Crash Course in Tabletop Simulator

I teach some game design classes and with Covid I had to move all my assignments online. Being an avid Tabletop Simulator modder myself, TTS was the obvious choice to have my students to quick prototypes. However, siince some of my classes are towards absolutely beginners - some of which who are taking it as their only game design class - I needed a quick tutorial series that would take my students from knowing nothing about games to being able to prototype a game in TTS quickly.

I think the series that I put together does a good job at achieving that outcome, so I wanted to share it with the community in case others would find it interesting.

This section is really aimed towards beginners. It starts with installing Steam. If you're an avid gamer, I would recommend simply doing the TTS tutorial instead or looking at the YouTube timestamps of the video to pick the topics that you might not know about. However, if you are entirely new to games, this is your starting point.

Install Steam and Tabletop Simulator on your computer.
Become accustomed to the controls of Tabletop Simulator. 0:12 Why learn tabletop simulator?
1:01 Installing Tabletop Simulator through Steam
2:52 Turning off that annoying music
3:10 What input device to use
3:56 Switching from TTS to other applications and back
4:42 Fixing non-loading assets when loading games
5:40 Joining a TTS game session hosted by someone else
6:06 Creating your own game session and finding games to play
7:08 Subscribing to the DrBo6's TTS Tutorial game
7:58 Loading the tutorial room
8:26 Assignment: Do the official tutorial

While the Tabletop Simulator tutorial provides you with most of the basic controls needed to play a game, you will quickly find that there is a lot more to it. This video features a training room that will help you practice the skills that you used in the tutorial, while showing you some more advanced yet commonly used features of Tabletop Simulator.

While the video provides a detailed look into each one of its exercises, you are welcome to skip it and move directly to the room. As always, you can use the timestamps in the YouTube description to skip to specific sections.

Setting up players and solving mistakes
Manipulating and duplicating cards, decks and dice
Picking up multiple objects
Editing common object properties such as states, rotational values, color tints, etc.
Playing games with hidden information
Understanding the camera perspectives
Communicating through interface tools such as lines and ping 0:27 Loading DrBo6's TTS Tutorial room again.
0:56 Moving around with middle mouse
1:32 Zooming with ALT and M
2:12 EXERCISE 1: Assigning player colors and seating
2:54 Spectators and game masters
3:44 EXERCISE 2: Manipulating cards and decks
5:34 EXERCISE 3: Picking up multiple objects
7:00 EXERCISE 4: Shuffling, drawing and dealing
7:37 Player hands and hand visibility
8:36 Drawing and dealing cards
10:55 EXERCISE 5: Duplicating items with copy-paste
11:52 Adding the value of multiple dice
12:10 EXERCISE 6: Grouping and searching
13:24 Searching a container
13:50 EXERCISE 7: Locking objects
14:37 EXERCISE 8: Drawing on Objects
16:29 EXERCISE 9: States and colors
18:40 EXERCISE 10: Hidden zones
20:38 EXERCISE 11: Whispering to other players
21:40 EXERCISE 12: Blindfold and perspective
22:12 Changing the camera perspective
23:45 EXERCISE 13: Pinging and lines
24:19 Lines and calculating distance between objects
24:54 EXERCISE 14: Undo
25:15 Table flip
26:25 ASSIGNMENT: Load a game and play it

Tabletop Simulator is designed for social interaction. After all, it mimics the inherently collective experience of playing board games as well as it possible can in an online environment. Unfortunately, this focus on multiplayer does not extend to its creative tools. As a tool for making games, Tabletop Simulator is a mostly solitary one, and there are a few caveats for any group attempting to build a game collaboratively. This video details how collaboration in Tabletop Simulator is possible and offers a step-by-step guide towards collaborative online game design in Tabletop Simulator that is essential to complete some of the assignments that are part of this course.

Connecting to your colleagues on Steam
Hosting a Tabletop Simulator server and allowing others to collaborate
Downloading better tables to create
Saving your work
Efficient collaboration with a group 00:27 Adding friends on Steam
01:15 Steam chat, voice chat and Steam groups
1:57 Creating an online server and inviting friends
5:30 Seating, becoming the game master and promoting collaborators
6:20 Joining a public or a friends-only server
7:47 Setting up the room for collaboration
8:35 Downloading custom tables from the TTS workshop
10:37 Creating some assets to make a game with
12:09 Saving your creation
13:26 DrBo6's Tabletop Simulator Collaboration Guide
13:40 Initial Setup
14:45 JSON and PNG files
16:08 Procedure after working on your mod
17:28 Procedure before comtinuing work
18:35 Summary

This is a bit of a weird episode. I recorded it at a later time since some of my students were still struggling to actually play a game. To fix that, I made a video in which I show them how to play the first game that they are required to play for my class, Tim Fowers' excellent deck builder Paperback[www.fowers.games].

Learn to play a game of Paperback 0:20 Setting up the room
1:13 Loading the mod
2:26 How to find the rules in the mod
2:53 Getting the starter decks
3:13 Shuffle the decks
3:28 Drawing 5 cards simultaneously
4:45 Wildcards and scoring points
4:58 Buying cards with the points
5:30 The common card
5:45 Victory points
6:26 Chloe's first turn
8:12 Selecting your entire hand
11:04 When your deck runs
12:35 Chloe uses a P-card
13:10 Bob uses an N and an ES-card.

Whether you want to build a board game, design a physical game or create a paper prototype for a video game, you will often need assets, components of objects to capture the game state and communicate relevant information to your players. Thankfully, Tabletop Simulator has many options for all of the above, and it even adds a wonderful physics engine to them as well.

Creating a game board
Importing your images into Tabletop Simulator for cards, decks and figurines
Adding custom 3D models
Understanding the difference between local and cloud assets
Create the DrBo6 Custom Assets bag as a saved object
Combining 3D meshes with the attach tool 0:53 Overview of the components
1:31 Game boards and grids
3:22 Getting custom assets from other games on TTS
4:41 Making custom 2D assets of your own
9:59 Importing custom 3D models (with Blender)
10:39 DrBo6's Custom Assets Pack
14:00 Using saved objects to move assets across game rooms
15:04 Uploading custom images and meshes to your own Steam cloud
15:27 Combining assets with the attach tool

Once you have completed the conceptual design of your Tabletop Simulator game, you are ready to dress up your game room to make it look attractive and clearly communicate the game's rules and its components' affordances to your players. This tutorial will guide you through this process, after which it will show you how to publish the first version of your game to the Tabletop Simulator workshop.

Positioning game objects precisely
Setting up a snapping system
Communicating the game rules to your players
Uploading your mod to the Tabletop Simulator workshop
Visibility settings for mods 0:35 A look at a completed game (Dags of War)
1:48 General snapping using the grid
2:50 Detailed snapping with the snap tools
3:59 Precise positioning with the gizmo tools
7:58 Placing snapping points precisely and attaching them to objects
13:54 Adding information for your players (with the note, notebook and text tool)
15:29 Creating a rulebook in TTS using states
18:41 Uploading your game to the TTS Workshop
21:57 Setting the visibility of your mod
22:15 Getting the page URL in the Steam overlay to share your game

A lot of Tabletop Simulator's features are about trying to recreate the experience of playing board games in a virtual setting. However, when it comes to its built-in scripting capabilities, Tabletop Simulator leverages the processing power of computers to create board game experiences that you would not be able to do in the offline world. Some mods features scripts that will do the table setup in mere seconds, while other mods have rudimentary computer opponents built in. In any case, the programming aspects of Tabletop Simulator are part of what makes the software special, and no tutorial series would be complete without addressing them.

However, this class is not a programming class and its scope and time frame prevent me to go in-depth into programming Tabletop Simulator. This video is therefore just an introduction on how you can add code to Tabletop Simulator, with some helpful tips towards the end for those interested in giving it a closer look.

Adding code to your Tabletop Simulator mod to optimize gameplay
Knowing where to find the unofficial API documentation for Tabletop Simulator
Joining the online Tabletop Simulator community of Discord 1:04 Installing Atom from Atom.io
1:46 Importing LUA scripts in Atom
2:31 onLoad() and onUpdate()
3:24 The official documentation
3:40 The unofficial documentation (by the TTS community)
5:16 Start of the improvised coding example
10:44 Creating a button with createButton()
18:29 Printing "Hello World" when pressing the button
19:43 Accessing the deck of cards using its GUID
22:08 Shuffling a deck and dealing cards using code
24:17 Making a second button without losing our work
26:41 Taking a card from the top of the deck and moving it
29:19 Tip #1: Everything in TTS mods is open source
30:43 Tip #2: The difference between objects and containers
31:42 Tip #3: Don't try to turn a TTS mod into a video game
32:19 Tip #4: Don't put all your code in the onUpdate() main loop
33:05 Tip #5: Get a LUA tutorial and learn about LUA tables
33:25 Tip #6: Make good use of the GMNotes field
33:58 Tip #7: LUA can parse the JSON files of every object
34:54 MrStump's Tabletop Simulator Tutorials
36:01 Where to get help for TTS coding online

The final video in this series recaps how to get your game on the workshop and how to promote your game so that people can find it.

Submit your game to class 00:28 Uploading your game to the steam workshop (recap)
01:33 Using prefixes for your cloud manager files
02:53 Changing the visibility so people can find your mod
03:02 Getting people to play your mod
05:30 Submitting your games to class

I hope the series was helpful for you! To wrap everything up, I wanted to add some quick notes in case you might be interested in more of my work.

As I mentioned in the intro, I enjoy modding TTS and I use it to prototype my own games. Some of my mods might be inspiring if you are looking to learn more. My Dags of War mod was made as I learned everything I needed to make this tutorial series and I commented it heavily. If you want to see some scripting in action, it is a good resource. My Rising Sun Ultimate Edition mod uses some scripts made by a third party, but I also added my own code for a force calculator and even a utility-based AI. I am not really a programmer, but I do think that it is a cool feature worth checking out if you are into scripting TTS. I am putting more and more of my classes fully online and on YouTube. If you are interested in learning about how to make applied games - games for non-entertainment purposes - then check out my Applied Game Design series. This is actually the class for which I made this TTS tutorials. Finally, if you made it all the way down here, I am sure you don't mind that I do a quick plug for my game Brukel. It's a first-person exploration game based on the actual memories of my 92-year-old grandmother, told to players in her own voice. It has nothing to do with Tabletop Simulator, but I am really proud of it.

And looking at the thumbnail, I am pretty happy I got rid of that bun. Yikes...

Anyways, thanks for reading and checking out the tutorial!