Rules reference

Two different things can answer “what are the rules?” at a taybl table, and a game only ever shows one of them.

The first is your rulebook — the file you uploaded. Rules, in the table menu’s Panels section, opens it directly, in a new tab. That is what nearly every game wants: the rulebook is the authority, and taybl hands it over unedited.

The second is the reference block: plain-language rules text stored in the game definition itself — a summary, a list of named rules, and a list of objectives. It is the fallback. A game with no uploaded rulebook opens the Rules panel in the right-hand drawer instead, and this block is what fills it.

Neither has any mechanical effect. taybl does not score, check legality, or declare a win. On taybl, resolving a rule means a human reads the text and moves things by hand, exactly as they would at a real table.

Which one your game uses

No game shows both. If you have uploaded a rulebook, that is the rules surface, and anything in the reference block sits unread — two rules texts that can disagree with each other is worse than one. So the choice is: upload a rulebook, or write the reference block. Writing it is the answer when there is no file to upload — a game you built by hand, or one whose rules are short enough to say in a paragraph.

Nothing here is written for you

Generation used to fill this block in with an AI paraphrase of the rulebook it read. It no longer writes a word of it. A paraphrased rule reads as authoritative to a player who has never seen the real book, and there is no engine underneath to contradict it — so a rule the model compressed or inverted simply becomes the rule. Your own rulebook is right by construction and one click away. A generated game therefore arrives with no reference text at all; everything in the block is yours, or Pip’s at your asking.

A game built before this change may still be carrying text the generator wrote. Nothing has been deleted from it. If that game has a rulebook, players get the file and the old text is simply never shown; if it does not, read the text back and fix anything the AI got wrong, because that is what your players are reading.

What goes in the block

An objective’s ranking is an advisory hint only — highest, lowest, or first — describing how the winning total is compared. taybl never totals anything or declares a winner, and the panel prints the description rather than the ranking; it records the shape of the goal, it does not act on it.

How to edit in the Studio

Open your game → Layout tab → click the table → the inspector’s Rules players read section. There you can:

• Edit the Summary — the one- or two-line overview.
• + Add rule to create a named section, then fill in its name and its text; the ✕ beside a rule removes it. Add as many as the game needs, and break a long rule into a few digestible sections rather than one wall of text.

Objectives have no field of their own in the inspector. To write one, ask Pip — “the objective is to be first to 100 points” — which patches the same block.

Changes save with the rest of the definition and appear the next time the table loads, Preview included. Preview follows the same rule as a real table, though: if the game has an uploaded rulebook, the Rules button opens the file and the panel never appears there either.

Where players read it

Everyone at the table gets the rulebook. A signed-in player, a guest who followed an invite link, and an anonymous visitor playing a public game all open the same file from the same button.

When a game carries more than one rules file, only one of them is the file players open. While you are still building, mark which on its row under Already uploaded; see Uploading assets. Once the game is built that screen is gone, and the Rulebook card on the Details tab names the file players get — Replace there swaps it for a new upload, and the swap takes effect the moment it lands.

That file does not have to be a PDF. A text file works, and so does a photo or scan — it opens in a new tab, and a picture of a rulebook page reads as well there as anything else. Building with AI accepts one too: when there is no text to pull out of a file, taybl reads the pages as pictures. Publish with one freely — the listing gate only asks that players have something to read.

Notes from the designer

The reference block says what the rules are. It does not say how to run the game on taybl — which is a separate thing a designer knows and a first-time player does not. That is what the designerTips block is for: a short note plus the handful of keyboard shortcuts that matter for this particular game.

Edit it in the same place: Layout tab → click the table → the inspector’s Notes from the designer section. Write the note in the markdown box, then use + Add hotkey to list a shortcut and say why it matters here — “flip tiles to their built side”, “reshuffle the event deck each round”.

You pick a command, never a letter. Every player can rebind their own keys under Account → Keyboard shortcuts, so a note that said “press F to flip” would be wrong for anyone who had. taybl stores the command and shows each player the key they actually have bound.

At the table, Designer notes in the table menu’s Panels section opens the panel. It also opens itself once, the first time a player sits down — right after the tutorial if the game has one, otherwise as the table loads. After that it stays out of the way until they ask for it. Unlike the rules, this one is always a panel: it is yours to write and there is no file it could open instead.

A note on enforcement

If you find yourself wishing the rules text could stop an illegal move, that instinct belongs elsewhere. Use a zone’s accepts list to limit what drops where, or visibility to hide contents. The reference block only ever describes — it never restricts.

Related

• What taybl is — why players resolve every rule manually
• Playing a game — the table menu the Rules button sits in
• The inspector — the table inspector this is edited in
• Zones overview — where “enforcement” actually lives
• Table basics — the full keyboard-shortcut set players get
• Publishing