Ludoya connects board gamers with events in their area. Whether you're looking for a casual game night or hosting your own, this page covers discovering, joining, and creating events. For scheduled games within events, see Scheduled Games. For venue-level operations (QR check-in, floor plans, forms), see Event Operations.
Discovering Events
Using the Location Chooser
- Go to Events in the main navigation
- Look for the Location Chooser at the top
- Enter your city
- Set your distance filter (e.g., "within 10 km")
Searching for Events
Use the search bar to find events by name, topic, or specific games. Results appear instantly.
Viewing Events
List View
- Scrollable list showing host, date, venue, attendee count, available seats
- Sort by relevance*, date, distance or alphabetically
- *Relevance is based on event popularity, distance, and date
Map View
- Events plotted on an interactive map
- Click markers for quick previews
- Great for finding events near a specific location
Event Types
Ludoya has four kinds of event:
Events (General Gatherings)
A general event is a container for an evening or day of gaming. It brings people together around a time and place, and can host multiple scheduled games inside it. On the Club or Business plan an event can also contain other events as sub-events, enabling multi-track gatherings such as conventions with beginner and advanced streams, or all-day club nights split into separate sessions. Examples: a weekly game night at a café, a regular club session, a convention day.
Scheduled Games
A scheduled game is a special kind of event focused on one specific board game. It has its own page, seat cap, time slot, and participant list. Scheduled games can exist on their own ("Looking for 3 players for Gloomhaven this Saturday") or be nested inside a parent event as part of a larger gathering. See Scheduled Games for full details.
Tournaments
A tournament is a competitive event where Ludoya generates the pairings, keeps live standings, and draws the bracket for you. See Tournaments for full details.
Play Booths
A play booth offers tables across time slots — players mark when they're free, and games are formed as availability overlaps. Built for convention demo areas, store open tables, and publisher booths. See Play Booths for full details.
Together, an event with scheduled games, sub-events, or a booth inside it lets attendees browse the full lineup and sign up for exactly what they want to play.
Attendance Modes
Separately from the event type, every event has an Attendance Mode chosen by the host — it controls whether and how people sign up, and is independent of visibility settings.
RSVP (Default)
The classic Ludoya flow described throughout this page: attendees join, choose a status, and appear in the attendee list. Capacity, reservations, minimum participants and the rest all apply. Every event uses this mode unless the host chooses otherwise.
No Sign-Ups
A purely informational listing — there's no RSVP button and no attendee list, and no one can see who's going. Attendees can still comment, react, share the event, see it on the map, and add it to their calendar. Useful for announcing something without collecting a headcount.
External Sign-Ups
The host sets a call-to-action label and link (e.g. "Register on Eventbrite") that replaces the RSVP button for visitors who aren't already on the attendee list. Clicking it opens the outside registration page in a new tab — public sign-ups happen off Ludoya. Behind the scenes, the host can still manage an attendee list manually: inviting people, reserving spots, marking who showed up, scanning QR codes, and exporting attendee data. Everything that works off that attendee list keeps working too — games at the event, raffles, custom forms, and experience levels. If you were invited or had a spot reserved for you, you can still respond with your own RSVP (confirm, decline, or leave) — it's only visitors with no invitation who see the external link instead.
Ludoya Tickets
Sell paid admission on Ludoya itself, with checkout on the event page and a QR ticket per attendee. Available to eligible groups — see Ludoya Tickets.
Tournaments and play booths both need an attendee list — one to generate pairings, the other to seat people at tables — so they can use RSVP or External Sign-Ups (the host manages the list), but not No Sign-Ups.
Two things to know about External Sign-Ups: capacity figures there are informational only, since sign-ups happen off Ludoya, and reservations and minimum-participant counts are RSVP-only features.
The Event Page
Host Information
- Host name and a link to their profile
Visibility & Access
- Public — anyone on Ludoya can find it and join
- Only friends — for events you host personally, limited to your mutual follows
- Only group members — for group events, limited to that group
- Only invited — nobody sees it unless the host invites them
Separately from all of that, a host can tick Anyone with the link can access, which lets people reach the event through a shared link even when it isn't otherwise visible. Public events are always reachable by link.
Location Details
- Venue name, full address, interactive map, and distance from your location with directions link
Date, Time & Recurrence
- Specific date, time, and timezone
- Recurring events (Player tier) repeat every week or every few weeks on a chosen weekday, shown as "Weekly on Monday" or "Every 3 weeks on Monday until 14 December". Hosts can have new occurrences created as drafts so each one gets a final look before it goes live
- Attendees can join the whole series rather than one night at a time, and leave it again just as easily
Images & Description
- Host-uploaded photos and a description of what to expect
Attendees Section
- Total spots, remaining spots, and a list of current attendees
- Once every spot is taken the join button reads Full and can't be tapped. General events don't have a waitlist you can queue on — that exists on scheduled games, where a full table offers Join wait list. Keep an eye on the event, or ask the host to reserve you a spot
- Shown on RSVP and External Sign-Ups events — on External events it lists the people the host has added, and visitors see the external registration button in place of the RSVP button. No Sign-Ups events skip this section entirely
Social Thread
- Attendees can comment, ask questions, and discuss
- Like and reply to create threaded conversations
- Events automatically appear in followers' feeds, the group's feed, and local discovery
Scheduled Games & Sub-Events Within
Each scheduled game appears as a subsection showing the game, player count, roles, experience level, estimated duration, and a join button. See Scheduled Games for the full breakdown.
On the Club or Business plan, events can also contain sub-events — fully-featured nested events that appear under the parent. Each sub-event has its own page, attendees, and schedule, and can itself host scheduled games. This is ideal for multi-track gatherings where each track needs its own registration, capacity, and lineup.
Games at the Event
A meetup carries a shared list of the games that will be in the room, so people can see what's coming and say what they'd like to play. It appears on RSVP and External Sign-Ups events — not on No Sign-Ups events, which don't track attendance — and it's specific to meetups rather than tournaments or booths.
Who adds games
- Anyone attending can add a title from the catalog, saying they'll bring their copy
- Organizers can additionally bulk-add straight from the group's own collection, which beats adding a shop's shelf one game at a time
How a copy can be used
Whoever brings a game says whether it's:
- Free to play — pick it up and start whenever you like
- Owner present — only playable while the person who brought it is around, which suits heavy rules-teaches and demo copies
Organizers can also flag a game as official, meaning the event provides it. That's separate from the two options above — an official game is still either free to play or owner-present.
Availability and booking
Each copy shows when it's actually free, worked out from the event's schedule and the owner's own hours, minus anything already booked on it. You don't reserve a copy directly — you book it by scheduling a game on it, which creates a table other people can join and takes that slot out of the copy's availability.
"What do you want to play"
Swipe through the lineup and react to each game: 🤩 Need to play, 😊 Interested, 😐 Maybe, or 🤢 Pass. Prefer a list? There's a list view, filters for popular, quick, easy, new, or what your friends want, and an undo if you swipe too fast.
Organizers see the results aggregated on each game's card, weighted by enthusiasm, so it's obvious which titles deserve a scheduled game — and which nobody actually wants.
Social Thread
- Attendees can comment, ask questions, and discuss
- Like and reply to create threaded conversations
- Events automatically appear in followers' feeds, the group's feed, and local discovery
Joining an Event
This section describes RSVP events. No Sign-Ups events have no RSVP button — they're for browsing only. External Sign-Ups events use an outside registration link in place of the RSVP button for visitors with no invitation, but if the host already invited you or reserved you a spot, you can still respond with your own RSVP (confirm, decline, or leave) the same way described here.
RSVP Statuses
- Going — confirmed attendance
- Maybe — interested but uncommitted
- Can't Go — can't attend
- Invited — the host invited you (pending your response)
- Reserved — the organizer has held a spot for you
How to Join
- Go to the event or scheduled game page
- Tap Attend — or Register on a tournament — and you're in
- That button then shows your status; tap it again to switch to Maybe, Can't go, or leave entirely
If a scheduled game is full you'll see Join wait list instead, and you're notified if a seat frees up.
Signing Up Without an Account
Not on Ludoya? You can still join from an event link: enter your name and email on the event page and you'll get a confirmation. No account needed.
Calendar Export
Add events to your calendar:
- iCalendar — download a .ics file for Outlook, Apple Calendar, or other apps
- Google Calendar — added instantly, syncs across all your devices
Hosting an Event
Creating an Event
- Go to Events and click Organize Event. You can also do it from a group or organization page if you have permission.
- Enter a title, description, and upload images
- Set date, start time, timezone, and duration
- Set recurrence if it repeats (Player tier)
- Enter the venue name and address — Ludoya maps it automatically
- Choose visibility — and, if you like, allow access by link
- Set capacity and a minimum number of participants, so the page can show "3 more needed" until the night is viable
- Optionally allow attendees to reserve spots for other people, cap how many each may reserve, and decide whether anonymous guests (a plus-one headcount) are allowed
Note that each person also controls this from their side: if someone has restricted who may invite them or reserve a seat for them, that preference wins over your event's settings. See Privacy & Visibility.
Not ready to publish? Save as draft, and the event stays hidden until you hit Publish.
Permissions
Three settings, each set to Anyone, Attendees, or Organizers:
- Who can take games — who may claim a copy from the games list
- Who can schedule games — who may add a table to the lineup
- Who can invite people — who may bring others along
Managing Attendees
- View who's going, maybe, invited, and reserved
- Invite specific people, reserve spots for them, or remove them
- Rename a guest or edit someone's guest count when plans change
- Mark as no-show after the event (and undo it) to track attendance reliability on player profiles
- On External Sign-Ups events, these tools still work even though there's no public RSVP button — sign-ups happen off Ludoya, but you invite, reserve, remove, mark attendance, and scan QR codes the same way
Event Lifecycle
- Draft — written but not published yet; only you can see it
- Open — live and accepting sign-ups
- Full — every spot taken
- In Progress — happening right now
- Closed — sign-ups paused, and you can reopen them
- Canceled — attendees are notified, and you can restore it
- Finished — it's happened; the final attendance stays on the page
On the Business tier, sign-ups can also open and close automatically at times you set — handy for early-bird windows, or for keeping registration shut until you've announced the event.
Editing an Event
Click Edit on your event page to update any details. Large changes notify attendees automatically.
Tournaments (Club Tier)
A tournament is its own event type, hosted by a group. From the group page choose Organize Tournament, pick Swiss, mixer, or single/double elimination, and Ludoya builds each round's pairings, keeps live standings with configurable tiebreakers, and draws the bracket as matches resolve. Every pairing becomes a scheduled game your players report like any other.
See Tournaments for the formats, tiebreakers, and how to run the day.
Raffles (Club Tier)
Give away games and prizes to your attendees with a live, animated draw everyone can watch. Raffles are available on RSVP and External Sign-Ups events — not on No Sign-Ups events, which don't track attendance.
The event has to belong to a group, and it's the host group's plan that unlocks it — your personal subscription doesn't cover an event you run under a club.
Setting Up a Raffle
- Open your event and choose New raffle
- Optionally give it a title and description, then add your prizes — each can have more than one winner if you're giving away several copies
- Open the raffle so attendees can see what's up for grabs
- Lock and start when you're ready. Locking captures the entrants — every confirmed and reserved attendee, guests included — and freezes the prize list
Drawing Winners
Draw one prize at a time, with a live animated reveal everyone in the room can watch. If a winner isn't there, void that draw and pick again. You can skip a prize, reset the whole thing and start over, or complete the raffle when you're done.
Results stay on the event afterwards, so people can always see who won what.
Tips
As an attendee: RSVP early, declare your games, show up, and be social in the event thread.
As a host: Write clear descriptions, schedule games before the event, engage attendees in the thread, mark attendance afterward, and thank your community.