Moving & Arranging Objects

Everything on the table is an object, and they all share a common set of moves: select, drag, rotate, flip, lock. Learn these once and they work on a card, a die, a board, or a whole handful at once. (For what individual piece types do, see Cards & Decks, Bags, Token Stacks, and the other piece guides.)

Getting Pieces Onto the Table

Nothing appears automatically when a room opens; you place pieces as you need them. There are four ways:

• Your project's components are in the left sidebar's Project tab, grouped by type and deck, as a list or a grid of art (the buttons above the list switch it). Click one, choose a quantity, and spawn it. This is how you set up your own game.
• Generic pieces (plain dice, tokens, bags, counters, blank decks) are in the sidebar's Generic tab, no project required. They're perfect for trying a mechanic before you've built art.
• Quick spawns: right-click an empty spot on the table (host only) for an instant D6, D20, coin, cube, token, bag, or counter.
• Drop an image onto the table (host only), from your computer or from the sidebar's Files tab, to make a brand-new component from it. See below.

The Components Sidebar

The host's left sidebar has three tabs:

• Project: your project's components, in sections such as Card Decks, Cards, Token Stacks and Rulebooks. Expand all opens every section at once.
• Generic: ready-made cards, boards, rulebooks, bags, tokens, dice, trackers, poker chips and other pieces.
• Files: the pictures in your My Files, with Upload and New Folder.

Left-click a piece for its spawn options, drag it onto the table, or right-click it to spawn it straight away. On a deck, stack or rulebook, the + Deck, + Stack or + Book button spawns the whole thing, and clicking its name opens it to show what's inside. Hover a component to Edit, Duplicate or Delete it; inside an open deck or stack, the × takes the card out of that deck instead. On a touch screen those buttons always show. The search box at the top filters the tab you are looking at.

Making a Component From an Image

Drag a single image file from your computer onto the table:

1. Pick the My Files folder the image should be stored in. It is uploaded there.
2. In New Component from Image, check the Component Name (it starts as the file name) and choose a Component Type: Card, Token, Board, Dice, Coin or Bag. It starts as a Token with Use Image as Mask on, so a picture with a transparent background is cut out along its own outline; pick Card for card art.
3. Click Create & Edit Project Component. The Project Component is added to your project and the Edit Project Component window opens so you can set its back, size and the rest.
4. Click Save Project Component, and a Table Component of it appears on the table where you dropped the image.

Already in My Files? Open the Files tab of the components sidebar and drag a picture onto the table. It goes straight to New Component from Image, without step 1, because the picture is already stored. Clicking a picture opens the same window, and the piece lands near the middle of your view. To add pictures to the tab, drop them on it from your computer: they upload into the folder it shows.

Dropping a PDF or a Markdown file makes a rulebook instead; see Rulebooks from PDF and Rulebooks from Markdown.

Selecting & Moving

Click an object to select it; a border in your player color shows it's yours to control. Drag it anywhere, and everyone else sees a live "ghost" follow your move so the table never feels frozen. Click empty space or press Esc to deselect.

To act on several pieces at once, multi-select: Ctrl+Click to add pieces one by one, or drag a box across empty table to grab everything inside (hold Ctrl while dragging to add to the current selection). Drag any selected piece and the whole group moves together.

Rotating & Flipping

• Rotate with Q (counter-clockwise) and E (clockwise), by your configured step (default 90°). Shift+Q and Shift+E rotate by half that step.
• Flip a card, token, or board with F or a double-click, to show its other face.

You can set your rotation step in Player Options (see the Realtime Playtest overview).

Layering

When pieces overlap, control which sits on top from the right-click Layering menu: Send to Back, Back 1, Forward 1, Send to Front. You can also Tuck Behind a component to slide a piece partly under it, useful for tucking earned cards under a player board.

Bringing a tucked piece forward past whatever it was tucked behind releases the tuck for you, so it can actually reach the front. You'll see a note saying it happened, and Undo puts the tuck back. Anything still tucked behind a piece you raise comes up with it.

Auto-Lifting Pieces

Drag a card, token or board and anything sitting on top of it is auto-lifted along with it, the way a snapped piece follows the component it is snapped to. A piece is auto-lifted if it is drawn above the one you are dragging and far enough onto it, so tokens on a board travel with the board, and a card lying across another goes with it.

How far onto it counts is the host's decision. Auto-Lift, in the Room Options panel, is a slider from 1% to 100% that starts at 50%. It measures how much of the piece on top is over the one underneath, so at 50% a card has to be at least half on. Drop it to 1% and anything that so much as clips a corner comes along; push it to 100% and only a piece sitting squarely on top does. See Host Controls.

Auto-lifted pieces keep their stacking order while they travel: what was on top stays on top, and the component you dragged never ends up covering what it is carrying.

A board you drop goes underneath the pieces already lying where it lands, using the same Auto-Lift amount, so they stay on top of it and you can still pick them up. It never goes beneath another board it overlaps.

It carries all the way down a pile, not just the first layer: a piece on the card you dragged comes along, a piece on THAT comes along, and so on. Each piece is measured against the one directly beneath it rather than against the piece you grabbed. Anything snapped to one of them travels with it too, so components joined by snap points move as one thing.

A few things are deliberately left where they are:

• Locked pieces. Locking means the piece stays put, so nothing drags it around.
• Pieces below the one you are dragging. Only what is on top comes with it.
• Decks, bags and token stacks never auto-lift anything, because dragging one of those pulls an item out of it instead. Hold Shift while dragging to move the whole pile.

Turn it off for a single piece with Prevent Auto-Lift on the right-click Restrictions menu. Set on a piece, nothing will auto-lift it; set on a board, that board auto-lifts nothing.

Locking & Restrictions

These keep pieces from being moved or used in ways you don't want. Most are on the right-click Restrictions menu:

• Lock (L): pin a piece in place so it can't be dragged. Press L again, or use the menu, to unlock. While a piece is locked, L is the only hotkey that acts on it: flip, shuffle, roll, rotate, scale, delete and the rest leave it alone, and a locked piece inside a selection is skipped. Two exceptions: you can still hover a locked piece and press the preview key to enlarge it or the peek key to see its hidden side, and a locked deck, stack or bag still hands out cards (click it to select it, drag off it to draw, or use 1 to 9).
• Prevent Stacking / Bagging / Hand: stop a piece from merging into stacks, going into bags, or being sent to a hand.
• Prevent Snap to Point / Grid: stop a piece from snapping to anchors or the grid.
• Prevent Snap Follow (host): keep a snapped piece from moving when its parent rotates or scales.
• Prevent Auto-Lift: stop a piece being auto-lifted by whatever it is sitting on, or, set on a board, stop that board auto-lifting anything. See Auto-Lifting Pieces above.
• Prevent Auto Adjust Layer Order: stop a piece being re-layered automatically, so it keeps the position you gave it in the Layering menu.

The Core Shortcuts

These act on whatever is under your cursor or selected. A double-click always triggers a piece's primary action.

The complete list, including host-only actions like delete and scale, is in the Keyboard Shortcuts reference.

Related: Cards & Decks · Camera, Navigation & Mobile · Keyboard Shortcuts