Playtable Controls: Full Reference

Start a Card Playtest explains how to create a session; this reference covers the controls once the table is open. For boards, mats, tokens, meeples, and custom dice, also read Playtesting Boards, Tokens & Dice.

Move around the table

• Scroll or trackpad-scroll to pan. Hold ⌘/Ctrl while scrolling to zoom around the pointer; use the zoom buttons at the bottom right of the table for predictable steps or to reset the view.
• Hold Space and drag to pan. Use the Select tool (the pointer button beside Add in the toolbar) to box-select pieces, or hold Shift while dragging an empty area to add a marquee selection.
• Hold Alt and click an empty area to drop a temporary “point here” ping the other players see.
• The toolbar's degree button opens the View menu: Rotate the table 90°, Fit everything, Centre the table, 100%, and in an online game Look from any player's seat. It changes the way you view the shared table, not the state or orientation of another player's pieces.

Do not use browser zoom as a substitute for table zoom. It changes the whole interface and makes physical card scale harder to judge.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? at the table to open this list at any time, and right-click any card or pile to see each action's key beside it. A key acts on the piece under the pointer first, then on the selection. Keys pause while you type in a note, counter label, or other field, and while a menu is open. Mod means ⌘ on macOS and Ctrl on Windows/Linux.

The keys follow the tables many designers already know: F flips and Q/E rotate as in Tabletop Simulator and Screentop, holding Z magnifies as in Tabletopia, and a number key over a deck draws that many, as in Tabletop Simulator.

Looking around

Selecting

Cards and piles

Table

Focused pieces and fields

In an online game, your side of the table is the part nearer your seat's edge than any other player's, so U never untaps an opponent's cards.

When you are watching a game, or playing back a recording, the table only answers the keys for looking around: scroll, Mod + scroll, Space + drag, pinch, and holding Alt or Z to magnify. ? opens the shortcut list while you watch, but not in a recording.

Deck, hand, and pile actions

The toolbar's Deck menu draws one card or several, draws up to the hand limit when the game sets one, shuffles the main deck, views its cards, and creates an empty pile. The Hand menu shows or hides your hand and sorts it by name or by a property; in an online game it can also show your whole hand to everyone or to one player. You can drag cards in the hand to reorder them.

The Turns menu is there in every game. Untap all (online, Untap my cards) is the untap step. Solo, Start counting rounds turns it into a round counter with Next round; online, Start turns in seat order passes the turn with End turn, and the button shows whose turn it is and the round. Once turns are running the menu also has Only the active player moves pieces (online), a Turn timer from Off to 300 seconds, and Stop counting rounds or Stop tracking turns. The timer is a clock on the active seat's marker; it warns and never ends a turn for you. While moves are restricted, everyone else sees a banner saying whose turn it is and cannot move pieces.

The Add menu puts pieces on the table: dice from d4 to d20, a coin or one of your custom coins, a counter, a score counter for each player, tokens (cubes, discs, meeples and standees in the seat colours), a Bag (draw at random), a Sticky note, or an empty pile.

Hover over a deck for quick buttons: draw 1, draw 5, shuffle, and view. Click a deck to draw a card into your hand, or hold Mod and drag from it to put the top card straight onto the table.

Right-click a deck to draw one card or several, shuffle it, view its cards, deal 3 or 5 to every player in an online game, rotate it, bring it to the front, or duplicate its top card or the whole deck. A pile you made also offers Return all to deck, which puts its cards on top of the main deck, or Remove pile once it is empty.

Right-click a discard pile or a stack to view its cards, take the top card to your hand, return the top card to the deck, or shuffle everything back into the deck. A stack you made can also be spread on the table again as separate cards, or returned to the deck.

In the pile viewer, click a card (tap it on a phone) for its actions: send it to your hand, play it face up or face down, discard it, or return it to the deck. On a computer you can also drag a card straight onto the table. Reveal cards shows the faces of a face-down pile, and Top 1, Top 2, Top 3 or Top 5 lets you look at the top cards: mark each one to stay on top (drawn next first) or go to the bottom, then Put back. In an online game the table is told you are looking through a pile, and after a look at the top cards it is told how many you saw, never which. Keep draw and discard piles as shared sources of truth rather than duplicating cards merely to speed up a test.

Right-click a card in your hand to play it face up, face down, or face down and sideways, discard it, return it to the deck, show it to other players in an online game, flag it, or duplicate it.

Dragging and dropping

A drag decides what happens by where you let go, and a label beside the pointer says it before you do (Stack, Stack underneath, Into Discard):

• On a pile, the card joins it: a deck shuffles it in, a discard pile puts it on top.
• On a slot designed on a board or mat, it snaps in, face and rotation as the slot says. A full slot refuses and the card lands just clear of it.
• On the middle of another table card, the two become a stack.
• Anywhere else, it lands where you dropped it.

Drag a card along your hand to reorder it, or off the hand to play it. Plain-drag a deck or pile to move the whole pile. With one table card selected, drag its rotation handle to turn it by hand.

Card actions on the table

Right-click a table card to:

• flip it face up or down, tap or untap it, or rotate it 90° or 180°;
• send it to your hand, discard it, or return it to the deck;
• add a marker, or use Flag / Add note to capture a playtest observation in context;
• peek at a face-down card, or show a card to other players in an online game;
• bring it to front or lock/unlock it; and
• duplicate it or create a new deck from that card.

Double-click a table card to flip it, or hover over it for quick flip, tap, rotate, hand and marker buttons. A marker shows as a chip on the card; click the chip to change the amount with its − and + buttons, or remove it. Drop a card onto the middle of another card to stack the two into a pile. While you drag, the card underneath is outlined and a label reads Stack before you let go; hold Shift to slide the card underneath instead. A card dropped near another card's edge stays a separate card, so overlapping layouts stay the way you arrange them.

Add marker asks for a Label and an Amount, with one-click buttons for the card's own numeric stats and a plain Counter. Everyone sees the marker, and it comes off when the card leaves the table. Flag / Add note opens Flag card: a note (optional), a tag (Balance, Wording, Rules, Art, Bug or Other), and Suggest a value change to propose a new value for one or more of the card's properties. Draw several… and Shift D ask how many, up to 50.

Use duplication for a token-like proxy or a rules experiment, not to accidentally change the number of cards a deck is meant to contain. Returned or removed cards go back into the appropriate deck flow; keep intentional card count changes in the workspace data.

Selection bar and table objects

Select several pieces to reveal a selection bar. It can roll selected dice/coins, rotate, flip, tap selected cards, send cards to your hand, discard them, bulk-flag cards, duplicate, tidy into a grid, lock, delete, or deselect. Tidy is ideal after a setup action; it is not a rules engine, so apply it only when a neat arrangement is actually useful.

Click a die to roll it, a coin to flip it, and a bag to draw a piece from it at random. A counter has − and + buttons, and you double-click its name to rename it. Double-click a sticky note to write on it.

Right-click a die, coin, counter, token, meeple, board, or mat for its valid actions. Dice Roll; coins Flip; counters offer Rename and Reset to 0; a bag offers Draw one at random, a row of swatches for each token shape (click one to add five of that colour, right-click to take five out) and Empty the bag; a token near a bag offers Put back in the bag. Every object can be rotated 90°, duplicated, locked, or removed with Remove, and anything except a board or mat can be brought to front. Boards and mats start locked, as anchored surfaces, so dragging across them never moves the play area. Unlock one (L) only when you mean to move it.

Who is at the table

In an online game the player list at the top left shows each person's seat colour, whether they are online, whose turn it is and how many cards they hold, plus anyone watching; the host also gets Copy invite link there. Each seat has a coloured marker on its edge of the table. You see other players' cursors, a coloured outline on any piece someone is holding, and a label on a deck while someone is looking through it. Cards another player shows you from their hand appear in their own strip. Someone watching sees "You're watching. Chat is open; the table isn't."

On a phone or tablet

Pinch to zoom and drag with two fingers to pan. The bar above the table has Draw, Hand and More; More opens every toolbar menu in a sheet. Tap a card to select it, and the selection bar that appears is where its verbs are; with one card selected, its More button has the rest of the right-click menu (peek, show, marker, return to deck, create a deck). Press and hold a card to magnify it.

Notes, recovery, and ending a test

Use a single-card flag/note when the exact board state matters, and bulk flag only when the same quick issue applies to several cards. Add the written outcome after the session in Notes & Version History, where it can drive the actual data or layout change. The Game log records every move and carries the table's chat.

The More menu (the dots at the right of the toolbar) holds the rest:

• Save this table as a scenario keeps the position so you can start from it again on the setup screen.
• Save a checkpoint and Restore the checkpoint give you one restore point during a game. Online, only the host has them.
• Refresh card designs (project owner) loads your latest card edits without losing the table.
• Debrief with AI puts a summary of the session into Shufflo's message box, for you to trim and send; any card changes it suggests arrive as ordinary proposals.
• Table sounds, Shortcuts, and in an online game Open Discord for voice.
• As the project owner in an online game, Watch every hand lets you see all hands; the table is told you turned it on.

In a solo session, Reset: back to setup returns you to setup so you can repeat a scenario, and Leave does the same. Online, the host's End ends the session for everyone; any other player's Leave takes them out while the game carries on. Confirm the session and table state before either action, then preserve the finding in a document or note rather than relying on the temporary board arrangement.