Frequently Asked Questions

A Game System is the catalog entry for a physical game — the board game, card game, or RPG you'd find on a shelf, with its data coming from BoardGameGeek. A Game is a single scheduled play date you can join. "Catan" is a Game System; "Catan, Friday at 7pm, at the café" is a Game. The Game Systems catalog shows what you could play — Discover shows Games with open seats near you.

A Game is one scheduled play date with one group. An Event is a registered get-together that brings many Games under one roof — a convention, a game day, or a big monthly gathering. You join a Game directly (or apply, if the host screens players); you register for the Event itself, and the Games hosted there appear as its Tables.

Both are the overflow when a Game is full — they differ in who moves you up. The waitlist is an ordered queue: when a seat frees up, the next person automatically moves up. The bench is a pool the host picks from by hand — useful when the host would rather choose who joins next, for example by reliability or group fit. Either way, you're in line — just not seated yet.

It tracks one thing: whether you show up when you said you would. After each Game, attendance is settled by consensus of the people who were there, and your score is calculated from that history — attended Games count fully, no-shows and late cancellations count against you, and early cancellations don't hurt at all. The exact formula, every threshold, and all safeguards are public. Read the full algorithms page →

Yes. Creating an account, joining Games, and hosting your own are all free — no credit card needed. Only two things can cost money: some Events carry a registration fee set by the organizer, and an optional membership supports the platform and unlocks the GM Workspace. There's a free tier for Game Masters, so hosting never requires payment. See the pricing page →

Create a free account, then create your first Game from your dashboard: pick a Game System, set a date and place, choose whether players join openly or apply, and publish. Add safety tools or a Session Zero if you want them — and that's it. Your Game shows up in Discover for players near you. See what's in it for hosts →

Create a free account, then create your Event from your dashboard or the events page. Events are for multi-table get-togethers — conventions, game days, big gatherings — and give you one place to manage registrations, announcements, and Tables.

Venues are public places to play — cafés, game stores, libraries. A venue becomes verified when our team confirms it's a real, publicly accessible place — usually because the operator claimed it on the platform, or someone proposed it and the review checked out. Verified venues show their exact address and precise distance; for every other location, what you see is deliberately limited to protect the host's privacy.

You stay in control. From your settings you can request a full export of your data and delete your account at any time. Under the GDPR you also have rights to access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection, and portability. The privacy policy explains each right in plain language — including what we store, who we share it with, and why. Read the privacy policy →