Rules

This page is about how you write the game’s rules: the rule documents, the two languages, the formatting, inserting images and video, and publishing, which is the step that matters with the rules.

The rule text saves itself, there is no save button. What you write goes into the draft, and players only see it once you press the Publish button.

What a rule is

A rule is a document of its own, belonging to the game. A game can have several: the short summary separately, the full rule book separately, the variants separately. Each has its own title and its own text, and a player gets each of them as a separate page, see What a player sees of it.

The rules are on the Rules page, in the sidebar’s Game page group. Along the left edge of the page stands the Rule documents list: every row is a rule’s title and its state. The + New Rule button sits under it. On a narrow screen that list is a chooser that drops down in the header.

The list shows a rule’s title in the interface language; if it has no title in that language, the one in the other language shows, and failing that the word Untitled.

The first rule is the base rule: it cannot be deleted, its Delete button is greyed out, and the help text says why. The rest can be deleted at any time.

A new rule

The + New Rule button opens a modal (The screen). It only asks for the title, in a single field with an EN and a HU badge, and filling in one language is enough.

The rule is created at once, with the title, and the interface takes you to its empty editor.

The two languages

Above the editor stand language tabs, English first. Whichever you pick is the one you see, and a missing tag stands on a tab if there is not a single letter in that language yet.

On the right edge, the Side by side switch shows both languages at once, in two columns, both editable. ⚠ It is not available on a screen narrower than 1280 pixels, and the explanation stands beside the switch.

The two languages are not two views of the same text, they are two separate texts. Either can stay empty independently of the other.

It is worth filling in both: a player gets the rule in their own language, and if that is empty, they see the one in the other language instead. The detail is in the What a player sees of it section.

At the right edge of the language bar it says when and by whom the rules were last published.

Formatting

You format in three ways, and all three reach the same thing.

The thin toolbar under the language bar: text style (Text, Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3), bold, italic, bullet list, table, link, image, video. The toolbar always acts on the column you were last in.

The floating menu: select some text, and the text style, bold, italic, link and bullet list appear above it. On the link, you type the address into a small field and Enter applies it.

The / insert menu: type / at the start of an empty paragraph and the list of insertable things opens: Heading, Bulleted list, Table, Image (from this game’s images) and YouTube video. Typing narrows it down, the arrows step through it, Enter or Tab picks, Escape closes it.

Beyond that you can also format by typing markdown: # , ## or - at the start of a line turns into a heading and a list at once, and **bold** and *italic* become formatted once they close. Pasting works the same way: paste markdown text in from somewhere else and the editor turns it into formatted text.

A table

The table item of the toolbar or the / menu inserts a 3x3 table with a header row. There are no row and column controls, the keyboard does it:

Key	What it does
Tab	moves to the next cell; in the last cell it opens a new row
Shift + Tab	moves to the previous cell

For more columns, or to restructure a table, the Markdown view is the more dependable road.

⚠ Two things not to do with a table: do not merge cells, and do not put more than one paragraph or list into a single cell. The editor cannot save such a table into markdown, and its contents break the next time you open it.

⚠ On the player’s side a table does not appear as a table, see What a player sees of it.

Inserting an image

The image button on the toolbar, or the Image item of the / menu, opens a modal with all of the game’s images. Every row carries the thumbnail, the file name and the Insert button, which puts the image into whichever column you opened it from.

You can upload from the modal as well: with the button, or with a file dropped on the modal. It lands in the same place as an image uploaded from the Images page, among the game’s images.

The inserted image’s alt text is the file name.

⚠ The inserted image is the thumbnail, not the original. The system makes a thumbnail at most 256 pixels wide out of every uploaded image, and that is what goes into the rules. For a detailed diagram, a card image or a piece of a board that is too little. There is no way to a higher resolution in the interface today.

Inserting a video

The video button on the toolbar, or the YouTube video item of the / menu, opens a modal with a single field, into which you paste the video’s address. The address can be the usual watch?v=… shape, the shortened youtu.be/… or shorts/…, and the interface picks the id out of it by itself.

The moment it recognises the id, the video’s preview image appears and the Insert Video button becomes active. If no id comes out of the field’s contents, the button stays greyed out.

YouTube only. You cannot insert another video service or a video file of your own.

Markdown view

The Edit as Markdown item of the header’s ”…” menu switches to the markdown source: the raw markdown appears in a plain text box where the formatted text was, and can be edited directly there. A note stands where the toolbar was: “You are editing the Markdown source.” You come back from the same menu (Back to rich text).

The switch acts on every visible column, so on both languages in side by side view.

The Markdown view is also the quickest road if you want to bring finished rule text over from somewhere else: paste it in here, and after the switch you see it formatted.

The saving goes by itself

There is no Save button. What you type goes into the draft by itself after a short pause, just as everywhere else in the Builder. The state of the save shows in the top bar, see Draft and versions.

Two things follow from that:

• You can leave the page without worrying. If there were still an unsent change, the Builder saves it first and only then lets you on; if the save fails, it asks whether you really want to go.
• “Side by side” and switching language lose nothing: the text of both languages lives in the same draft.

⚠ If somebody else has changed this same rule in the meantime, a bar appears under the header: “Someone else changed this in the meantime, so your change wasn’t saved.” It has two buttons on it: Copy my text puts the text of both languages onto the clipboard, and Reload brings in the other version. Copy first, reload only afterwards.

Publishing

Players do not see a rule that is in the draft. The header’s Publish button makes it live, and the page spells it out: “Published rules reach every player at once, whatever release they are on.”

• The button is live when there is an unpublished change. The header and the list then carry a yellow Unpublished changes tag; after publishing, Published <date>, and on a rule that has never been published, Not published.
• The button asks for a confirmation: “Rules update for every player right away, including games in progress.”
• Publishing takes out all of the game’s rules at once, not only the one you are looking at.
• If you happen to have an unsent change, the interface says so: “All changes need to be saved first.” Wait a second and press it again.

The Revert to published item of the ”…” menu goes the other way: it throws away every rule change made since the last publish, and brings back what players see. ⚠ It cannot be undone, so it asks for a confirmation.

A rule is not part of a release. You do not need to release a version for it, and a release does not publish it either, see Draft and versions.

Renaming

The Rename item of the header’s ”…” menu opens the same modal as creating one, filled in with the existing title. One language is enough here as well.

The rename goes into the draft like everything else: no separate save is needed.

Deleting

The red Delete rule item of the header’s ”…” menu opens a confirming question: “The rule is removed from the draft. Players stop seeing it after the next publish.”

That sentence is exact: the rule disappears from the editor at once, but whoever has already seen it goes on seeing it until you publish again.

The base rule cannot be deleted, its menu item is greyed out for it.

What a player sees of it

A rule appears in the controller’s menu, on the game’s page, during a party. At the bottom of the page the game’s rules line up as a list, one row per rule; tap one and the rule opens as a full page of its own. The rule does not appear anywhere on the display.

Which language they get: the one their own interface is set to. If the rule is empty in that language, they get the English text instead. Two rules follow from that:

• English is the general fallback. If the English is empty, a player who is not using Hungarian sees No content where the rule should be, not the Hungarian text.
• Hungarian is never a fallback. Only a player set to Hungarian gets it.

The same holds for the title: if a rule has a title in neither language, it appears in the list under a default name.

⚠ What you see in the editor is not exactly what a player gets. The viewer on the player’s side knows a simpler markdown:

• A table does not appear as a table: the player sees the raw rows with their vertical bars. If there is data in the rules that wants to be a table, a list is more dependable.
• Struck-through text does not format either, the ~~marks~~ show.
• A lone line break disappears: lines written under one another run into a single paragraph for the player. If you need a separate line, leave an empty line between them, or make a list.
• Headings, lists, bold and italic, images, links and an inserted YouTube video all appear properly; the video embedded and playable.