Host Controls

As the host you're the table's stage manager. This page covers the host-only controls for shaping the space. Several of the bigger ones have their own guides, linked below.

Shaping the Table

• Table color and texture: each player picks their own in Player Options. To start everyone on the same look, make them player defaults.
• Project dependencies: pull another project's components into this room (see below).
• Free Scale: to resize a piece to an exact size, right-click it, open the Scale row, and choose Free. Drag the corner handles, then click Done. (For uniform 25% steps, just press + and -.)
• Room Options: the table grid, plus what players can see and do at this table (see below).

Room Options

Open Room Options in the bottom toolbar. Only hosts see this panel. Everything in it applies to every player at the table and takes effect straight away. Most of it starts neutral, with the switches off. The exceptions are Allow saving & loading game progress, which starts on, and Auto-Lift, which starts at 50%.

Grid

An alignment lattice over the whole table, so pieces click into place instead of landing wherever the mouse let go. Turn on Show grid to draw it, Snap pieces to it to actually pull pieces onto it, and set the type, size, line color and snap location to suit the game. Full detail, including per-board grids, is in Grids & Snapping.

Hand visibility

• Show hand counts: players can see how many cards each other is holding, but not what those cards are.
• Open hands: every player's hand cards are visible to everyone. Use it for a teaching game, a solo test, or a post-game review.

Auto-Lift

Dragging a card, token or board carries whatever is sitting on top of it. This sets how much of that piece has to be over the one below before it comes along: a slider from 1% to 100%, starting at 50%.

• Low carries anything that so much as clips a corner, which is useful when pieces are meant to sit loosely against each other.
• 50% means a piece has to be at least half on before it travels.
• 100% carries only what sits squarely on top of the piece underneath.

It is measured per layer, against the piece directly beneath rather than the one you grabbed, so a token on a card on a board is judged against the card. Full detail on what does and does not travel, including the per-piece Prevent Auto-Lift restriction, is in Moving & Arranging Objects.

Personal decks

Decide whether players may save decks from this table to a file, load their own deck files into it, or both. See Personal Decks.

Allow copy, paste & duplicate is the third switch here. Copying is host-only until you turn it on; once you do, every player can use Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, and Ctrl+D on table objects, plus Copy and Duplicate in the right-click menu. Turn it on when players are building their own decks, since that needs more than one copy of a card.

Game progress

Allow saving & loading game progress lets any player at the table save the whole game, hands included, to a sealed file on their own computer and load it back later. It is on by default, because the sessions that need it most are the ones you are not attending, and those are exactly the ones where nobody present could switch it on. Turn it off if a game should not be resumable, and save the setup to make that stick. See Saving Game Progress.

Admin mode

Shows you every player's hand and the contents of hidden zones. It changes your view only; nothing about the table changes for anyone else, and no player is told it is on.

Player Defaults

Player defaults are the settings every player starts on, such as a 60° rotation step and a green felt table for a hex game. They are a starting point, not a rule: each player can still change any of them for themselves.

To set them, open Player Options and switch from My settings to Setup defaults. Every option now has a pin next to it. Set an option the way you want it, then click its pin: it fills in amber, and hovering it shows the value players will start on. Click it again to leave that option to each player.

While you are on My settings, you are only changing your own options. Pinned options still show their amber pin there, but clicking it does nothing, so you can't change the setup by accident. If your own value has moved off a pinned one, its pin gets an amber ring.

Every option in Player Options can be a default, including the table color and texture. Camera views are the one exception: they are managed separately under Camera Views (see Camera, Navigation & Mobile).

In Setup defaults, the bar at the top tells you whether the setup holds your defaults yet:

• Saved in "…" means the setup has exactly these defaults.
• Not in "…" yet comes with a Save to setup button. It saves only the defaults into the setup. The table, hands and other options in it are not changed.
• If the table is not a saved setup yet, or the setup belongs to someone else, Save as a setup… opens Save Setup instead. A full Save Setup always includes the defaults.

Clear all in the same bar removes every default.

What players see:

• Anyone who loads or joins a room with that setup starts on its defaults. This does not change the settings they keep for other rooms.
• A short note at the top of Player Options, and an amber pin on every option the setup sets. Once a player changes one, its pin gets an amber ring, and clicking it puts them back on the default.
• If you change a default mid-game, players who are still on the old value move to the new one. Players who changed it keep their own choice.

Setups saved when Room Options could force Drag to Hand or Auto-flip when drawn on everyone now start every player on that value as a player default instead, and players can change it.

Project Dependencies

A room is started from one project, but you can pull in the components of other projects as dependencies. Their cards, tokens, boards, and everything else show up in the room's left sidebar alongside the host project's pieces, ready to spawn onto the table. This is how you playtest an expansion against its base game, combine separate modules, or reuse a shared component library without copying anything.

To add a dependency:

1. In the room's left sidebar, click Add Project Dependency (above the Game Info section).
2. A picker lists the projects you own, minus this room's own project and any already added.
3. Click a project to attach it. Its components appear right away as a new collapsible section in the sidebar.
4. To detach it, click the remove (×) control next to the dependency's name. Removing it clears the sidebar section; pieces already spawned on the table stay put.

Keeping Data in Sync

• Sync all components (the rotate icon beside the Components search box; its tooltip reads "Sync all components with their latest database values"): re-fetch your components and push any changes onto matching pieces already on the table. Edited a card's art in another tab? This brings it in.
• Dextrous Sync: if a Dextrous feed is configured, re-import external component data. See Dextrous Import.
• Fresh Room: open a brand-new, empty room for this project without leaving your session, handy for a clean test table. See Starting & Joining Rooms.
• Editing a single piece: right-click any component-linked piece to edit, restore, or save its definition. See Editing & Syncing Components.

Designer Notes (Action Items)

Capture thoughts mid-session without breaking your flow. Right-click empty table and choose Add Action Item, type the note, and Save Note (or press Ctrl+Enter). You can also open the Notepad and switch it from Notes to Action item: type the note and click Save action item (or press Ctrl+Enter). Select components first to reference them. Notes are private to you and appear on your project dashboard and the linked session page, where you can check them off as you address them.

More Host Tools

Each of these has its own guide:

• Zones , regions that enforce rules.
• Grids & Snapping, Snap Points and Snap Tags , for precise placement.
• Saved Table Setups , snapshot and reload a whole table.
• Markers, Drawing & Labels , annotate the table.
• Session Replay , record and rewatch a session.
• Personal Decks , let players bring their own deck files.

Related: Players, Hosts & Co-Hosts · Editing & Syncing Components · Saving Game Progress · Realtime Playtest overview