Hey Reader!

Emily Vincent here.

If it's January, it's time for Protospiel Online! I love kicking off the new year with our community, playing exciting new games and hanging out with amazing people. Hopefully everyone has recovered from the holidays and is starting to think about playtesting. Today I'm sharing a few quick reminders to help people get themselves ready for the weekend.

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Get Your Badges

If you haven't gotten a badge yet, you can do that today! Your badge unlocks the door to Protospiel Online, getting you three solid days of 24 hour playtesting and community. Grab a badge and join the fun :-)

And if a badge is out of reach for you, we also have a scholarship program to help folks get badges who could not otherwise afford to attend. These scholarships are made possible by our generous sponsors, both publishers and individuals who are a part of our community and want it to be as accessible as possible.

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Prep Your Prototypes

Probably the biggest task in getting ready for Protospiel Online is preparing your prototypes. Whenever I'm headed into a Protospiel Online weekend, I find that I need to digitize at least one game that I've been testing with a physical prototype. There are a number of platforms used during Protospiel Online (although as a reminder, our convention weekends don't include TTS as a supported platform) and lots of members of the community can help out if you've got questions as you build your prototype.

In exciting news, all attendees to the Jan 2024 Protospiel Online will get a yearlong 30% discount on the new Pro tier of screentop.gg!

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List Your Games

It's a great idea to list the prototypes that you're bringing before Protospiel Online starts. Lots of people browse the prototype list to get ideas of what will be available, including flagging ones that they want to play. Additionally, once you're looking for playtesters, folks may want to go read a bit more about the game before they join the playtest.

If you get your game listed before Thursday Jan 11 at 9pm EST, it will also get highlighted on the Prototype Showcase livestream! This is another way to help the community learn about your game, find your audience, and inform playtesters.

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Reach Out to a Mentor

When you first get into the discord, don't forget to go to the #event-prep-challenge channel to get yourself oriented and prepared! This handy walkthrough will take you through a discord orientation, sharing your profile, learning about the metagames, submitting sell sheets, preparing your prototypes, and spreading the word. If there's anything that you get stuck with during this prep, Protospiel Online has recently added Mentors to each team. These are members of the community who are there to answer questions, provide guidance navigating the event, and generally help you get ready. I'm one of the Mentors (on team-clubs). Feel free to hit up your team's Mentor with questions or requests, we're excited to help!

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If you get through the above tips, you'll be in great shape for Protospiel Online. I can't wait to see what folks have been up to since last PO!

📣Announcements Announcements Annooouuuncements!

Are you a Board Game Geek user? If so, you'll probably find some free Geek Gold in your Geek Mail as a New Year's gift if you log in to your account.

One thing you can use Geek Gold for is buying microbadges to add to your BGG user profile. In case you haven't heard, there's a Protospiel Online Alumni microbadge you can get right here if you'd like to use this year's infusion of Geek Gold to decorate your BGG user profile with that good old Protospiel Online P .

See you this weekend!
~Emily

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P.S. If you have something you'd like to see featured in our Community Newsletter, you have 3 options -- either submit an official feature request, reply to this message, or, if you're a current attendee or alumni, post in the #🙌share-your-wins channel in the Protospiel Online Discord server to let us know the details. We'd love to celebrate you!

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