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Documentation

Creating Competitions

Step-by-step guide to setting up competitions on Tabletop League.

Starting a New Competition

  1. Go to your organization page (/o/your-slug)
  2. Click Create Competition
  3. Choose Quick start, From a template, or Custom setup, then fill in the details

Quick start gets you a fully configured event from just a name, an organization, a game system, and a format template. From a template reuses your organization's (or a public) saved competition template — every stage, scoring rule, draft config, and rules pin the template carries comes along in one submit. Custom setup is the full wizard documented below, with every option up front. See Simple Setup for the quick path and the Simple/Advanced view toggle.

Basic Settings

Competition Details

  • Name — clear, descriptive title (3–100 characters)
  • Slug — URL-friendly identifier (auto-generated from name, editable)
  • Description — rules, prizes, schedule, and any other info players need
  • Game System — which tabletop game this competition is for
  • Rules URL — link to an external rules document (optional)
  • Banner Image — promotional graphic for the competition page

Competition Type

Choose the structure that fits your event:

  • Tournament — structured rounds with brackets (Swiss, elimination, etc.)
  • League — ongoing seasonal play
  • Ladder — continuous ranked play with tier-based matchmaking
  • Open — freeform play where participants create their own matches

Dates

  • Start Date — when the competition begins
  • End Date — when it concludes (leave blank for ongoing events)

Visibility

Two independent settings decide who can find your competition and who can join it. Set them separately — a listed competition can be invitation only, and an unlisted one can take open registration.

  • Listed publicly (on by default) — the competition appears in competition lists, search, share previews and the sitemap. Turn it off to make the competition unlisted, hidden from all of those.
  • Unlisted is a discovery control, not a privacy control. Anyone with the link can still open the competition page and see its roster, bracket, standings and results — unlisting only stops it from being found. The setting says so itself: "Anyone with the link can still view this competition." Don't rely on it to hide sensitive information.

Who can register is the separate control described in Registration & Invitations below. The word "Private" is deliberately not used, because it would over-promise confidentiality that unlisting doesn't provide.

Registration Settings

Control how players join your competition:

  • Registration Enabled — toggle on/off
  • Registration Window — set open and close dates
  • Min/Max Participants — cap the field size or set a minimum
  • Team Size — set to 1 for individual play, or 2 for 2v2 pairs
  • Require Approval — organizer must review and approve each registration
  • Who can register — Anyone can register, or Invitation only (see Registration & Invitations)

Custom Registration Questions

Add questions to the registration form for collecting extra info (army lists, dietary needs for in-person events, etc.):

  • Set question text and type
  • Add an optional Description that appears below the question label — useful for helper text, links, or instructions (supports markdown)
  • Mark as required or optional
  • View answers when reviewing pending registrations

Registration & Invitations

The Who can register control (on the competition's Settings page, or in the create wizard) has two options:

  • Anyone can register (default) — any signed-in player can join, subject to the registration window, cap, approval and any questions.
  • Invitation only — only players you invite directly, or who redeem an invite link, can register. Everyone else can still view the competition; they just can't join it.

Invitation only pairs naturally with unlisting — hidden from lists and closed to uninvited players — but the two are independent, so use whichever combination fits.

Inviting players

Manage invitations from the Invitations tab in your competition's manage area. Two mechanisms:

  • Direct invites — pick existing players (they must already have an account), add an optional message and optional expiry, and send. Each invitee is notified and can accept or decline. You can invite in bulk; the tab reports how many went out and how many were skipped (already invited, already registered, and so on).
  • Invite links — create a shareable link (with an optional name, expiry, and maximum number of uses) to post in Discord or elsewhere. Anyone signed in who opens it can accept and register. You can see each link's use count and revoke it at any time.

Accepting an invitation unlocks the normal registration flow — questions, rules compliance, Discord requirements and capacity/waitlist all still apply. Invited players skip the approval step even when approval is otherwise required, since the invite is itself the approval.

What invitees experience

An invitation-only competition shows an "Invitation only" badge on its registration card. An invited player sees an Accept & register / Decline banner; an invite link opens a landing page with a preview and an Accept invitation button.

Declining is permanent for that competition — there's no "ask again", by design. When declining, a player can also choose "Don't let this organizer invite me again" to mute future invites from your organization. If a player changes their mind, they can still come back through an invite link.

The whole flow from the player's side — including the settings that decide who may invite them — is documented in Invitations & Unlisted Events; point confused invitees there.

Sending limits and skipped invitees

Direct invites are rate-limited so the feature can't be used for cold outreach:

  • Up to 100 players per send.
  • 50 invitations per day across your whole organization, counted over a rolling 24 hours and shared by all your competitions. An organization less than 14 days old gets 10 per day instead.

Going over the daily cap is a partial success, not a failure — invitations are created up to the cap and the rest come back as skipped. Every send reports how many went out and how many were skipped, broken down by reason:

| Reason | What it means | | ------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | No account found | That player doesn't have an account yet — invitees must be existing users | | Already invited | They have an outstanding invitation to this competition | | Already registered | They're already in | | Previously declined | They declined this competition, which is permanent | | Not accepting invitations | Their own settings exclude your invitation | | Daily invite limit reached | You hit the cap above; try again tomorrow | | That's you | You can't invite yourself |

"Not accepting invitations" is deliberately vague. It covers both a player who has restricted who may invite them and a player who has muted your organization, and you're never told which — so it can't be used to work out who blocked you. In every case, an invite link still reaches them: those settings govern invitations pushed at a player, not a player choosing to join.

Invitations to players who don't know you are quieter. If an invitee doesn't follow your organization and has never played in one of your competitions, their invitation is delivered in-app only, with no push notification. Invitations never go out by email or Discord, and your written message is never part of the notification — it appears only on the invitation banner on the competition page. If you want to reach people who don't know you yet, the invite link is the tool: post it where your community already is.

A note on who can do this

Invitations and links are free for everyone — no paid tier required. Restricted organizers can send invites, revoke them, and manage links, but only a full organizer or org staff member can flip a competition into Invitation only in the first place.

Match Verification

Choose how match results are confirmed:

| Mode | How it works | | ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Required (default) | The opponent must confirm the reported result before it's finalized | | None | Results are accepted immediately on submission |

Stages

Every competition needs at least one stage. Stages define the format and rules for a section of your competition.

For single-format events, create one stage. For multi-format events (e.g., group stage into playoffs), create multiple stages in sequence.

See Stages & Formats for details on configuring stages.

Game Configuration

If your game system supports it, you can configure:

  • Entity Pool — which characters, maps, units, etc. are legal in this competition
  • Draft Rules — pick/ban sequences and phases for pre-match drafts

Access these from the Game Config tab in your competition's manage area.

Draft timers

Every draft needs a timer. Pick and ban timers must be between 5 seconds and 7 days (604,800 seconds) — there is no "no timer" option. If you don't want time pressure on your players, set a very long timer rather than a zero.

The timer is what lets us recover a draft nobody finished. Without a deadline we can't tell a draft that's still being played from one both players walked away from, and an unfinished draft blocks the match from being reported at all.

Set Timeout Behavior to choose what happens when the clock runs out:

| Setting | What happens at the deadline | | --------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | None | Nothing is forced. The deadline is advisory, and either player can still take their turn. A draft left untouched for a week is cleared so the match can be reported. | | Auto Random | A random valid pick or ban is made for the player who ran out of time, and the draft moves on. |

Setup Checklist

Your competition dashboard shows a setup checklist to track what's configured:

  • Basic details (name, type)
  • Dates set
  • Registration configured
  • Game entities selected (if applicable)
  • Draft rules configured (if applicable)
  • At least one stage created
  • At least 2 participants registered

Complete all items before publishing your competition.

Publishing

When your settings are ready:

  1. Review the setup checklist — all items should be complete
  2. Set the competition status to Published or Active
  3. Share the link with players
  4. Monitor registrations in your dashboard