Playing a game
A taybl game is a ready-to-play table — a felt surface with components on it, seats around the edge, and a rules reference you can open. Playing is nothing more than moving those things with your pointer, exactly as you would at a real table.
This is the single most important thing to understand about taybl: it is a table, not a rules engine. Nothing is auto-enforced. There is no turn police, no scorekeeper, and no legal-move checker. You draw, flip, deal, and move pieces by hand, and you resolve every rule yourself using the rules sidebar. When you are unsure what a control does, ask "how would this work on a real table?" — that is almost always how taybl models it. (See What taybl is for the mental model behind this.)
The play surface
Wherever you play — the designer Preview tab, a solo sandbox, or a live multiplayer session — the surface is laid out the same way:
| Region | What it is |
|---|---|
| The felt | The whole viewport. Your table fills it edge-to-edge; the board, decks, and open play areas live here. Drag on bare felt to pan; the view fits the table by default |
| The right rail | A thin docked icon strip on the right edge — your home for the rules reference and the drawer panels (History, Chat, Tutorial), plus quick controls (End turn, Undo, Whose turn?, hot-seat, sound, shortcuts, full screen) |
| The hand tray | A drawer along the bottom edge that slides up on hover — your private hand and personal zones. See your hand |
| The supply tray | A drawer on the right edge for shared supply pools (cube banks, worker pools). See your hand |
| The zoom cluster | A small zoom-in / zoom-out / fit control in the bottom-right corner, fading in when you hover the felt |
Panels open as a drawer that slides out to the left of the rail and floats over the felt — non-modal, with no backdrop, so play continues around it. Only one panel is open at a time; clicking its rail button again closes it.
Everything routes through a menu or a drag
Two gestures cover almost all of play. Drag relocates a component from one zone to another (draw a card into your hand, move a meeple, drop a tile on a board). Right-click (or long-press on touch) opens a context menu of verbs for whatever is under the pointer — a card, a deck, or the bare table. A plain left-click flips a card, or opens the container inspector for a deck or pile. Power users can drive the same verbs from the keyboard.
Where to go next
These pages cover the play surface in depth:
- Moving around the table — zoom, pan, fit, rotate, multi-select, and the hold-to-magnify / hold-to-preview keys.
- Handling pieces & cards — dragging, flipping, rotating, stacking, and the right-click verb menu.
- Decks, draws & bags — drawing, dealing, shuffling, bags, and the container inspector.
- Your hand & private zones — the hand tray, private visibility, and the shared supply tray.
- Turns, history & undo — ending a turn, undo, the activity history, and pass-and-play.
Related
- What taybl is — the table-as-scene mental model
- Studio tour — the Preview tab you test on
- Rules reference — the rules text in the sidebar
- Zone visibility — who sees what on the table