What pieces are
Pieces are the main interactive game objects on the table. They carry the actual playable state of a game: faces, stack order, token geometry, die results, counters, timers, and container contents.
How the system uses pieces
The system uses pieces as the highest-interaction entity family:
- pieces can be moved, copied, rotated, locked, and deleted
- many piece kinds have kind-specific actions such as draw, deal, shuffle, roll, count, or dispense
- pieces are drawn above spaces and annotations
- imported components are normalized into piece behavior instead of running as a separate entity system
Pieces resting on other pieces
A small piece sitting on a larger piece travels with it. Drag a board and the cards and tokens on it come along; drag a card and the token on it comes too. It works through layers, so a token on a card on a mat moves with the mat.
A piece counts as resting on another when all three are true:
- it sits above the other piece, drawn on top of it
- it is smaller than the other piece in both directions
- it is completely inside the other piece's outline, with nothing hanging over the edge
The outline is the one you see, so a turned board carries what is on it and nothing beside it. For a deck, only the top card counts, not the edge of the deck; for an open book, both pages count.
The same happens when the table moves something for you: a space moving its contents, a sequence step moving a card, a row of cards closing up after one leaves, or a card sliding into its slot when you drop it into a row or grid. For these, the table goes by what each piece was put down on: a piece you drop onto a card, add onto one from the piece browser, or that is dealt onto one in a space, goes with that card. A piece that is moved off it, or that was pushed there by something else without being put down on it, stays where it is until you drop it there.
A locked piece stays put on whatever it rests on, so it moves with the board under it. You still cannot drag a locked piece on its own. A piece another player is holding, or one in an area you cannot reach, is left where it is, and the board you move does not slide over the top of it.
This happens automatically. There is no setting to turn it on or off for a piece.
Where new pieces land
A piece made from another one lands right beside it, to its right, whatever already lies there; the new piece is drawn on top.
- Copy puts the copy beside the original, with the same name. Copying several at once cascades them: each further copy lands a little down and to the right of the last.
- Paste keeps the pasted pieces arranged as they were, centred on where you paste.
- A piece added from the Add Entities panel lands where you dropped it, or at the spot the panel names; several at once cascade from there.
- A card drawn onto the table, cards split off into a new deck, a token handed out from a bowl, a piece drawn from a bag, and a bowl made from a piece land beside the deck, bowl, bag or piece they came from.
A new piece that would land past the table's edge is kept on the table.
A copy or a paste shows on the table the moment you make it, with the cards, layers and spaces it brings. If the table refuses it (it is full, for example), it is taken away again and you are told why.