find out where any Protospiel- whether it's the one I run online or the ones that are physically in cities like which ones are coming up soon and find out if there's one in your city. Also just like maybe look on Meetup for local design groups or Facebook for local design groups and get connected to the people who live physically around you. But if you don't have something like that especially then break my game is great and when we have a Protospiel online open for sale if you join Break My Game you'll see announcements about that there cause we do collaborate with them. You can also join our discord which we kind of purposefully keep pretty quiet except for when it's a quiet doesn't bother you server and then when the event opens we get very very very busy and there's like 60 people at the same time in our in the voice channels of our server and there's more chatter and everything too but um you can join just the free community though of Protospiel Online at Protospiel.online/community now you can fill out a form there that will kind of get you all set up with the right roles and everything in our discord server so that you can just participate in clubhouse general channel conversations and also you'll see announcements when we're getting ready to sell our badges.

If you'd like to you know- If you're hearing about Protospiel online and you'd like to get more plugged into it or help with it like I was discussing you know we have moderators I have a lot of people that are they support just a little piece of what needs to get done and that's how we keep it running sustainably so you can go to our website and there's a link for contact in the nav bar. Get involved is under that and you can do things like donate things to our digital swag bag that's like a digitally deliverable gift that we're happy to like kind of help you get the word out about your thing by putting you in our swag bag. You can also become a moderator or a sell sheet reviewer there are applications for that in our list yeah sell sheets are something we didn't talk a lot about but people who get a badge can post a sell sheet in our discord server and then they're entered into a system where they'll get feedback emailed to them and it won't be like just an open forum but they'll get direct messages from somebody who looked at their sell sheet feedback we have a few people on staff to make sure every sell sheet definitely gets at least one piece of feedback but it's open for the community to give feedback to yeah

Ambie: oh cool. Is there anything else you want to talk about?

Heather: No I just say like yeah thank thank you too for running this podcast it's been it's been something that I've enjoyed seeing happening in the board game industry is just having women's points of view speaking about board games that's also part of why I do Protospiel Online and kind of stick to it is that I know it's important for women to show up and be present in our industry so I appreciate you too doing that too.

Ambie: Thanks

[00:43:16:05 - 00:43:24:00]

Ambie: And Protospiel Online sounds really cool I, I still don't like playing board games online but like it sounds-

[00:43:24:00 - 00:43:54:25]

Heather: You can come, you can come and just talk and coffee talk if you just want to talk and you can come anytime you want and leave anytime you want but it's one nice thing about is you don't have to get a plane ticket you don't have to pay for a hotel you can come in your pj's if you want you can have your pile of snacks you know what I mean yeah stay comfy at home yeah it's great for parents you know that I get that feedback a lot people who can't travel because of their kids they can still be involved in the industry by doing the online convention thing

[00:43:54:25 - 00:44:06:18]

Ambie: Yeah, sounds like super convenient.

Heather: Yeah

Ambie: But yeah, I will put all the links or I'll try to put all the links in the show notes so if you're listening you can go check out those links and join those discords and make some games

[00:44:06:18 - 00:44:30:26]

Heather: or play some games we'd love to have you know your listeners are probably more board game players than designers yes but um I guess so one thing I would

Ambie: they can do both

Heather: yeah say is that the playtester badge is very cheap it's like ten dollars and we love our playtesters you'll get like labeled as a playtester and you will just get thanked profusely for being part of the community without bringing in a game yeah

Ambie: It is fun.

[00:44:30:26 - 00:44:38:25]

Ambie: I've played prototypes at like other conventions I've never played it went online but like yeah it's fun playing prototypes because you get to see like new stuff and

[00:44:38:25 - 00:44:56:20]

Heather: Oh yeah

Ambie: really neat ideas

Heather: You might get to play something you'd never get to play otherwise like yeah like I was saying about the first time I went to Protospiel because some of them are some of the people who bring games to this they do it for the love of making the game and they're not going to bring it to market but they're still really fun to play.

[00:44:56:20 - 00:45:49:11]

Ambie: And that’s it for this week’s Board Game Blitz. Visit our website, boardgameblitz.com for more content and links.

This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Don’t forget to grab your copy of Vampire Survivors, the board game through the pledge manager on Gamefound today! And whenever you shop at GreyFoxGames.com, you get 10% off everything in your order–including exclusives–when you use the code BLITZ2026 at checkout!

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Our theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.

Until next time,

I wanna make 'em like they do in Ger-many

Sign it, let me make it, take it, gamers, look at me

Bye everyone!

Heather: Bye!

Crystal: Bye!

[00:45:59:11 - 00:46:04:19]

Ambie: don't forget to go *cough* okay the water didn't help

[00:46:04:19 - 00:46:12:17]

Heather: so I'm sorry I forgot what question I was answering

Ambie: I think it was Protospiel Online

Heather: Oh why Protospiel - okay

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