Looking for a Game
Want a game right now? Say what you'd play and for how long, and Tabletop League finds you an opponent. Once you both accept, it creates the match and opens a private room on Discord with everything you need to start.
Rolling out game by game
Looking for a game opens one game at a time. If you don't see your game on the Looking for a game page yet, it isn't open for it.
Start looking
You can look for a game on the web or from Discord.
- On the web: open Looking for a game (also linked from your dashboard and the game's page), pick the game, and fill in the form.
- On Discord: use
/lfgwith the Tabletop League bot, or press Look for a game on the LFG panel in a server's LFG channel.
You choose:
| Choice | What it means |
|---|---|
| What you'd play | A friendly (best of one) and/or any open or ladder competition you're entered in. Pick as many as you like. |
| For how long | Between 5 minutes and 3 hours. You can extend it later, up to 3 hours in total. |
| Show my name | Off by default: other players see an anonymous player until the ready check. Change the default in LFG settings. |
| I can host | Tick it if you can host the Tabletop Simulator game. |
You can look for one game at a time. While you're looking, a Searching pill with the time left sits at the top of every page. Press it to get back to the page, extend your search, or stop looking.
How you're paired
- Ladder games are paired blind. Nobody sees who is looking for a ladder game, only how many. The usual ladder rules apply: rank distance, the rematch limit, and no new game while either of you has an unfinished ladder match.
- Friendlies and open competitions appear on the board, so you can also Join someone who's already looking. Open competitions keep their per-pair match limit.
- When you're queued for several kinds of game, a ladder game is tried first, then an open competition, then a friendly.
- Nothing is created after a competition's deadline.
The ready check
When a game is found, you both get a ready check: a 2-minute window to accept. It appears on the web (on any page), as a push notification, and as a Discord message with Accept and Decline buttons.
- If you both accept, the match is created.
- If the other player doesn't answer or declines, you go back to the front of the queue.
- Declining a friendly or open-competition game is fine. On the ladder, a missed or declined ready check pauses your ladder searches for a while: 5 minutes, then 15, then 60 if it keeps happening within a day.
If you queued from Discord, the ready check and "your game is ready" messages reach you on Discord even if Discord messages are off in your notification preferences.
Make sure you get the ready check. If you look for a game on the web, the ready check reaches you through the open tab, a push notification or a Discord message. If you have push notifications off and no Discord account linked, the form shows a reminder with one-tap buttons to turn on push or link Discord. It never stops you from queuing, but if you close the tab you can miss your match, and on the ladder a missed ready check pauses your ladder searches.
Your room
Once the match exists, you both get a private room:
- a private thread in the competition's Discord channel, for ladder and open games; otherwise
- a private thread on a Discord server you both share: your preferred server, then your opponent's, then the game's official server; otherwise
- a direct message to each of you.
The room names the host, a server name and password for Tabletop Simulator, the game's workshop link and a link to report the result. If only one of you ticked "I can host", they host. Otherwise the host is picked at random, and you can swap in the room. You also see the server name and password on the Looking for a game page.
Report the result as for any other match. See Match Reporting.
LFG settings
In Settings → Looking for a game:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tabletop Simulator name | Shown to your opponent from the ready check on, so they can find you. Never on the board. |
| Show my name by default | The default for "Show my name" when you start looking. |
| Preferred Discord server | Where your private room opens first, for each game. |
| Alerts | A ping when someone you could play starts looking. At most one per alert every 30 minutes, never in quiet hours. |
| Blocked players | See below. |
Blocking a player
You can block a player so the two of you are never paired, in either direction, and neither of you sees the other on the board or gets alerts about the other. Block someone from the ready check (Decline and never pair me with…) or by username in your LFG settings, and unblock them there.
The blocked player is never told. A block only affects looking for a game: it doesn't change ladder challenges, Swiss pairings or matches an organizer creates.
For server staff
Staff of an organization that linked a Discord server can add an LFG panel in Organization settings → Discord → LFG channels: pick a channel for each game and turn it on. Every LFG server shows the same pool of players. See Discord setup.