Set Up

What board game do we play? Your shelf and the table in, one game out.

Type the BoardGameGeek username of whoever owns the games tonight, say how many of you there are and how long you have. Set Up keeps the games that actually fit — by BGG's own best-player-count poll, play time and weight — ranks them, and settles it with a weighted roll, a bracket or the wheel.

How many are playing?
How long do we have?
How heavy?

The username is the one in your BoardGameGeek profile address (boardgamegeek.com/user/…), and the games need to be marked Own in that collection. Nothing about you is stored beyond a short cache of what BoardGameGeek returns; vetoes and shortlists stay in your browser.

What you get

  • Tonight — the games on the shelf that fit your player count and your time, ranked by how well that count plays (BGG's poll), the owner's rating and how long the box has sat unplayed. Roll, veto, shortlist.
  • Bracket — 4 to 32 games that fit, seeded by that ranking, same-category first-round matchups. The optional wheel lets the other side of the table overrule a pick — at a price.
  • Shelf — the whole collection, sortable, with never-played badges. Add a guest to see both shelves, what they could bring, and which of your games they want to play.
  • Compare — with a guest: overlap, taste by category, and the games you both rate 8 or more.
  • Table — who goes first (spin for it), a turn timer and a scorepad.

Questions people ask

What board game should we play tonight?
One that fits the people at the table and the time you have. Set Up reads the host's BoardGameGeek collection, keeps the games whose box covers your player count and whose play time fits, ranks them by how well that count plays in BGG's poll and by the owner's rating, then rolls. The whole formula.
What is the best player count for a board game?
BoardGameGeek asks players to vote, for every player count, whether a game is Best, Recommended or Not Recommended. Set Up uses the winning answer at each count — so a game that says 2–5 on the box but is voted Not Recommended at 2 is not suggested for two unless you ask.
Do I need a BoardGameGeek account?
The host's games need to be on BoardGameGeek, marked as owned. Nobody logs in here: Set Up only reads the public collection for the username you type. A guest can add theirs to see what they could bring.
What is the demo shelf?
About sixty well-known games described only by what is printed on the box — players, time, year. It shows how Set Up works without a BoardGameGeek collection; ratings and polls only ever come from BoardGameGeek, never from us.
Is it free?
Free, with no account, no ads and no affiliate links. Game data comes from BoardGameGeek under its non-commercial terms.
Does it know when we last played something?
Only roughly. BoardGameGeek's collection export has no last-played date, so Set Up uses the number of plays logged and the date the collection entry last changed — the "dusty" boost is a nudge, not a diary.

Powered by BGG. Game data from BoardGameGeek's XML API; Set Up is not affiliated with or endorsed by BoardGameGeek. It is a fan homage to a 1995 desktop, not a Microsoft product; Windows is a trademark of Microsoft. Set Up is a program from Somebody Decide. How it works · Legal & privacy

See what is on the demo shelf (63 games, box facts).

of the games on fit in . Roll, veto, or shortlist; change the table below.

Players, time & filters
Players: Time:

Runners-up

Best fits tonight

Shortlist

Rolled here before

Ready