Zone scope

A zone’s scope decides how many copies of it exist at the table. There are two values:

• shared — one instance at the table. A communal draw pile, a central discard, the shared board, a market. Everyone interacts with the same single region.
• perSeat — one instance per seated player. Each player gets their own copy: a hand, a player board, a personal capture pile, a player mat. Add a fourth seat and a fourth copy appears automatically.

Scope is about count, not visibility. A perSeat zone is not automatically private — a row of face-up player tableaus is perSeat and fully public. Privacy is a separate field, view; see zone visibility.

How perSeat interacts with seats and setup

A perSeat zone is templated against the seats you place in the layout: every seat gets its own copy of the zone, positioned relative to that seat so each player’s copy sits in front of them. In the layout editor you can edit all copies in lockstep, or unlink one seat to give a single player a different position (the inspector calls this “Make different for this player only”).

Setup placement has a matching idea. A setup placement into a perSeat zone can be marked perSeat so the same starting contents are dealt into every player’s copy — e.g. “each player starts with one worker in their supply.” A shared-scope placement, by contrast, fills the single communal zone once.

How to edit in the Studio

Open your game → Layout tab → select a zone. In the Properties card, the Who uses it dropdown sets scope: Shared (one at the table) or Each player (one copy per seat). Switching to Each player makes the per-seat copies appear immediately in the preview.

Related

• Zones overview
• Seats — what per-seat copies are templated against
• Zone visibility — privacy is separate from scope
• Setup placements — dealing into every player’s copy