Guide
Want a walkthrough for a specific job, like prototyping a card game or importing a Tabletop Simulator deck? See the how-to guides.
What Iterary is
Iterary is a table you set up in the browser: you lay out the decks, dice, boards and counters your game needs, then play them by hand the way you would at a real table. Nothing keeps score or enforces a rule for you, so a half-formed idea is as playable as a finished one.
Areas
Table
A plain area that holds things together as a group. Its items can lie spread out or pile up, and it can be marked private so it works as a player seat.
Deck
Cards in three areas: Deck, Hand and Discard. The bar on top has Draw, Shuffle and Discard, and the inspector sets how many a draw takes and what shuffle and discard gather up.
Dice
Holds dice so you can roll them together. Roll All throws every die in the area, or tick dice in their toolbars and roll only the ticked or only the unticked ones.
Board
A grid of cells with a set number of columns and rows and an optional background image. Pieces sit in cells and scale to fit them, and you can drag pieces on and off the board.
Tray
A box that holds other areas. Open it for a floating window with its own canvas: Stash moves an area from the table into the tray, Take out puts one back.
Bag
An opaque pile for blind draws. Pull reveals one item at random, Return puts everything back, and the bar shows how many are still hidden.
Items
Card
A card with a title, text sections and images, a layout template and an optional second face. Its click action is yours to pick: zoom, flip, rotate, show text, or nothing.
Die
A die with editable faces, up to 20 of them, each face either text or an icon. Click it to roll.
Counter
A number with plus and minus buttons, or a slider, for life, score, gold or anything else you count.
List
A short list of lines, laid out down or across, numbered or plain.
Note
Free text on a paper background, for rules, reminders and setup instructions.
Log
Writes down what happens in the area it sits in: rolls, draws, flips, counter changes. Clear empties it.
Building a game
- Pick a tool from the bar at the bottom, then click the canvas to drop that area at its natural size, or click and drag to draw the position and size you want.
- Click an area to select it. The inspector opens beside it: rename, recolor, set how big its items are, add Cards, Dice, Counters and Lists (with a copies count for building a deck in one go), Copy it, or Delete it.
- Drag an area by its title bar to move it, drag any edge or corner to resize it. Hold Shift while dragging to snap to the grid instead of to the other areas.
- Rotate 90° in the inspector’s Layout section turns one area so it faces its player, and Reset puts it upright again. The top bar does the same for the whole table at once.
- Tick Stack on a container and its items pile up, last on top. Fan spreads the pile out so you can reorder it or take one from the middle, Restack piles it back, and with an item selected the Pile order row moves it Top, Up, Down or Bottom.
Playing
- The Edit / Play button in the top bar switches modes. In play mode the insert bar goes away and clicking things works them instead of editing them.
- Deck: Draw, Shuffle, Discard. Dice: Roll All, or roll just the ticked or unticked dice. Bag: Pull and Return. Cards run whichever click action they were given, and a card on a board zooms on a double click.
- A Table ticked Private is a seat: in play mode its contents stay covered until you press Reveal, and Hide covers them again before you pass the device on.
- Undo and redo sit in the top bar and work in both modes, so a misdrawn card or a stray roll takes back as easily as an edit. The arrow beside them opens the list of recent actions to jump back to one.
- A Log hears the area it lives in, so a Log dropped inside a Table narrates that Table only, while a Log on the table hears everything.
Saving and sharing
- The game you are working on is kept in this browser, so a reload picks up where you left off. New game starts from an empty table, Reset reloads the game you opened.
- Save and Load are in the ⋮ menu and sign you in with Google the first time.
- Share gives you two links: a plain one that needs no account, and a short one that keeps showing your latest version as you keep editing. Either can be set to open in play mode.
- Anyone who opens a shared link gets their own copy to play with and change. Their edits never touch your game, and they can save it as their own.
- The Import row in a container inspector reads cards, dice or counters from a CSV file or pasted text, and lets you map the columns before it brings them in.
Controls
Mouse
Pan the table.
Zoom towards the pointer. Over an area the wheel scrolls that area instead.
Select it and open the inspector.
Move the area. Drag an edge or corner to resize it.
Snap to the grid rather than to the other areas.
Zoom out, the current zoom, zoom in, and zoom to fit.
Touch
Zoom the table.
Pan the table.
Select a crate. On a phone the inspector opens full screen.
Move the area, exactly as with a mouse.
On a narrow screen, Rotate table and Reset rotation live here.
Keyboard
Undo. Ctrl + Y or Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + Z redoes.
Zoom to fit the whole table.
Nudge the selected area a pixel. Hold Shift for a grid step.
Pan the table from anywhere, even over a crate.
Put down a tool you armed in the insert bar.