How to Playtest Your Card Game Online With Tabletop Simulator

Local playtest groups are wonderful, but they're small, and they get used to your game. Tabletop Simulator opens your prototype to testers anywhere, including the strangers whose first impressions you most need. Getting your cards into it is easier than it looks.

How Tabletop Simulator reads a deck

Tabletop Simulator doesn't load card images one by one. It loads a deck sheet: one big image with the card faces in a grid, up to 10 columns by 7 rows, plus a back image. It cuts the sheet into cards itself.

Two details trip people up:

• The last slot of the grid is used to show cards that are face down in someone's hand, so a full sheet holds 69 cards, not 70.
• You have to tell it the grid's width, height and number of cards when you import.

Step 1: Make the deck sheets

If your cards are in Decklab AI, export to Tabletop Simulator. You get the deck sheets, a back, a saved object, and notes on how to import them. It's free, like every export.

If you have card images from elsewhere, the free deck sheet maker builds the sheets in your browser:

Tabletop Simulator deck sheet maker

Turn your card images into Tabletop Simulator deck sheets: up to 69 cards a sheet with the hidden-card slot left free, a back, PNG or JPEG, and a saved object that loads the whole deck in one click. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

It leaves the hidden-card slot free, starts a new sheet after 69 cards, and gives a smaller deck a smaller grid.

PNG or JPEG? PNG is sharpest. JPEG is several times smaller, so it uploads and loads faster for everyone at the table; at 200 DPI the difference is hard to see.

Step 2: Import into Tabletop Simulator

There are two ways:

The saved object (fastest for you). Unzip into your Saved Objects folder and click the deck under Objects > Saved Objects. It loads the whole deck at once, each card named, with the right number of copies. It points at images on your computer, so other players won't see them until you upload the images and change the links.

The custom deck (best for groups). Open Objects > Components > Custom > Deck, choose a sheet as the face and your back, and type the width, height and number of cards from the import notes. Tabletop Simulator can upload the images to your Steam Cloud so everyone sees them.

Step 3: Set up the table

• Lay out the play area: decks, a discard spot, any shared market.
• Add tokens and a board if you have them. Tabletop Simulator's custom tile and token objects take any image; a quick sheet from the token maker or grid generator works well:

Token and counter sheet maker

Make printable tokens and counters from your images or typed labels: pick round, square or hex, the size and how many of each, and download a print-and-play PDF with cut outlines, or a PNG of each token. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

Hex and square grid generator

Make a printable hex or square grid for a game board, map or play mat: pick the board or paper size, the cell size, orientation, offset, labels and colours, and download a PDF (split over pages for big boards) or a PNG. Free, in your browser, with no sign-up.

• Put the rules somewhere visible, as a custom PDF object or a link in the room description.
• Save the whole table, so every session starts from the same setup.

Step 4: Run a useful remote session

Remote testing loses the body language you'd see across a real table, so make up for it:

• Use voice. Text chat misses most of what you need to hear.
• Don't teach unless you have to. Point testers at the rulebook and watch where they get stuck. Every question is a missing sentence.
• Record (with permission). Rewatching a session finds problems you missed live.
• Ask the same three questions every time: what was the most interesting decision, when were you bored, and what would you change?

Step 5: Update between sessions

After a session, change your cards and rebuild the sheets. If the cards come from data (in Decklab AI or the quick card maker), that's a few cell edits and a re-export. Keep a version number on the card back or in the deck name so testers know which version they played.

Do a solo run first

Before inviting anyone, play a few hands yourself. Decklab AI's playtest table deals your real cards in the browser, which catches broken cards before you spend testers' time on them.