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Protospiel San Jose [3 Days Of Board Game Play Testing!]

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Velgus
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Joined: 02/15/2018
Protospiel San Jose card.jpg

Registration Now Live. Designer Tag Table badges still available.

PROTOSPIEL SAN JOSE 2018

Friday, March 9th - 10 AM to 10 PM

Saturday, March 10th - 10 AM to 10 PM

Sunday, March 11th - 10 AM to 10 PM

Location: Game Kastle, 550 Showers Dr, Mountain View, CA 94040

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Protospiel San Jose is three days of family friendly board game play testing. Game designers and game companies come from all over with their in-development board games to hear YOUR feedback. This is a fantastic opportunity to play games, make an impact on their development, and gain more insight into the world of game design. You might just end up playing what could be the next big thing. Protospiel San Jose is FREE for players. No play testing experience is needed. While you're here enjoy free snacks, the chance to win a prize from our huge raffle pool, chat with industry guests, check out the Game Kastle store, and more!

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REGISTER FOR THE EVENT HERE: http://www.boardgamebuilders.com/register/

Registration for Players is FREE and appreciated. Walk-in players during the event are also free.

Game Designers must pay for a Designer Tag Table badge and register in advance.

Protospiel San Jose is a not for profit event, powered by the friendly and dedicated volunteers that run it. If you can commit to at least a two-hour shift, please consider registering as a VOLUNTEER to help out at the link above.

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In 2017, the event's 4th year, we had 80+ designers and 600+ unique players.

For more information, please visit www.boardgamebuilders.com

freelix
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Joined: 06/15/2014
I will definitely be coming

I will definitely be coming to this (and will buy my pass soon).

Velgus
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Joined: 02/15/2018
Event Starts March 9

#ProtospielSJ starts this Friday March 9 at 10:00am. Designer badges are sold out, so there will be tons of games to play test over the three days. Players are free and walk-ins are welcome. More information on the updated website: http://www.boardgamebuilders.com

JohnBrieger
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Joined: 11/04/2016
Protospiel SJ

I will be there all three days! Would love to play some games with other BGDF folks!

Mosker
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Joined: 03/30/2014
Bunnies, Barbarians, and the Bard

That's what I'm bringing. At least the paper versions of them. No pre-existing Shakespeare, lagomorph, or warrior depilation knowledge needed. As for pre-existing conditions--we're good with that too. Will be editing this post as my schedule becomes more defined and I update the events page. All under David Moskowitz.

Hops.
Howl. Howl. Howl.
(Something barbarian that begins with an H)

ssm
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Joined: 04/06/2017
Fun time

First day I played 4 games.

Dishonor Among Thieves - I loved playing this card game. Try to make make sets of items while taking from others, blocking, etc.

Castle Climbers - Really fun tile laying game where you build a castle, climb it, collect treasure, and try to knock others down. Seemed complicated when rules were being explained, but gameplay was fast and relatively simple.

Cry Wolf - A Fun shepherd/sheep/wolf game that started as a Warcraft style game for kids. Fun game, went by pretty quickly. Fun compass mechanic.

Cat Rescue - A collaborative game where players try to rescue cats from a shelter or street. Gameplay was a bit difficult for me to wrap my head around. There is a push mechanic using rows of cards and a card flipping mechanic, and both were/are confusing to me. Amazing graphics.

The show is, once again, fantastically organized and run. Everything seemed smooth, lots of games for raffle prizes (needs more single player), was happy to see the inclusion of healthy snacks (fruit).
Really looking forward to returning today and tomorrow.

ssm
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Joined: 04/06/2017
I played some more

I played some more games-

Babble. A party game where cards with letters or letter combinations on them are dealt. Players then draw and spell words or make up words and another player assigns a meaning to the word, and there are back and forth talking using made up words to add points to a pot. Interesting, I kind of liked it but can see how others would love it. Was difficult to play in a loud game area.

Magical Menagerie. I loved this game. Play cards to gain bait to capture creatures that have abilities. Super fun. Great graphics on the cards. I liked that you could either capture a creature or use the other cards; it added a lot of tension hoping nobody takes the creature you want.

Wax the Barbarian. A game by our very own Mosker. I remember it from last year and it played better this year. Really fun dice rolling with secret guessing/betting. It is fun to have a pile of hairy body parts you have collected. The tracker for how close to waking the barbarian added tension and moved often, usually toward waking, but would swing back up to sound asleep.

Superbloom. A game I played last year and is refined and could be released now. A board with a grid with a marker in each square. Cards with color combinations are dealt and you replace the markers with colored flowers, while secretly betting on color combinations on the board. Really fun and one of the games for anyone years 5-95.

Overall a fantastic show. Everybody involved were friendly, helpful, and wanting to help. Some great games as raffle prizes and Sunday afternoon when it quieted down there was a giveaway of the games left over.

There is another one of these later in the year in Santa Clara and I look forward to it.

And a shout out to the host, Game Kastle. A great store with a few locations here in the bay area. A relatively small game/model supply store, while the bulk of the area is tables for gaming. I saw a new sign that they are now offering franchising if one wants to open a store.

JohnBrieger
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Joined: 11/04/2016
Wonderful Weekend

I got to catch up (albeit briefly) with SSM and and Mosker, though I didn't play the updated versions of Mosker's games (a downside of not having our tables side by side this year).

I did get to play 13 games from other designers, including sitting in on a publisher pitch from Velgus of his wildly entertaining party game: "Finger Guns at High Noon".

In total, I ran 17 playtests of 4 different games: Toil and Trouble, Causality, Door Number 3, and Rurik: Dawn of Kiev. Got amazing, insightful feedback and some deep dives on design philosophy from some talented designers and publishers outside of just playtesting time.

I can't recommend this event enough. Game castle does a great job providing space, and Jeremy Commandeur, the organizer, does a fantastic job coordinating a friendly environment. After hours, I went to the hotel some out-of-towners were staying in and talked shop and gamed late into the night.

Looking forward to seeing more great prototypes on the table over the next few months as I playtest with some new people I met during the convention - and looking froward to returning next year to see how some project will have evolved

ssm
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Joined: 04/06/2017
Games Gotten

On Friday in raffle I won/chose Flip it City, and the someone gave me their copy of Nerdy Inventions.
On Saturday I won/chose Mow Money, and was given a copy of Level 99's Noir card game.
Sunday I won/chose Captain Carcass, was given Dragon Slayer, and in the afternoon staff gave me Farmageddon, and later Jeremy gave away Booze Barons.

It has been a pretty rough past year and this show was what I needed to check out of life for a weekend. Sunday night I played Dragon Slayer by myself for a few hours, fun and simple game.
It looked like most raffle games were either by Mayday Games or Tasty Minstrel Games.
Print & Play once again provided sample bags of hex, diamond, square, etc, game pieces. I love these sample bags. It is a lot of fun to play with the shapes to see what can be made with that style of piece. Tasty Minstrel Games gave away bags of wooden game pieces, from people to houses of different sizes, to odd shapes (I'm guessing resources), to circles and squares, all in a variety of colors. It is very difficult to choose what to take and not to take a bunch of it all.

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