Well, hello, everybody. This is my ask me anything, call with the mentors for, August 14, 2023, right before early bird sales closed for the August event in 2023. And so I'll just I'm recording this call. So if anybody doesn't wanna have their voice be recorded, but they wanna ask a question, go ahead and put it in mentor calls text channel right above this voice channel in the discord server. But otherwise, floor is open and go ahead and just ask me your questions if you have any.

Heather, how are you doing today?

I'm doing pretty good. I've been doing a lot of troubleshooting and building and that sort of thing today. Oh, but I did get I do have a beautiful thing to say that I would be lovely to have recorded here is that I have been sharing in some Facebook groups, over the last couple of days about Protospiel online coming up. And one comment that I read in like a new group that I haven't been very active in before, but I just sort of announced and explained this is what Protospiel bill is, if you want this kind of thing, this is the place for you. Someone that I don't know at all, said a very nice thing about just Protospiel Network in general online or otherwise. This person's name is Bain Williams. Maybe somebody here knows this person. But, they said, I can highly recommend Protospiel to anyone thinking of signing up.

I've worked with numerous designers who have come through the doors of both the real life and online events, and their games are always in much better state than what I usually see. While I can't speak to the event itself, the results speak for themselves. Isn't that nice?

Oh, nice to hear.

That was awesome to hear. Yeah.

Lovely.

So that was one thing I woke up to, and that was a good start to the day.

I I here's a legitimate question. What makes a good mentor for Protospiel online?

I think past experience with the the event itself is the first requirement because you'll be there to help explain to people what the experience is going to be like when they join the event live since a lot of things in the server are quiet and closed down in between, like, when people register and come in at first, they can't see everything. So a big part of what the mentor program is meant to do is give people somebody to practice using Discord with and to help walk them through maybe even practicing certain systems on a live call sometimes, with, like, mock ups that we'll have in the server so it won't be as new and intimidating on Friday or Saturday morning when people join for the first time.

Awesome. Thank you.

Question. Heather, can you walk us through the, what are the sort of games that, we have going on? I know we've got the the shout out palooza. We've got the secret agent hidden name game. I just wanna make sure I have them all under my belt because I have not Sure. Played all of them very well.

No problem. There's one that you might have heard of from the past, which is the partner scavenger hunt, and that is on break. It may or may not come back. If it comes back, I think it'll be very different than it's been in the past. It just we've kind of sunsetted the way that used to be because it's not fun enough for the amount of effort it takes. So if there if you're kind of, like, counting in your head and you feel like there's one missing, that's the one we're not going to be doing for the first time in August 2023. The ones that we do have going for August 2023 are bingo is kind of the granddaddy meta game that, gives people the biggest ability to earn entries in the giveaway drawing that happens after the event because you earn entries for every 2 squares you have filled in and, like, extra good entries if you get bingo patterns. So, bingo should be played every time you play someone else's prototype.

So not your own, but when you play for another designer, there'll be things on your bingo card that are qualities of this playtest, things about the designer or the game. And sometimes you might strike up a conversation with the designer to say, would you say this uses the drafting mechanic and or ask them questions about themselves so you can tell if you can take one of those, fields and you can print that bingo card out or you can fill it in. It's a it's a it's a web app tool that we use to play the bingo. You can also mark it in your web app if you don't have a printer and then just download it, into your computer and submit it after the event is over if you don't wanna print it out. I like to print mine out because I use it as a journal of everything I've played. So I'll write the name of the designer and the name of the game in the square that I use, and then I get, like, a really fast journal. That's one of my, favorite things to do over weekend myself. And, I I I don't wanna say off the top of my head how many, entries you get for a bingo pattern, but you can get multiple bingo patterns on the card.

We do not just rows, but also, like, the 6 pack shape and, like, the diamond shape in the middle and all that kind of stuff. So it's for it's even for kind of for bingo aficionados, the people who actually go to bingo halls and play all the different patterns. Some things will be maybe recognizable to that type of person. And then, secret identities is a very, very low, complexity thing to do, which is that you're when you join your team, you're told within Discord what your secret identity is. You also know what your secret identity is the moment you register if you, read your registration confirmation email. But a lot of people do not enjoy going and phishing through their email, so that's why we built a way for you to join your team and have your secret name written right inside the Discord, but only partially available to other people in the server. Only the people who are in your team unless people ask you and they you tell them they're not gonna know what it is. And that kind of goes hand in hand.

So bingo, the crossover between bingo and the secret identities is this, single card game that I created earlier this year called confide confidental cards. Confidential cards. Right? And they're like another way to get a bingo if you can fill out a full confidential card. That counts as a bingo pattern now. And what you're trying to fill out there is the is to play test a game from somebody from each team and get their secret identity when you play that game with them. So you'll be asking people what team are you on and what is your secret identity if you wanna be filling that card out. You also can fill that one out by hand or, there's a fillable PDF. It's just like a huge page, right, that just has 4 kind of fillable sections on it.

And I think and then shout out a palooza is not for earning entries in the giveaway drawing and that and shout out a palooza also, I've created that to be fun also for the mentors to do because they always get free badges anyways. And what we give away in the drawing is largely free badges. So, I want to be able to give something to the mentors or have something for them to play for. So shout out a palooza, you play for a snail mail prize, secret prize, mailed to you, and it's it's small and flat enough that I can mail it anywhere in the world with an international forever stamp. So everybody can play no matter where you live and get a flat pack sort of something. And the way you play Shoutoutpalooza, also you have to be on your team, and the winning team is the team that has the highest average of shout outs per person on their team. So the more people join your team and do not participate in Shadow of Looza, the worse chance you'll have of winning that contest.

Cool. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks for asking. That's a good question. I know that's a thing that a lot of people who attend Protegepiel are much more focused on getting all of their materials ready to present and play test, and they end up not having time to read the rules of the games that I made for y'all. And it's completely fine to not participate, they're there for people who think they're fun, and they're all built in a way to encourage people to remember the humans that they play tested games with. The core of basically all of them is that's what they're all there for. Yeah. Any other questions?

I was wondering if you could chat about the preplanning, looking for a gg. Just to

make sure

I'm not

Yeah. Yeah. Looking for a game where you can post instead of I want players ASAP, I want players sometime within the next 3 hours.

Exactly.

Yes. Yeah. And that's gonna be a big time test for August 2023. This will be the first time we're running the system. But we built this system based on feedback from people who have longer games that it feels bad to them to have to sit and looking for it it feels like they're kind of the outcast in looking for a game because everybody's always really excited about the games that take 30 minutes and less excited about the games that take 90 minutes. I think a lot of the reason for that is that people are here to see each other, and the shorter game they play, the more chance they're going to be able to see a lot of different people. And that doesn't mean that there aren't people here that don't like to play longer games. I think it's just the timing needs to be right and sometimes the timing is really off when somebody asks for a 90 minute gg.

It's not at a moment when people have time. So through talking about the way it feels that that way to them and also having told them, it's completely fine with us if you want to drum up interest in advance of the event and tell people, you know, at 4 around 4, I'll be there. Come and find me then. You know, talk talk your game up via text, in the Discord before the event. But, we got the feedback that that feel that can feel bad when a whole bunch of people show up for something. The card is posted, everyone's gone, and there was, like, there's it was sort of, like, something secret was going on and people might feel left out of it. So this system is built to make that whole process of talking about, play playing in advance more visible to everybody and let everybody know that if you're if you're interested in it, you had a chance to say so. So the biggest change for moderators that they're gonna have to notice and remember how to dot, kinda like a little tiny training piece that is one more thing.

If you're in LFG and a post comes into this new channel called LFG planning, it's not set to be like, every all the attendees are not able to post in that channel until there is a thread under something. Attendees have permission to post in threads, but not in the channel. So the moderator has permission to start a thread under a post that says this game will be starting at this time, and it still gets an LFG post. So it's still gonna have the players wanted post, but it's gonna be floating there, not starting. So the moderator might see it come by and just the designer is not there, and they didn't ask for ASAP as the time, and that's right gonna be right right at the top of the post ASAP or the future time. And the future time is an increments of 30:30 minutes, I think, for up to 3 hours. So it's not them entering, like, a real specific time, it's just 30 minutes from now or an hour from now up to 3 hours from now and I'll say right at the top. So if, now if somebody posts something and they're not in the voice channel, it's normal for them to do that if it says start time and it doesn't say it ASAP.

Still, if it says ASAP and they're not in the voice channel, we're having, a miscommunication with that person and, they they need some they need somebody to reach out to them and let them know they have to be in the voice channel to start their game to actually go off to the table. But when people are asking for an advanced time, they're not looking to go off to the table right right away, so they can do that whether they're in the voice channel or not. But that does mean that they promise to come to the voice channel at the time they're saying they want the game to start. Hopefully, that all makes sense. And I think that it's going to be hard to tell what the problems it creates are or if it creates problems until we just run it live. We foresaw that making a channel that just was open for chat was going to be chaotic. So that's why we did this thread thing. There's 1 thread per advanced requested game play test, and, those threads should also be closed when the game happens.

So there'll be one more step for the moderator to everybody shows up. Hopefully, they've they've they've put their thumb on it. Like, if you wanna playtest it later, you know, a game says, requested for 1 hour from now, you notice that maybe you're not in the server right now because you're doing some chores at home or something, but you do wanna play that game and you know it's gonna be starting in an hour, you put a thumb on it to say, I'll be there 1 hour from now to join. I'm gonna join LFG Voice 1 hour from now to do that. And after that, it's just like a usual LFG, players wanted call where you check for the thumbs and you send the people to the room. But the one thing you'll need to do extra if it was, preplanned is close the thread for posting so that people don't, think, like, it's obvious that it's over. We're not talking about this one anymore. Right? And there'll be instructions for that in the moderator handbook.

Yeah. Super. Thank you.

Any any follow-up questions or you also can raise concerns about this or, I'm I'm willing to take fee feedback here too because I might be able to tweak things still before we get started. But, this is we're just doing our best to picture what, the way the behavior will probably go if the system is in play. Yeah. If no questions

I think my only concern, and I don't think it's anything that you can plan around or or gg, is, it feels like sometimes in in ASAP, anyway, people will go, oh, wait. I have to go eat!' or oh wait, I've got a kid doing this!' or whatever. And it could feel it could be rough if something like that comes up and it goes below a minimum count or something for the designer. I don't know that you want to overbook or if they want to over say how many people they want just to make sure they get their true minimum. But, I think that would be the only concern I'd have is whether whether there's that Oh. Minimum the minimum that the designer wants actually does make it back at that time.

Right. Right.

Not dot for time not for any, you know, nefarious reason, but life. Just life.

Yeah. But, yeah, they they they should remove their thumb. I think that maybe some instruction should be there too. Like, if it turns out you if you realize between now and the start time that you can't do it, remove your thumb reaction so other people know there's room.

Yeah.

That's probably important thing for me to add to the instructions. And also, by the way, like, the people who happen to be in LFG when when, the designer shows up to make the final call, they also can, of course, join. So you're kinda starting to run a new little looking for a game auction, but with some people who already are planning to do it potentially. Yeah.

Sounds really fun.

It's just that it won't be at the very probably won't be at the very bottom of the list like it usually is when you're making when you're kinda running the LFG auction

Yeah.

For lack of a better term. Any other thoughts, questions? Another thing that is is new is the sponsorship, so I can go over that a little bit, try to go over it really quickly, just the high points of it, if you want me to. Sure. Okay. We're still building the infrastructure that allows us to fulfill on the sponsorship, so we're kinda getting off to a bit of a slow start for people who get them this week. But, hope hopefully, by next week, the documentation and, like, project planning system will be in place. So we'll be able to respond quickly when new sponsors give us their information. But it's just like a badge registration when you buy your badge.

First, you pay and check out, and then you register. And that's exactly how the sponsorship works too. You pay and check out and then you have to give us at least one link in your brand or company name and your logo so that we can fulfill on placing, like gg you placement and visibility around places. So that's the bare minimum requirement is at least one link, your name, and your logo. And then beyond that, you'll have and that's all gonna be in one form. You fill out that form and submit it to get started, and then we kinda make your sponsorship record off of that. Beyond that, you'll have a chance to ask us to post, announcements and things like that under your brand in our partners forum. You don't have to do that, but if you have something you wanna say, there'll be a form you can fill out to say this is what I want you to post for me.

And, actually, we'll we'll we're fine doing several of them for you if you have a few different things you wanna talk about. But now just you have to write them and put them in this form. This form isn't quite ready yet, as we're having this call on 14th August, but that's one of the things I'm working on building this week. And you'll also have the opportunity to give an offer to put as a gift in our swag bag. So that's another big shift. We were talking about the meta games before. It's no longer gonna be a bingo prize pack that you have to play bingo and at least fill in, like, one square to get the prize pack. Everybody's gonna get the prize pack on Friday morning.

Everybody who's registered on Friday morning is going to get access to that. And they'll have access to it. I'm still working out the details of some of this, but they may only have access to it for about a week, but it will it will have offers from our sponsors and partners in it. So as a sponsor, you're not required to give a gift for the swag bag, digital swag bag, but you can, and you can give more than 1 if you want to, whatever you wanna do. It might be a promotional offer or something like that. Yeah. So I think that's everything. Oh, and the other the other thing to mention about the sponsorship is that it comes with a pack of 5 badge vouchers, which the sponsor can use to attend themselves or to run their own giveaway, or give out as a merit base.

Like, I don't know if if it happens to be a publisher that wants to send their design like, people that they've signed games with to go, they could give it to those designers or there's many different ways those vouchers could be used, but, they 5 of them come with the sponsorship if the sponsor wants to use them. I'm also hoping that will encourage publishers to at least come and spend a little time with us, even if they don't want to spend the whole weekend with us. If they got a badge voucher, maybe they'll be more willing to go, yeah. No. That wasn't anything extra. I'll come on Sunday afternoon for a little while. It's not like a waste if I don't come for the whole weekend, because I definitely get that vibe from a lot of people. That's a common question I get.

Can I buy for just one day? Like, the the fact that the badge covers 3 days makes people feel like they're losing out if they only use one day that they should have had to pay the price, but, of course, the badge covers not just the convention, but all of the all of the, support and activity leading up to the event too. So it's not really it doesn't really work out, split into thirds like it might seem at first glance. Yeah. Any more questions?

I have

to make sure to keep an eye on mentor mentor calls text too, But we're also in this, in this call, we're experiencing for the first time what it's like to have a friendly recorder bot in our Discord. And we can see that, it is announced to everybody before they join in that we're recording, through a post in the companion channel, and everybody heard an announcement they're being recorded. So those were the kind of things that I have been concerned about. Like, a lot of people have asked us to record our special guest spots that happened during the convention. And because people can so freely come in and out of those channels, I haven't, it I'm not comfortable, like, putting people in the position where they have to be recorded if they wanna speak for those for those events. But, now that we have this way of recording and making it really clear, like, which calls are and aren't gonna be recorded in advance, We may do some recorded calls. Maybe we'll have some guests. I'm thinking about having guests outside of professional online convention weekend hours and maybe not having special guests during the convention, but getting those special guests, those chances to talk to special guests for maybe only an hour at a time, outside of convention open hours.

That feels like it might be a little bit easier of a fit now that we have the structure for a place where we can have mentor calls. That seems doable to me. If you don't have any more questions for me, I'm I'm happy to end early. I think I've talked about, everything that's not real new.

I have one more, actually. Is there a question we should be asking you that we haven't yet?

I don't think so. I could I could check really quick in what I talked about in the newsletter, which I wrote very recently, but, I've been hopping around to a lot of different tasks, so it's easy for things to fall out of my memory. I well, I guess one other thing about the sponsorship is that you can buy it for 1 event or 2 in a row, And the deadline for everything around the sponsorship is, gonna be 3 days before no. 2 days before the the event starts on the Wednesday before purchase bill online weekend, and that's the deadline for buying a sponsorship for August or giving us any material for August. And after like, right after that, like, over approach fill online weekend in August, we're actually selling sponsorships for January, January May at the same time. So we sell 2 events at a time into the future. And that's been a big part of why, of what's complicated about setting up the sponsorships is allowing people to bundle 2 in a row and, making sure we can keep track of that when people do that. There's this mentorship itself, I guess, that, just the fact that this mentor calls space exists, which we we have been talking about a little bit.

We removed press and publisher badges. That's and this is the first time this this event is the first time we haven't had those, and that is very much tied to the situation with sponsorships being becoming available. Sponsorships are the better way now for publishers to get a badge. And since it comes with a pack of vouchers, and people can now identify themselves as a publisher without being sort of on the hook to present as a publisher at the event, if that makes sense. So there's only 2 emojis now on the front of, people's names. It's just either you're a designer or a playtester. But when you register, you can answer that you're a content creator or publisher, and that'll be a for info only kinda tag on your profile inside Per Share Bill online. So it won't be as front and center, but it will be available to know about you if people dig into your profile.

And I think that works a lot better too because there's plenty of people who are all three of those things, they're designers, publishers, and content screentop. And there also are hand in hand with that. There are a a few more, info only roles that you can add to yourself, which you were asked quick command a quick command to get all of, like, your user info posted in a in a nice neat little box that shows what all your roles are. So and I've seen people using that. I actually had put that in to help people just know what their roles were in instead of a longer explanation of how to hover over your name and all the different places it might be. But just like, I can tell you one place it'll be if you type this command, it will tell you and made the instructions really brief. But I've noticed people kind of I think they might just post it because they want they want to announce their roles to everybody. I didn't really think of it being used that way, but it kinda works nicely that way too.

It posts your roles as they are at the moment you type the command. The command is dash user and

my

user info my user info. It's a new attendee benefits channel, where the only thing you that the only thing it allows you to type the only thing it saves or pays attention to is if you type dash dash user into that channel, you kinda can post your profile there. Yeah. And there's, that's part of the whole system of advanced playtesting. Some people will subscribe to be notified when a game of, of the weight they're interested in gets posted in LFG planning. So you can add or remove that role if you add it to yourself, that registration, and you decide it's irritating, you can remove it from yourself, under attendee benefits in the role menu channel. And, if there's something that you meant to add to yourself and you forgot, you can also add it to yourself in the role menu channel. It's all flexible.

The only thing that's not flexible right now, I don't have it set up to add or remove publisher and content creator from your from your profile in role menu. And was there anything else that we shared in the newsletter? Nope. We talked about all this stuff already, so that's all, you know, not very much changed. I think that we we had to redo our registration because of the username change in Discord, and that, a lot of these things that I added are a lot easier to add when the automations are not running actively. All of the things that I have built, you know, like having them down and quiet made a good opportunity for a lot of these things to get built. So we did do a lot of building all at once. Last call? Any other questions? Okay. If nobody pipes up or types anything in the chat, I will probably stop recording in just a couple seconds here.

Cool. Cool. Well, thank you all for joining. Looking very forward to playtesting with you in a couple weeks.