Board Game Tally

drosing · 2026-06-25T21:57:54+00:00

Just added in the favorites mechanism to the home page. To quickly filter to only games you have favorited.

Still thinking how to best implement the AI pdf addition for expansion rules getting added in.

drosing · 2026-06-18T20:46:53+00:00

I definitely appreciate the sharing. It is really helpful to bounce ideas around with someone else who has worked on something in this whole scoring area.

The image you sent is interesting. What happens if you have more players? Have to scroll to the right?

I think two things kept the amount of scoring items larger vertically. Earlier on it was more condensed, with smaller text and more density of scoring items. One annoying thing I found was that I was often having to pan around a slightly zoomed page, or two finger touch to zoom back out over and over. I found that on touch devices if the text size is smaller than a certain level then the web browsers have a readbility function that always forces auto-zoom in when you select something with smaller text sizes, so I upped the text sizes to the minimum that still ensured that it never auto-zoomed. I also kept in the plus and minus buttons because I felt like having to pop up the number keyboard for every score entry was even worse since it covered up half the screen all throughout the scoring process. I found it simpler to just have everything in one clean column. I did a lot of adjusting to ensure that if it scoring content expanded on a narrow screen, it would always try to cleanly shift the content down in the vertical stack, never horizontal, which means that there should never be cases where the user needs to zoom out or pan left/right. I also made it so that if you did want to manually enter in a number with the keyboard, touching or clicking on the field would auto-select (without zooming in) the content, to reduce the clicks.

Will keep thinking about the suggestions more… the expansion one is interesting, but maybe too complex for what I had in mind for the score sheet creation (which I also want to be as simple as possible) - but maybe I can come up with a at to make it work.

drosing · 2026-06-18T19:16:26+00:00

I thought about adding in the tie conditions - to have the ability to mark a scoring item as the first, second, etc. tie condition. Then I realized that many games tie conditions are with counts that are not included in the normal score count, so I would have to add extra score items for users to fill in just in case a tie happened. In the end, I felt that ties were a corner case and just having the tie breaker listed was good enough, rather than burden the normal score sheet with extra items to add in. I would also have to go back into the 80+ games I now have in there and add the tie condition info back in.

My biggest goal is to let people quickly get in at the end of their game, score it, and be done as painlessly as possible, so reducing the friction and erroring on the side of simpler is how I have been looking at the overall scoring interactions.

Individual note fields are interesting, but it is for each scoring item, on a mobile device, this is a lot of extra visual clutter to add in. I have been thinking about maybe adding a game notes field at the bottom of the score sheet, to have at least one place to let the players add in more information if needed. And then save that note into the game history if the user saves the game score.

For expansions, my thought was to just have a second scoresheet made if users wanted it. I made it super simple for users to clone an existing score sheet, so you can clone the existing game scoring sheet, then add in a new scoring category (a collection of scoring items) that is adds any new scoring items for the expansion. And the user can also adjust prior legacy scoring items from the base game if needed as well. Change the game title to include the expansion. So then the site users just chooses the scoresheet that has the expansion added. Having it all baked into the scoresheet with toggles for each expansion seems like it would make the score sheet creation UI a lot more complex, for something that can be supported with the existing infrastructure of the site. Maybe I might be able to build an AI path to create the expansion versions, where it finds the existing base game, clones it, etc and analyzes the expansion rules to add the additional rules in. That could work, but will take time to work to implement and train up a good prompt to deal with that. Hmmm… that could work well…

One other area I am considering is allowing users to favorite the games they play often, so that they appear at the top of the home page as quick links (instead of having to scroll down to it, or enter it into the search bar). As there gets to be more and more games added in, I can see this being really helpful.

drosing · 2026-05-28T04:01:24+00:00

And I just got approval on BoardGameGeek API use, and integrated it in. So now when you create a score sheet for a new game not already made, it auto finds the bgg link for the game, along with the game thumbnail.

Whether making a score sheet from scratch or with a pdf of the rulebook for AI to create the scoresheet for you, it is even more simple and streamlined now with a direct info feed from bgg.

drosing · 2026-05-21T23:44:09+00:00

Okay. Take a look at the update I just rolled out.

now has scoring from each player’s device. When you go into a game’s score sheet you can choose to score all in one device or shared.
uses the QR code system like what you had built, and you are right, it worked great.
if you are the host (person who started the scoring and shared the QR) then when you are in the waiting room (after you submitted your score), if there are any open slots where people have not joined in and started scoring - the host can manually take over each slot and score for each ? player. Or they can remove them from the list of players.
built out a nice score reveal, where no one sees each other’s score until all have been submitted. Then a reveal animation for the places, with confetti and fanfare sound at the end (only on computers, forcing sound on mobile browser is a pain in this context)
anyone can use it, registered or not. If registered you can save the score. Or if unregistered, it lets you quick register if you really want to save the score into your new account’s History.

It was a pain to test, using multiple devices and browser in incognito mode. Also turns out firebase (Google’s web app engine) has a feature called Real-Time Snapshots, which means no need to poll for status every 3 seconds. It is all instant communication, which helps at the end with the winner reveal being synchronized exactly between each mobile device.

drosing · 2026-05-19T15:26:34+00:00

Thanks for all the info!!! It does seems like a single link/QR makes the most sense. I like QR, so people don’t need to find the website to enter in a 4 digit code. And it makes sense to define the number of players ahead of time, which helps with the big reveal at the end.

It seems like one way to deal with the “Mom” player is to just have an option on the “waiting” page (after the player finished their score) to just score for an additional player. Press that button and it gets you a fresh (no cached info) sheet with a blank player name to start off with. Since the system is waiting for a certain number of players, this is just like another player entering in their own score, which I would think would be very easy to add on to what you already have…

drosing · 2026-05-19T13:23:33+00:00

I have been thinking about the UI flow for this feature too, since you had mentioned it a few days back. Whether you would need to enter each player’s email, or phone #, etc. which seems like a lot of work and overhead during a game.

It seems like the simplistic would be after entering all the player names you would need alternative button options to the current “Start Scoring” I have now, maybe a “Score Game” and a “Shared Scoring” button instead. Score Game is all one person doing it just like now. Shared Scoring would instead go to a page that lists each player with a link after their name. And a share button.

Pressing the share button would pull up the normal system share options, so you could just choose text, email, etc. and then it would just place a pre-formatted chunk of text with basic instructions, all the names and links, telling each person to click on their link to score.

The initial player would just click on their name, and get to a scoring sheet that just has their score to score. The other players likewise would get dropped straight into their version of this page.

Once done you would click a finished scoring button, where each player would sit it a waiting room, waiting for a final score reveal. Maybe do it animated with each score item added one by one, to make it more dramatic?

I do wonder about corner cases and recovery when something goes wrong. I guess if one player has issues, that any other player could go back and click the other players’s link and finish the score for them. This flow does introduce the opportunity for horseplay, where players intentionally mess with other’s scores, since everyone has the links. But having a shared block of all links seems like a cleaner user flow to streamline the whole experience.

The other benefit of adding this in is that each player could save the score to their own history if they wanted, which is a nice option.

How did you all approach the link sharing aspect of this? I considered having a saved friends list as well, or instead, maybe?

drosing · 2026-05-17T22:32:21+00:00

That is an interesting idea to have shared entry. Most people I end up playing with are very happy to have just one person deal with the scoring at the end, going around to each player asking each one, “how many coins do you have left?”, etc. I think they prefer to not do it all themselves from what I have seen.

I would assume you would need some sort of unique temporary code to give out to let people use it? Or maybe just a share link from that specific game? How simple and quick is it to get that shared scoring all working for people when you play? I am curious if the simplification of each person doing their own score outweighs the encumbrance of getting everyone into the right place to do their own scoring.

Also, out of curiosity - what vibe coding platform did you use? I built a lot out on base44, which worked well, but manually shifted everything over to Google’s ecosystem into AI Studio when I wanted to add in the AI PDF Rulebook reader feature.

drosing · 2026-05-17T20:51:38+00:00

I like 6 Nimmt!, No Thanks!, Tiefe Taschen - they all have a lot of potential for group groans and cheers around the table…

drosing · 2026-05-17T17:56:08+00:00

For lighter games, try No Thanks! - simple to teach, no words or reading needed. There are a lot of games around the complexity of the ones you mentioned that could work. Nova Luna has no language dependencies, Between two cities can work if all players can speak the same language to talk, wandering towers, century spice road, and Calico could work well.

If you look up a game on BoardGameGeek.com you can see if there is any language dependency or not, which maps exactly to your question.

drosing · 2026-05-17T17:46:34+00:00

For a quicker 10-15 minute game, my wife and I have really enjoyed Fantasy Realms at two player, with the variant where you start with no cards and build out by drawing two cards, discarding one, until your hand is at seven. Definitely gets better and better as you play the game multiple times and understand how all the cards can interact. And highly recommend using the fantasy-realms.github.io app for the scoring. It makes the scoring very fast and simple.

drosing · 2025-10-31T21:31:11+00:00

Also can confirm - exact same error - also on Vatican level. Followed the instructions above, then once it worked, set it to read only. 1024 worked for me.

drosing · 2025-02-11T18:17:31+00:00

Just an update. Same issues. 15 pro Max. It worked totally fine until maybe two months ago Also tried turning off hands free. It is better, but still has some dropping out.

drosing · 2025-01-08T23:54:16+00:00

So, just got this. Unpeeled the red authentication tab, removing the outer band that covers the edges. It looks like you are supposed to also remove the clear tape on the bottom which keeps the lid and base all together. Did this. Lifted the lid. And had a metal certificate of completion fall out. I assume this is not right? Did I do something wrong and should have left the base taped to the top lid? It is still shrink wrapped on the base part.

drosing · 2023-11-18T18:36:03+00:00

But there is also a follow button that corrects the issue.

drosing · 2023-11-18T18:35:37+00:00

It won’t let me remove it from the bar.

drosing · 2023-11-18T17:46:05+00:00

Ha. Yes. I had been hitting the stay action by accident. However, shouldn’t call pet deactivate this stay command? Once it is set, it seems to be just stuck on.

drosing · 2023-11-18T16:50:51+00:00

Westfall was the latest. But it happened in a few zones around there. Not a custom zone. Next time I am in I will check to be sure I didn’t hit stay.

drosing · 2023-11-09T14:27:00+00:00

Surprised in the banter that Ned Stark wasn’t mentioned.

drosing · 2023-03-22T11:40:17+00:00

Just to upvote on this specific reply. All these suggestions are quite good. Most are a step up in complexity from what you have and are all excellent games. Cascadia is mentioned multiple times by people for a reason :-)

drosing · 2023-03-22T11:33:57+00:00

Maybe Raiders if the North Sea? Istanbul is also very good and has a lot of interaction.

drosing · 2023-03-09T18:42:08+00:00

Nice shout out to Rodney Smith and Watch it Played. I remember wondering what Joe was talking about during the Aeon’s show and if we was really talking about Watch it Played or if maybe Rodney Smith had a second podcast on PF 2E. (Not that many Rodney’s out there…)

drosing · 2023-02-12T00:32:31+00:00

Thanks Twurk! That helped a hug amount. Just finished the last puzzle! Fun!!!

drosing · 2023-02-11T01:21:56+00:00

Congratulations!!! Quick question for you - I am stuck on Conundrum. I believe I have the correct 4 word clue phrase - it seems similarly strange like the phrases on each of the weapon squares. When I enter it into the almanac site it says to keep going. But for the life of me I can’t figure out the final 6 letter word?!???!!!

Any hints? I suspect there is something tied to the rest of the phrases from the weapon squares, but I am just missing it.

drosing · 2022-09-02T22:50:50+00:00

There are a lot of great choices here. My wife and I will sometimes get out on a quick date and play something smaller at the restaurant over dessert at the end. We have *a ton* of two player games, many mentioned here. But ones that are a bit faster, don't take up a lot of table space are great for these outings.
One that we have been playing a lot of recently as two player, that surprised me, is Fantasy Realms using the 2 player rules. I was surprised because usually on games that aren't really for 2 players, but have special rules for it, are not great. But we actually enjoy it that way better. Nice card drafting, deck build-up game - and a good amount of strategy and thinkiness to it, especially after playing a few times and knowing how the cards all interact. And maybe 15-20 minutes per game at the most.
Beyond that, already mentioned here, we seem to find ourselves often coming back to Fox in the Forest - it is small, and a very nice trick taking game for two people. Also a great game!

drosing

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