How Your Data Fits Together

A few minutes here will save you a lot of confusion later. Designer Den has a clear structure, and once you can picture it, questions like "why didn't my card update?" and "where did my table go?" answer themselves.

The Big Picture

Your Account
├─ Files ............ your image library (shared across all projects)
└─ Projects ........ one per game
   └─ Project "My Game"
      ├─ Components .. the blueprints for every piece
      ├─ Saved Setups  snapshots of a table arrangement
      └─ Playtests ... session logs, feedback, and replays

Playtest Room (live, launched from a project)
├─ Pieces on the table .. live copies of components
└─ Your Hand ............ private, stored in your browser

Everything hangs off your account. Almost everything else lives inside a project. The one exception is Files, your image library, which is shared across all your projects so you can reuse art anywhere.

The Levels, One by One

Projects

A project is the home for a single game. It holds that game's components, saved setups, and playtest history. Keep each game (and each expansion) in its own project. See Projects.

Components are blueprints

A component is the master definition of a piece: its name, image, size, and so on. It is a blueprint, not a physical thing on a table. Building components is how you describe your game. See Components.

The table holds live copies

When you spawn a component in a room, you create a live copy of that blueprint on the table. You can move, flip, and rotate that copy freely.

Files are shared art

Files is your account-wide image library. Upload art once and reuse it across any project's components. See My Files.

Saved Setups remember the table

A saved setup is a snapshot of a whole table arrangement, every piece's position plus the camera, stored in the project. It's how you reopen a game already laid out instead of building it each time. See Saved Table Setups.

Playtests record what happened

When you play, sessions are logged to the project: duration, the action log, player feedback, and (optionally) a full replay. See Playtest Analytics and Session Replay.

How a Component Renders

There's a second hierarchy worth knowing: the one inside a single piece. Several settings stack on top of each other, and knowing the order explains most "why can't I see my image?" moments.

From the bottom up:

Component (one face at a time: front OR back)
  1. Color layer ...... the face's fill, with its own 0-100% opacity
  2. Image ............ the artwork for that face, sitting on the color
  3. Markers & labels . drawn-on marks, then text labels above them
  4. Mask ............. clips the whole stack into a shape

1. Color layer. Each face has its own color and opacity. The color is the fill, so it shows anywhere the image doesn't: when there's no image at all, through the transparent parts of a PNG, and in the corners a mask cuts off. At 0% opacity you see only the image. See Color & Opacity.

2. Image. The image for the face currently showing sits on the color layer. Front image and color show when the piece is face-up, back image and color when it's face-down. A piece with no back image falls back to its back color, which is the usual way to give a deck a uniform back.

3. Markers and labels. Anything drawn on a piece with the marker tool, and any text labels attached to it, render above the color and image. Labels sit above markers, and stickers sit above both. All of them ride the piece: they move, rotate and scale with it, and they're tied to the face they were added on, so a mark made on the front doesn't show through to the back.

4. Mask. The mask is applied last and clips everything above into a shape: the color fill, the artwork, and the marks alike. Cards use a Card Shape Mask, tokens use a Token Shape. See Shapes & Masks.

You aren't limited to the built-in shapes. You can draw your own in the Custom Mask Editor, and because masks are matched by name, a custom mask named to match one your import expects (a Dextrous mask name, for example) is picked up automatically. Create the mask first, then run the import. Mask names are unique per designer, so a name always points at exactly one mask.

What Persists, and What Doesn't

This catches people out, so it's worth stating plainly:

• Saved forever (in your account): projects, components, files, saved setups, and logged playtests.
• Live and temporary: a room's table. When the room closes, the arrangement is gone unless you saved it as a setup (or the room is a persistent Pro room, or you recorded a replay).
• Local to your browser: your private hand. It survives a refresh, but it lives on your device, not in your account.

Free vs. Pro Limits

The structure is the same on both plans; Pro mainly lifts the ceilings.

Full details and how to upgrade are in Plans & Pricing.

Related: Saved Table Setups · Editing & Syncing Components · Plans & Pricing