Legal & privacy

What Set Up is

Set Up is a free website that reads a public BoardGameGeek collection and helps the people at one table pick a game to play. It is made by Somebody Decide, a small software studio operated by RapidShift, LLC. It has no accounts and never asks for a password. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by BoardGameGeek, LLC or any game publisher.

Privacy: what happens with your data

What you type in

One or two BoardGameGeek usernames, how many people are playing, how long you have and a weight preference. When you press Go, our server asks BoardGameGeek's public XML API for those users' collections — the games they marked as owned (and, for a guest, as want to play), with their own public ratings and logged play counts — and for public facts about those games. Opening a shared link (/p/…) reads the same public collection to count the games that fit. We can only see what BoardGameGeek already shows to everyone.

Someone else's username

You may enter a friend's BoardGameGeek username. Only their public collection is read, for the single purpose of picking a game together, and it is cached only as described below. Ask before you enter a friend.

Server cache

BoardGameGeek's answers are cached on our host so a group reloading the page does not hammer BGG: a collection (or BGG's "no such user" answer) for up to 20 minutes per username; facts about a game — the player-count and age polls, weight, categories, mechanics, rank and box-art addresses — for 30 days, because they rarely change; and the picture generated for a shared link (a username and a count of games) for up to 24 hours. Entries past their lifetime are ignored and deleted by a daily sweep. The game-facts cache is also what the game pages and lists on this site are built from; it holds facts about games, never about people. There is no database of people and there are no user records.

In your browser

What makes the tool useful between visits lives in your browser only and never leaves your device: su.form (the usernames, player count, time and weight you last used), su.recent (your last three shelves), su.sound, su.party, su.wheel, su.visits, and per shelf su.<shelf>.vetoes, .short (shortlist), .hist (roll history), .max, .filters and .msbest (your best Mines time) in local storage; the Table helper's scorepad, turn order and timer are kept in session storage as su.table and disappear when you close the tab. File ▸ Empty vetoes and File ▸ Clear shortlist & history remove those lists, the landing's forget link removes your recent shelves, and clearing this site's data in your browser removes everything. Set Up sets no cookies.

Usage counts

To learn which features people use we count events (page path, event name such as "bracket started", whether the browser is a phone, and the day). No IP address, user agent, cookie, username or identifier is stored with a count; counts cannot be linked to a person. Browsers that send Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control are not counted at all.

Hosting and third parties

The site runs on Netlify, whose edge servers keep standard request logs (including IP addresses) for a short time under Netlify's privacy policy. Box art is loaded by your browser straight from BoardGameGeek's image servers (cf.geekdo-images.com). "BGG page" links go to boardgamegeek.com and "How to play" links open a YouTube search for the game's name — links only, nothing is embedded. When you follow a link you leave this site and that site's policy applies. The optional Internet Radio program streams audio directly from Radio Paradise or SomaFM, independent listener-supported stations; opening it is your choice and their policies apply to the stream.

Your rights

Because nothing is stored per person beyond a short cache of public BoardGameGeek data, there is little to export or delete, but you can ask what is cached for a username or have it purged early — use the contact below. If you are in the EU/UK: the legal basis is legitimate interest in running the tool you asked to use; the cache is the only processing, and it expires as described above.

Children

Set Up is not directed at children under 13 and knowingly collects nothing from them.

Terms of use

Set Up is provided free, "as is" and without warranty of any kind. It may be wrong (a poll that moved, a play time that is optimistic, a collection BGG had not finished exporting), it may be slow, and it may go away. Use it for what it is: a way to settle "what do we play?" faster. Don't use it to harass anyone, don't automate requests against /api/, and don't try to break it. We may change or discontinue any feature at any time. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for anything that happens as a result of using the site, including but not limited to the outcome of a bracket or a game of Diplomacy.

Party mode

Party mode adds a spin-the-wheel penalty when one side of the table overrules the other's bracket pick. The Drinks wheel is a joke for adults of legal drinking age who choose to turn it on; the app asks first, and the Dares wheel has no alcohol in it at all. Nothing on this site encourages you to drink: swap in water, know your limit, look after each other, and never drive afterwards. You are responsible for what you do at your own game night.

Advertising and commercial links

Set Up carries no advertising, no affiliate links, no sponsorships and no tip jar. BoardGameGeek licenses its XML API for non-commercial use, and that is how this program runs. If that ever changes it will be because BoardGameGeek granted a commercial licence in writing, and this section will say so first.

Attributions, trademarks and the 1995 look

Powered by BGG. Game data comes from BoardGameGeek through its XML API, under the XML API terms of use: non-commercial use, displayed and filtered but never modified, and never used to train anything. BoardGameGeek and BGG are trademarks of BoardGameGeek, LLC. Game titles and box art belong to their publishers and are shown for identification only, linked to their BoardGameGeek pages. The demo shelf holds box facts only (names, years, player ranges, play times and a one-line description of each game).

Set Up's appearance is an affectionate homage to the desktop computers of 1995. It is a parody and a fan tribute, not a Microsoft product: every window, bevel, icon and cursor was drawn from scratch for this site, every sound is synthesized in your browser rather than copied from any operating system, and no Microsoft code, fonts, images or audio are included. Microsoft, Windows and Windows 95 are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. The little programs on the desktop (a mine-clearing game, a "defrag" animation, a dial-up tone, a screen saver) are original jokes in that style. If you are a rights holder and believe something here crosses a line, tell us and it will be fixed or removed promptly.

Radio Paradise and SomaFM are independent, listener-supported radio stations with no connection to this site; if you enjoy them, support them directly.

Contact, corrections and takedowns

Privacy questions, cache-purge requests, corrections and rights-holder notices: a public contact address is being set up and will appear here; this page is regenerated on every build. Include the page URL.

Changes

This page is regenerated with every build; the "page updated" date at the bottom is when its text last changed. Material changes to how data is handled will be noted here.

This product is licensed to: a table of friends who could not decide. Set Up 95 — a Somebody Decide program — how it works · back to the app.

Set Up is a free tool: type a BoardGameGeek username, say how many are playing and how long you have, and it ranks the games on that shelf that fit tonight — then a roll, a bracket or the wheel settles it. Game data from BoardGameGeek's XML API, displayed as BGG publishes it. Powered by BGG — not affiliated with or endorsed by BoardGameGeek. page updated 2026-09-23 · a Somebody Decide program. How it works · Legal & privacy · Demo shelf