A quick guide to everything on this site. If something's still confusing after reading this, just ask in the group chat.
You need a person either way. There's no way to sign yourself up without a join link or an invite.
Path A
Open your group's join link — it looks like /join/your-team. Ask anyone already in the group for it.
Create your account right there, whichever way you prefer: Continue with Google, or enter your name, email, and a password. Nobody has to add you to anything first, and there's no approval step — you're in as soon as you finish.
Path B
If an organizer put you on the roster before you ever signed in, you don't need a join link — they send you an invite email with a link to set your password. It works for seven days and only once.
Can't find it, or it's expired? Ask them to send it again; typing your email on the front page won't get you in on its own.
That's a one-time setup. After that, use Sign inon the front page with the same method you signed up with. The site remembers you until you sign out or clear cookies, so you won't be logging in every visit. Everything except this guide requires signing in.
Already in one group and joining a second? Sign in first, then open the new group's join link — it adds that team to the account you already have, and a switcher appears next to the logo.
There are two levels of access, and it's worth explaining the difference, because the page you land on if you hit it doesn't look like a rejection and isn't one.
Signing up through the join link makes you a member. The library, your own games, the marketplace, past games, the people who play, all the lists and stats, game discovery — that's all yours immediately, with nothing pending.
The Schedule, the Calendar and at-the-table mode need the other level, for one reason: they say when and where the group is meeting, and where is usually somebody's house. Home addresses aren't something to put in front of the whole internet, so they stay with the people who actually turn up.
Open one of those without it and you get a page headed “You're in”, listing what you already have. That's not a knock-back — there is no form and no queue. Say hello in Discord, or have a word with an organizer at a night out, and they'll switch it on.
New? Do these four, in this order. Everything below is reference for later.
Two ways in — a join link, or an organizer's invite email. How joining works is just above.
The highest-value minute you'll spend: it pulls in your collection and every rating you've already given, so the group's suggestions reflect your taste from day one.
Schedule for the next few weeks, Calendar for three months out. Weekdays default to available, so click your name if you can't make it; weekends need a click either way.
If your group runs nights through Discord, run /link once — otherwise the bot can't credit your RSVPs to you.
This is the single most useful thing you can do, and it takes about a minute. Linking your BoardGameGeek account means the games you own and the ratings you've already given get pulled in automatically — so the group's suggested games reflect yourtaste from day one, and you don't have to re-rate a shelf full of games by hand.
Your username is not a second login and notyour display name. It's the handle in your profile's web address:
Ratings you've already set in the app are never overwritten, and importing again later is safe — it only fills in what's new. Only games the group actually has get a rating; your full collection is the team library's overnight sync, not your personal import.
Nothing imported?Nine times out of ten it's a typo in the username (case matters), a collection set to private on BGG, or games not marked “Owned.” Fix that on BGG and import again.
If you host games at conventions, add your Tabletop.Events display nameon your Profile. It lets the app recognize the events you're running and show them on your dashboard. On tabletop.events, sign in → account menu (top-right) → your profile; copy the Display Name shown there exactly (capitalization and spaces matter).
Add your BoardGameArena username on your Profile so teammates can find you and play online between game nights — it shows up on the Scoreboard.
Your Profile also holds your display name (how the group sees you), your email and password, and your notification settings.
There's no app store download. The site installs itself to your home screen and then runs like any other app — full screen, no browser chrome. Worth doing: the phone is the device you'll actually have with you at the table.
On iPhone that step isn't optional if you want notifications. iOS only allows push from the installed version, never from a Safari tab — so add it to your home screen first, then turn notifications on from there.
Notifications are the RSVP nudge and the game-day announcement, the same two you'd otherwise get by email. Turn them on under Profile. It's per device— switching them on for your phone doesn't switch them on for your laptop.
If your group runs game nights through Discord, a bot posts a live boardfor each night — who's coming, which games are being played, and who's sitting where. You RSVP and pick tables with the buttons right on that board; it all writes to the same place as this site, so the two always agree.
Discord knows you by your Discord handle, not your name on the roster — so before the bot can credit your RSVPs and games to you, connect the two once:
Type /link and no command menu shows up at all(it just sends as a normal message)? That's a bot-permission thing on the server, not something you did — tell whoever runs game night so they can re-check the bot's setup.
Don't see your name in the list? The list is the roster, so you're not on it yet — if your group uses a join link, that just means you haven't signed up (step 1); otherwise ask whoever runs game night to add you. Then try /link again. Changed your mind and linked the wrong name? Just run /link again and pick the right one; it moves the link over.
A few of the same actions are also slash commands if you prefer typing: /bringing (offer or withdraw a game), /eta (set an arrival time), and /board (refresh the board).
Everything the whole group owns, pooled into one collection and kept in sync with BoardGameGeek overnight.
The same catalog and the same filters, narrowed to the games youown. The library pools everyone's collections together, which is the right answer for “what could we play Thursday” and the wrong one for “what's on my shelf” — rating your own games meant filtering everyone else's out first, every time.
Your group's recurring game nights, plus any one-off days someone's added with “+ Add a game day” — which can be any date at all.
Which nights those are is set up per group, so it's whatever your organizers configured — every week, the second Sunday of each month, the last Friday, or a night whose date somebody picks by hand each month. Two nights can share a weekday and stay separate, so a morning coffee meet and an evening pub night are two nights, not one.
Long-range availability — every one of your group's nights for the next 3 months, so you can block off a holiday in advance instead of answering week-to-week. It uses the exact same availability as the Schedule page, so anything you set here shows up there automatically once that date comes into range.
There's also a subscribe link at the bottom of the page — paste it into Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook and game nights appear alongside the rest of your life, updating themselves when something moves.
The one part of the site built to be used during a game rather than before or after it — on a phone, at a table, possibly on bad wifi.
Hitting Finish logs the game to History. No retyping it later.
Games can carry their own documents — rulebooks, quick references, player aids and errata — and you'll find them on a game's page and inside at-the-table mode.
Log games after you've actually played them.
Anything you finished in at-the-table mode is already here — you only fill this form in for games logged after the fact.
Your level measures volumeacross everything you do in the app — next to the Scoreboard's competitive rankings (wins, points), it tracks your personal growth. You only compete with your own past self: the 14-level ladder always has a reachable next rung, even when all the Scoreboard titles are taken.
XP comes from three main categories — setup (connecting accounts, marking your availability), showing up (RSVPs and play results), and growth (ratings, teaching, building your collection). Early levels come quick; later ones stretch out so veterans still have somewhere to climb.
Why levels instead of points?The Scoreboard is zero-sum — only one person can win each game. Levels are different. Grinding ratings doesn't steal from anyone; it just fills in your own profile. The system is designed so the bottom half of the roster always has room to climb, regardless of how many titles are taken.
Buying, selling and trading within the group. A game appears once, saying how it can be had — for cash, for swap, for free, or cash-or-swap. Open a listing on this site to read it; BoardGameGeek is a secondary link when the game has a page there.
The app never handles the money. It carries a number between two people who then settle up in person, exactly as you would have anyway.
Standing questions about the library, each with a count and a row of covers — most played, never played, gathering dust, top rated, ready to teach. Click any one and the library opens already filtered that way, or use the search box to jump straight there.
Ten unrated games, one at a time, ordered so the ones you can most plausibly answer come first. The library can rate anything, but finding something unrated every time is friction — this page does the finding and leaves just the decision: what number?
The shape of the collection and the people in it — how many games at each difficulty level, playtime ranges, how many people own the same game, and where the group's taste parts company with BGG's. Useful for spotting gaps or trends.
How deep your play log actually goes, in one number. Total wins reward grinding one game hard; games-owned reward buying; the h-index resists both — it weighs whether you play manydifferent games. It's per person, so the group view is a leaderboard ranking who plays the widest spread.
Two things side by side: the group's collective scoreboard — wins, losses, teaching records, who has the longest win streak — and everyone's player profile, measuring your taste and play style against the group's actual collection and history.
Use the search box (🔍, or ⌘K) to jump to any page — it matches on what a page does as well as what it's called. The ☰ menu holds the full list.
What's New: the changelog. A dot appears on the ☰menu when there's something you haven't read.
A typo in the username (case matters), a collection set to private on BGG, or games not marked “Owned.” Private is the sneaky one — from outside, private and empty look identical, so the import reports success either way. Fix it on BGG and import again.
A bot-permission setting on the Discord server, not anything you did. Tell whoever runs game night.
That list is the roster, so you’re not on it yet — either you haven’t signed up through the join link, or an organizer needs to add you.
You’re a member rather than a regular. Nothing is pending; ask an organizer to switch it on.
Invite links last seven days and work once. Ask for a fresh one — typing your email on the front page won’t get you in by itself.
It did. The group average is the mean of everyone who’s rated it, so one vote among many shifts it a little. The count underneath tells you how many that is.
The library syncs from BGG overnight — use “Refresh from BGG” to pull it in now. Solo-only games and expansions are hidden by default.
Tell us about it → Bugs and ideas both go to the same place, and it reaches the people who run the group. A screenshot helps for anything that looks wrong, but isn't required.