Welcome to the Help Center
Everything you need to know about using Dustin's Designer Den — from your first project to polished playtests.
Start Here
New to Dustin's Designer Den? Follow the path from idea to iterated playtest.
Browse by Topic
Every guide, grouped by area. Looking for a key combo? See the Keyboard Shortcuts reference.
Getting Started
Quick Start Guide
Get your first playtest running in minutes, create a project, add components, launch a room, and learn the basic controls.
Getting Started
A full walkthrough, from your first project to your first real playtest session with friends.
How Your Data Fits Together
The mental model behind Designer Den: account, projects, components, files, setups, rooms, and hands, and what persists where.
Quests & Bonus Storage
Complete a few simple tasks to learn the app and earn bonus file storage along the way.
Projects & Files
Projects
Your game's home base, create and manage projects, organize components, and track playtests and exports.
My Files
Upload, organize, and reuse images across your projects from one place.
Exports & Bulk Import
Get your data out as PDF or CSV, export a session's action log, and bulk-import components from a spreadsheet.
Components & Design
Components
Catalog and manage every card, token, die, board, and more, with costs, playtest display settings, and import options.
Component Types
A reference for every component type, cards, decks, tokens, dice, boards, rulebooks, coins, bags, spinners, counters, timers, and more.
Deck & Stack Builder
Group your cards into decks and your tokens into token stacks — reusable, many-to-many groupings you load into the playtest room. One card can live in many decks.
Print & Play
Turn your component library into a print-ready PDF with cut lines, bleed marks, and proper layouts (Pro).
Realtime Playtest
Realtime Playtest
Host a virtual tabletop, share a 6-character code, and playtest your game live with anyone. No accounts needed for players.
Starting & Joining Rooms
Open a playtest room from a project or saved setup, share the code, and have players join from a browser with no account.
Players, Hosts & Co-Hosts
Who can do what at the table, how to promote a co-host, and host-only powers like the Hand Viewer and Force Resync.
Camera, Navigation & Mobile
Move around the table: zoom, pan, rotate your view, reset the camera, and the touch gestures on phones and tablets.
Moving & Arranging Objects
The moves every piece shares: select, drag, rotate, flip, lock, layer, and restrict, plus how to spawn pieces onto the table.
Cards & Decks
Draw, flip, shuffle, and deal cards, and build decks, all in a live room.
Bags
Store pieces in a bag and draw them back at random. Covers filling, drawing, shuffling, recoloring, and infinite bags.
Token Stacks
Stack tokens into an ordered pile you can draw, reverse, shuffle, and deal from, like a stack of chips or counters.
Coins
Flip a two-sided coin for heads-or-tails outcomes, and set each side's color.
Dice
Roll dice, set a specific face, step values, and roll a whole handful at once. Standard sizes and custom faces.
Spinners
Spin a weighted wheel for uneven odds. Configure up to 12 sections with labels, colors, weights, and images.
Counters
Track a running number, score, health, ammo, with shared on-piece plus and minus buttons.
Timers
Put a shared countdown on the table for turn limits and timed phases, with presets, controls, and an expiry alert.
Your Hand & Dealing
Keep cards private in your personal hand, play them to the table, and deal opening hands to every player at once.
Zones
Draw regions that enforce rules: hidden areas, hand drop-zones, auto-flip discards, randomizers, and tidy layouts.
Grids & Snapping
Make pieces line up perfectly with a table grid or per-board grids, and choose Center vs Intersection snapping.
Snap Points
Place invisible anchors so pieces lock into exact spots: card slots, dice trays, and player-board positions.
Layers
Group components into named, ordered render layers so you control exactly what shows over what, no matter how pieces are moved.
Markers, Drawing & Labels
Sketch on the table or on a card, and drop formatted text labels, for marking zones, explaining rules, and giving live feedback.
Stickers
Place image stickers on the table or on components, status markers, tokens of damage, callouts, scaled and rotated to fit.
Saved Table Setups
Snapshot a whole table (pieces and camera) so every session starts pre-arranged. Covers defaults, loading, sharing, and Free vs Pro limits.
Text Labels
Drop editable text notes anywhere on the table — free-standing or attached to a component — with your own size, color, and background.
Editing & Syncing Components
Understand the blueprint-vs-table-copy model, and use the right-click Component menu to edit, restore, and save changes.
Host Controls
Host-only table controls: background color, syncing components, project dependencies, free scale, and designer notes.
Voice Chat
Talk to everyone at the table with the built-in voice chat. No separate call, no extra app, included on every plan.
Player Tools
The everyday extras: live cursors, ping and ruler, the action log, notepad, blindfold, sound, and submitting feedback.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Every keyboard shortcut and touch gesture for working fast in playtest rooms.
Session Replay
Record playtest sessions and watch them back, scrub to any moment and see the full board state and player hands.
Analytics & Tools
Probability Calculators
Crunch the odds on dice pools, card draws, and custom dice before you ever sit down to playtest.
Playtest Analytics
Track every session, collect player feedback, and discover which parts of your game get the most action.
Playtest Sessions & Feedback
How sessions are logged to a project, entering them manually, and collecting player feedback during a game.
Integrations & Importing
Dextrous Import
Point Designer Den at your Dextrous JSON feed to create and update components automatically, manually or via webhook.
The Game Crafter Import
Import a game you have on The Game Crafter into a project, components, images, and pricing, then keep it in sync.
Account & Billing
Plans & Pricing
What the Free and Pro plans include, what upgrading unlocks, and how to manage your subscription.
Account & Profile
Manage your profile, password, GameCrafter connection, room player limit, info-box preferences, and account deletion.
Beta Tester Program
Apply to test new features early and get free Pro access while you give feedback to the team.
Your Designer Profile
Set up a public designer page — avatar, bio, a custom URL and banner color — that shows off your public table setups for anyone to play.
Community
Community Resources
A community-curated library of designer tools, videos, and articles, browse freely, submit links, and vouch for quality.
Suggestion Board
Propose features, upvote ideas you want, and help shape what gets built next. Filterable by area.
Bug Reports
Report something that is broken, track its status, and read the team's response when a fix ships.
What's New (Patch Notes)
See every update, improvement, and fix, newest first, with version numbers and New/Fix badges.
Playing Shared Games
Join a community-shared game from the public lobby and play instantly, no account, nothing to install.
Publishers & Pitching
Publishers & Pitching: Overview
How the publisher directory and pitch system connect designers with publishers — browse, pitch, and even let a publisher test your game right inside Designer Den.
Finding the Right Publisher
Browse the publisher directory and filter by genre, player count, and complexity to find publishers who actually want a game like yours.
Submitting a Pitch
Fill out a publisher’s pitch form, attach files and a playable setup, submit, and track every pitch and conversation from My Pitches.
Attaching a Playtest Setup to a Pitch
Let a publisher load your game into a private playtest room straight from your pitch — your project stays private the whole time.
Becoming a Publisher
Turn on publisher mode, build a profile that shows off your brand, set what you’re looking for, and control your directory listing and pitch acceptance separately.
Managing Incoming Pitches
Use your pitch inbox to review submissions, set statuses, message designers, customize your pitch form, and load a designer’s setup to test their game.