Hosting a night

The three screens

There's a short film of all this at the top of this page — the whole thing end to end, from signing in to a live round with all three screens going. Two minutes, and it saves a lot of reading.

Every game works the same way, so once you've run one you can run any of them. There are three screens, and the whole thing clicks once you've got these straight:

1. The players' phones. Your punters scan a QR code and land straight in the game. Nothing to install, no account, no login. This is the link you share with the room.
2. Your console. Your phone or laptop. This drives the show — it holds the answers and the controls. This link is private. Never share it with the room, or they can see the answers and run your game.
3. The big screen. Cast this to the venue's TV or projector. It shows the join QR, the action, and the winners. Your venue's logo is the star of it.

One game has a fourth. Beat the Local gives you a separate Local link for whoever is playing the opponent — see below. Everything else runs on the three.

Setting up a night

1. Log in at front-bar-games-production.up.railway.app and go to your account.
2. Pick your game and create a session. You'll get your three links straight away.
3. Hit Email me these details and they land in your inbox — handy if you're setting the big screen up from a different device to the one you're hosting on.
4. Open the big screen link on the venue's TV (or cast it), and the console link on your own phone or laptop.
5. Let the room scan the QR on the big screen, and away you go.

Do this bit before the room fills up, not while forty regulars watch you squint at a laptop.

Real games, rehearsals and demos

Every game runs in one of three modes, chosen when you create it — and every one of them needs an account. No account, no game: if you don't have one yet, register your interest and we'll set you up.

• A real game uses one credit. Clean screens, full pack library, everything on.
• A rehearsal is free and doesn't touch your credits. It's the full game with a REHEARSAL watermark across every screen, for practising to an empty room before you do it in front of anyone.
• A demo is also free — even with no credits left you can always run one. Demo games carry a DEMO watermark on every screen, play the starter question pack only, and there's a daily limit. It's for kicking the tyres, not for running a night — the watermark makes sure of that.

The watermark is on every screen — the big screen, the phones and the console — so nobody in a room can mistake a practice run or a demo for the real thing.

Getting the big screen up

Open the big-screen link in a browser on whatever's driving the TV, and put it full screen. If you're casting from a laptop, cast the tab, not the whole desktop — nobody needs to see your notifications.

In Last One Standing, the Open display button in the console header still opens the board in a new window with one click. Use the arrow beside it when you want to Cast to a screen, Share the display link with another device, or explicitly Open in new window. If direct casting is unavailable, the display opens ready for your browser's Cast or AirPlay menu.

The QR code sits on the big screen in the lobby, so latecomers can always join by looking up (as long as the game hasn't locked them out — some games do).

Pick the show's look

Every game can wear one of eight visual themes — Studio (hot, lit and glossy — the default on every board), Broadcast, Marquee (a cabaret stage ringed in chasing bulbs), Aurora, Arena, Neon, Matrix and Sunset. Pick one from the selector in your console header and every screen in the room re-skins together, live — the big screen, the players' phones and your console all switch at once. Change it any time, even mid-game; it's pure look, it never touches the state of play.

A theme changes colour. The boards also have their own shape and motion — the flap tiles, the gloss, the turning board — and those stay whichever theme you pick, so they always look like themselves, just lit differently.

Sound

Sound comes out of your console — the device you're hosting from. If you want the room to hear the countdown beeps and the music, that's the device to plug into the PA.

The players' phones and the big screen stay silent on purpose: eighty phones beeping slightly out of sync with each other would be a nightmare. There's a 🔊 toggle in your console header if you'd rather run it silent.

There's a shared set of sounds across the games — right, wrong, buzz, lock-in, reveal, drumroll, and the win and lose stings. They're real recordings, so a correct answer sounds like a game show rather than a calculator. If a file hasn't loaded yet the game falls back to a generated tone, so a slow connection makes it plainer, never silent.

Beat the Local has its own sound on top of that. A driving bed under the cash builder, a heavier one under the final chase, a clunk when each side locks in, a rising note on each of the three reveal beats.

The moments that belong to this game and no other are real recordings now. Your player and The Local have their own steps — The Local's is heavier and shorter, because it repeats. The three offers land on a sweep. And the two endings finally sound like endings: getting caught is a hit, getting home is a fanfare, where both used to play the same generic win and lose sound every other game in the catalogue uses. That bed now follows the clock, not the button you pressed to start it. Pause the cash builder or the final chase and the bed stops with it; resume and it comes back. If you open the console on a second device mid-round, or your laptop reloads, the bed picks up where the round is instead of leaving the clock ticking in silence.

The bed under the two chases is still generated live, so it can run at the round's own tempo and loop for as long as you need without a seam.

Bingo has its own sounds now. A ball leaving the cage gets a soft knock and two rising notes — kept under half a second on purpose, because you're about to talk over it sixty times a night. A player tapping BINGO knocks twice on your console, so you look up before the room has finished shouting. Your BINGO! and NO BINGO buttons carry the verdict: a rising major run for a good card, something short and flat for a false call. Switching between five-in-a-row and full house, or starting a new game, gets a two-note "here we go".

Live Vote and Badge Draw have sound too. The vote opens with a sting, then a drumroll under the leaderboard build and the win as the crown lands. The draw is a drumroll while the badge number is up and a win when someone claims it — and a flatter sound if the claim window runs out with nobody coming forward. Both use the same house kit as everything else, and both now have the console/big-screen selector, so a draw can come out of the PA rather than a laptop.

Who's That? has sound too, which completes the set. Each photo lands on the big screen with a sting, the reveal is the correct sound when somebody in the room got it and the wrong one when nobody did, and the final leaderboard gets the win. Every game now has sound.

Lucky Punter's wheel is a real one now. It used to be a synthesised whirr; it is a recording of an actual spinning wheel, and it runs for as long as you let the draw run — there is no point where it restarts or takes a breath. The names still land on the same sound as every other reveal in the catalogue.

The right-answer chime is a struck marimba. It used to be a synthesised one, and it sounded it. You'll hear it wherever a right answer gets marked — the cash builder and the final chase, and when you mark an answer right in the expert round. The wrong-answer sound sits at exactly the same level as it, deliberately: a miss should never land bigger than a hit.

Running the head-to-head

You release the offers. When the cash builder ends the board shows only what they built — the number the room has watched climb all round. The Local's two offers are not on it, and are not sent to anyone's phone, until you press Put them on the board. Set the numbers first, then release them when the offer is actually made. Nobody can take an offer they haven't been shown.

The reveal is three beats, and you drive them. Their answer, then the right answer, then The Local's. Each waits for you, so you can hold the room as long as it's worth holding — which is the whole point when somebody is one wrong answer from being caught. The console names the beat you're about to show. If you'd rather it ran itself, the old behaviour is still there as a setting.

The Weakest Link's sounds

All of it is in the sound studio now — the round music, the end-of-round sting, voting closing, money banking, somebody going out, the crown. Three moments that never had a sound of their own now do: voting opening, the vote being revealed, and the walk of shame. They start on stand-ins from the shared kit so you hear something from the first night; give them something of their own in the studio.

Every game goes by its own name here. The head-to-head is Beat the Local, and the same goes for the rest — on the big screen, on your console, on the join links your room gets, and in the browser tab. If you ever see a game called something that isn't a Front Bar Games name, that's a bug and worth telling us about.

The crowning is a real fanfare now — trumpets and french horns, where it used to be a synthesised one. You'll hear it when Last Drinks crowns its winner, and at the end of Survey Showdown. Like everything else, it's in the studio if you'd rather something else.

The Bar Tab

The Bar Tab has its three moments now, where they were borrowed sounds before. Voting opening is a dissonant pulse, the reveal is a stab as the tally goes up, and the walk out is a slow descending sting — long enough to actually walk to. Stern rather than comic: this isn't the sad-trombone school of being sent home. All three are in the studio if you want something else.

The badge draw

The prize does not have to be money. Type whatever's on offer — a bar tab, a meat tray, two t-shirts — and that's what the room sees. Leave It's cash, and it rolls over ticked and it behaves as it always has: a dollar figure that grows every week nobody claims it. Untick it and there's no dollar figure anywhere, and nothing quietly growing in the background.

The claim window is at least a minute, whatever you set it to — long enough for someone at the back to hear their number, find their badge and get to the front. What's on offer shows on the claim screen in your own words, so a door prize never gets quoted a price.

Call it whatever your room calls it. What it's called sets the title across the top of the big screen — Members' Draw, Meat Raffle, Friday Jackpot. Change it mid-night and every screen follows straight away.

You can put a draw time up too. Set one and the big screen counts down to it on a flip clock, and the last minute turns gold so the room knows it's nearly on. Nothing happens on its own — the clock reaching zero just says it's time, and you still press Draw. Leave the time empty and there's no clock at all: the screen gives that space to the prize instead, which is the board you want on a night where you're just calling one number after another.

The buttons stay under your thumb. Whatever you've scrolled to, the bar across the bottom carries only what you can do right now — Draw on its own before a draw, then Winner claimed and Reset board with the claim clock sitting above them once one is running. You never have to scroll back up past the settings to run the night.

Reset board asks twice. It clears the draw off the big screen and can't be undone, and it sits next to the button you press when someone wins, so the first tap only arms it: it reads Tap again to clear for four seconds, then goes back to normal on its own.

If the connection drops, the claim clock is marked stale. It keeps counting on your phone, because the deadline is fixed — but the big screen has stopped hearing you, so the console stops promising the two still agree. Settings lock too, so nothing you type gets thrown away when it reconnects. See If the console loses the connection for the rest.

Your venue's logo gets the screen while the room waits. Pick it under Venue branding and it sits large above the countdown between draws, then steps back to a credit under the number once a draw is actually running.

The number lands one digit at a time, and the last digit lands first. The reel always shows as many columns as your highest badge number, so a short number can't be guessed from the count before it lands — the spare columns roll like the rest and then close up. Each digit rolls on its own column, and they stop right to left so the big one drops last — a leading digit arriving first would tell everyone holding a low badge they'd lost before the rest of the number had even stopped. This way the whole room is still in it until the final column.

A claim gets its own beat. Press Winner claimed and the big screen goes to the badge number and what they've won for a few seconds before settling back to the result, so the room has a moment to react rather than the screen just quietly changing.

The drumroll now runs for as long as the randomiser does. It used to be a single roll that ran out before the number landed, leaving the room watching digits flick in silence. It loops under the spin and stops on the landing, where the number gets the same hit Last Drinks uses when it announces who's out — the one that means something just happened.

The big screens have lost the floating emojis. In their place is a slow drift of colour in your room's own skin — it keeps the screen alive between moments without putting clip art on a two-metre projector, and it swells for a beat when a number lands.

The space bar runs the show

Most consoles get run on a laptop or a tablet on the bar, and when you're watching the room rather than the screen, reaching for a trackpad to press one button is the wrong ask.

Space presses whatever the main button is right now. On the badge draw that's Draw a badge before a draw and Winner claimed during one; on a quiz it walks the question — ask, close answers, reveal, next — one press at a time. You never pick which: the console only ever offers one main action at a moment, and Space presses that one. The key is printed on the button itself so you can see what it'll do before you do it.

Every console has it. The one thing Space never does is choose between two answers: on the survey board a strike and awarding the pot are both real calls, and on beat the local so are RIGHT and WRONG, so those stay on the pointer where you have to mean it.

Nothing that clears a board is on a key. Reset board, Clear board and anything else that throws work away stays on the pointer, where the two-step guard is. A key you can catch with your elbow shouldn't be able to wipe a live game.

It stays out of your way. Typing a team name, a prize or a question? Space is a space. It only acts when you're not in a field, it won't fire while the connection is down, and on a tablet the key hints don't show at all, because there's no keyboard to hint at.

If the console loses the connection

Your console talks to the big screen over a live connection, and on venue wifi that can drop for a few seconds. When it does, a red bar comes across the top of the console and counts how long it's been out, and every button and field goes dim and stops responding — a tap that can't reach the screen shouldn't look like one that can.

Your place is kept. Scores, the question you're on, the board as it stands: all of it stays on screen behind the bar, so a two-second blip doesn't throw you out of the show. Links still work, so Open the big screen is still there if you want to go and look at it. Everything comes back on its own the moment the connection does — there's nothing to press.

Every console does this now. Two of them — the knockout quiz and the bar tab — do it a slightly different way, putting a card over the whole console until they're back, which comes to the same thing: you can see it's out, and you can't press anything that wouldn't land.

Your account page

It's your games and nothing else now. Tonight's show is the page — getting back into a game you've already made is one glance, with no scrolling past anything.

Every game has a ▶ Big screen button next to it. It throws the display straight onto a new window — no copying a link and pasting it into the other screen. The link is still there to copy if the projector is driven by a different machine.

Your plan usage and your logos live under your name in the bar at the top. Click it and they drop down, along with your details and Sign out. They're things you check now and then rather than every time, so they no longer sit between you and a running game.

One bar across the top, not two. Your name, your games-this-month count and Sign out live in the site menu now — the count is a chip up there, so you can see where you're up to without scrolling back.

The sound studio

You can change any sound in any game yourself, at /studio. It lists every cue the games can play — a right answer, a drumroll, the doors, the Chaser's step, the wheel — with what each one is for and, importantly, which games use it. A lot of them are shared on purpose: a right answer sounds the same wherever it happens, so a room hears one vocabulary across the night. The studio tells you what else you're changing before you change it.

Build a pool to assign from in two ways. Search finds public-domain (CC0) sounds you can hear before you take them — safe to use commercially with no credit needed, and that filter isn't optional. Upload takes your own mp3, wav, ogg or m4a; anything you upload is yours to be sure of, because the licence check only covers what comes from the search.

Either way it gets levelled to match the rest of the kit on the way in, so a sound you add can never come out three times louder than the one next to it. Assign it and it takes effect on the next round — no deploy, no waiting. Set a cue back to Built-in sound at any time; removing a sound from your pool does the same for anything using it, rather than leaving silence.

Your choices are yours: each brand keeps its own, and a cue you never touch keeps the built-in sound — so if we improve one later, you get it.

Every sound in every game has been levelled against every other one. Cues used to vary by nearly 20 decibels between the loudest and the quietest, which on a pub PA meant setting the volume for one moment and having another either vanish or make people jump. They now sit in three deliberate tiers: the big moments (a win, a wrong answer, getting caught) are loudest, the working sounds (a reveal, a lock, a ball, a step) sit under those, and anything that plays while you are talking — a clock, a wheel, a bed — sits under those again. Set your level once at the start of the night and it should hold for everything.

The 🔊 toggle and the console/big-screen selector in your header work here exactly as they do everywhere else — if the projector is what's plugged into the PA, route the sound to it and the big screen plays the cues instead of your laptop. The first time it does, the screen asks for a tap to turn sound on; browsers won't let a page make noise until someone touches it.

The Bar Tab: the board and the music

You (or whoever's on the backstage pad) start the clock with one tap — the round music plays straight away, and an end-round sting hits when the timer runs out. Both follow the 🎛 Console / 📺 Big screen selector, so if the projector is the thing plugged into the PA, that's where the music comes out. The big screen is a prize board: the chain climbs on the side as contestants get answers right, with the countdown clock, the round pot (what's banked this round) and the bank (from earlier rounds) up top, and the round name in the corner. The questions aren't shown on screen — they're answered out loud — so the room watches the chain, not the words.

Beat the Local: casting your opponent

This is the one game with a fourth link. The Local is a real person, not a bot, and they play on their own phone or tablet. Send them the Local link and nothing else — it lets them name themselves and lock an answer, and that is all it can do. It cannot see the answer key, and it cannot see what the contestant picked until the board reveals both at once.

Cast someone the room will enjoy watching lose. The know-it-all who wins every trivia night, the longest-standing regular, the publican if they dare. Let them pick a name and an epithet on their own device — it goes up on the big board with a tally of who they have caught so far, and the room will be barracking against them by the second contestant.

If their battery dies mid-chase, you are not stuck: the console can lock an answer for either side.

Beat the Local: running the show

One player at a time, four beats:

1. Cash builder. Call them up, start the clock, and read questions. They answer out loud and you tap RIGHT or WRONG — the next question comes up on its own, so keep talking. Every right answer is money on the table.
2. The offers. Three numbers land on the board: what they built, a bigger number for starting one step closer to The Local, and a smaller one for a step of head start. Edit any of the three on your console before they choose. They pick on their phone, or you pick for them.
3. Head to head. Three options a question, on the player's phone, on The Local's device and on the big screen. Both lock in blind and the board reveals them together — right answers step you down. Get home and the money joins the team pot. Get caught and it's gone, and so is their seat in the final.
4. The final chase. Everyone who got home plays for the pot. They start on one step each, get two minutes of rapid-fire to build a target, and then The Local gets two minutes to run it down. Every time The Local misses, the clock stops and the team gets one shot at the same question to push them back a step.

This is the game that turns a bar full of strangers into one team: everyone who gets home is playing for the same pot, and everyone who gets caught costs the others a step of head start.

A pack needs both kinds of question — spoken ones for the builder and the final, three-option ones for the board. The console tells you how many of each you have left. Local and topical questions work especially well in the cash builder.

Beat the Local: reading the big screen

You shouldn't have to explain the score. The board is built so the room can read it from the back, and both halves of the show use the same trick — position, not numbers.

On the ladder, The Local is territory, not a marker. Every rung from the top down to where they stand goes red, brightest on the rung they're actually on, so the red block grows down the board as they close in. What's left between the red and your player is the gap, and the room will start counting it out loud without being asked. Your player carries the money — the amount they're playing for rides their step, so what's descending towards HOME is the number everyone cares about.

The reveal comes in three beats, never all at once — that moment is the best thing in the format and dumping it in one go throws it away. The board turns over the player's answer first, then the right answer, then The Local's. Nothing on the ladder moves until that last beat, so a step can never spoil the ending. It walks itself at about two seconds a beat (adjust "Reveal beat" in your console, or tap Next beat now to hit them on your own timing).

In the final chase, the target is a line of boxes. One box lands every time the team gets one right (the free head start is dimmed, so the steps they earned stand out). Then The Local runs at that exact same line from the left, turning it red box by box. A won pushback takes one back off them. The line stays up during a pushback on purpose — that's the moment the room most needs to see how much road is left.

Front Bar Feud: strikes and the reveal

A wrong answer flashes a big red ✕ on the board (one per strike) with the classic double buzz from your console. When a pot is awarded or stolen, the STOLEN / on-the-board banner pops up for a couple of seconds and then clears itself — that's your cue to reveal any answers nobody found, because the room always wants to see what else was on the board, before you put the next question up.

The board flips. Every answer sits face-down until you reveal it, and then it turns over and lights up gold — readable from the back of the room, not a subtle shade change. The team that has the board is lit; the team on a steal pulses gold, because a steal is them going live rather than being penalised. Red on this board means one thing only: a strike.

Last Drinks: friendly mode

An elimination game spends the night telling people they are out of it, and a room shrinks every time it does. Friendly mode — the button on your console, off unless you turn it on — keeps a knocked-out player answering on their phone instead of pocketing it.

They cannot win. They are never counted among the survivors and never crowned. What they get is a side game scored on the inverse of the difficulty: 100 minus the percentage. The 70% question pays 30, the 60% pays 40, the 1% question pays 99 — so the side game rewards the same thing the main one does, which is answering what almost nobody can. A question with no difficulty set pays 50.

The board ranks them on the share of what was on offer — the points they took out of the points available on the questions they answered. Play a perfect round and you are on 100% whether you went out first or last, which is the point: neither a total nor an average manages that. A total rewards going out early, because the first person out has the most questions to accumulate on. An average rewards going out late, because the later questions are the hard ones and pay more. Expect several people on 100% on a good night; the order under them is who answered the most.

Their phone tells them what each question is worth before they answer. The result lands on the same beat as everyone else's — they sit through the same "Calculating eliminations…" hold, then a card zooms in with what they scored, rather than the full-screen green or red the people still standing get. Nobody in the room finds out the answer before anybody else.

The side standings live on your console, not the big screen — read them out when the moment suits you, and let the board stay on the people still standing.

Turn it on whenever you like. Anyone already eliminated joins from the next question — they were told they were out and put the phone down, so they aren't scored on one they didn't know they were playing. Turn it off and the phones go quiet again, with the scores kept.

When the game is crowned, the side game's final table goes up on the big screen underneath the winners — the eliminations are over by then, so there is nothing left for it to compete with.

Last Drinks: nobody goes out on a wipeout

If a question takes out everyone still standing — two or more of them — nobody goes out. They all get a reprieve and enter The Final. Correct players advance; if several are correct, only those players continue. If nobody is correct, nobody goes out and the same finalists play again. The Final repeats until exactly one person remains. Passes are closed.

The instant one contestant remains, the result is locked. The host cannot ask that person another question and accidentally finish with nobody; the console moves straight to crowning.

The board says so — "EVERYBODY MISSED IT — nobody is out, The Final continues" — and so does your console. As soon as one person remains, the console locks the result and asks you to crown the winner.

This guarantees the room gets one person to cheer, without turning a tied field into a group win.

Last Drinks: the elimination beat

When you hit Reveal, the room doesn't get the answer straight away. The big screen flashes black and white — "CALCULATING ELIMINATIONS" — for a long four seconds while every phone holds its breath, then the board slams up the casualty count ("3 OUT!") and every phone floods with its verdict at the same moment: green, you're through to the next question; red, you're out. Then everything settles into the answer and the names. The whole beat takes about seven seconds — don't hit the next question until it's played out, that pause is the drama.

It's scored, too. A computer churns away under the calculating screen, cuts out dead on the four seconds, and a hit lands on the casualty count — so the room hears the eliminations before it reads them. Like every other cue, it comes out of wherever you've pointed the sound: Console if the laptop's on the PA, Big screen if the projector is. Turn it all off with the sound toggle if you'd rather run the room on your own music.

Why that's the answer

A question can carry an explanation, and it waits for the cull to finish before it appears — the room gets its moment of who's gone first, and then the explanation fades up under the answer, on the big screen and on every phone at once. Your console shows it too, under the answer in "Run the show", so you can read it out over the top while the room groans.

It never appears before the reveal, on any screen, so it can't give the answer away. Write one in the question editor under Why that's the answer, or let Generate write them with the questions. Imported question sets keep theirs if the file has them. It's optional, and blank simply shows nothing, so skip it when the answer explains itself.

This is where the logic rounds earn their keep. "You overtake second, so you're second" is the moment the room argues about on the way out, and it turns a knockout into something people actually talk about afterwards.

Crowd Favourite: the reveal is the show

While voting is open the big screen counts every vote as it lands — the tally beats and a little +1 floats up, but nobody can see who's winning, so the room stays honest. Voters get a Vote locked confirmation on their phone and can change their pick right up until the clock runs out. When you hit Reveal, the board builds from last place up — bars race, numbers count up — then holds on "And your winner is…" before the winner lands with the confetti. Phones get a small winner card at the same moment. Hold the pause; that's the show.

Your venue's branding

If your venue has a logo with us, it appears on the big screen and on the players' phones automatically — no setup. If you run nights at more than one venue, you can switch which logo is showing from your console. With no logo set, it falls back to the Front Bar Games wordmark.

Write questions in seconds with AI

In the quiz games — Last Drinks, The Bar Tab, Front Bar Feud and The Local Round — the host console can write questions with AI. In most games there's a ✨ Generate with AI box: type a topic (say "footy finals through the years", "songs they play at closing time" or "this suburb, then and now"), pick how many, and it writes a fresh pack in that game's format. Most games generate up to 20 at a time; The Bar Tab goes up to 100 in one run — it burns through questions fastest — and writes them in the proper chain-quiz register: a 20-35 word question with a setup clause, made to be read aloud. In The Local Expert it goes further — when a contestant enters their specialist subject, the questions are written on it automatically and a picture of the subject goes up on the big screen. Everything drops straight into your list to review and tweak. Load a starter pack, generate your own, edit by hand — mix and match however you like. (This one's set up per account; if you don't see the box, ask us to switch it on.)

Both come from the subject's encyclopedia entry rather than being invented: the picture is a real photograph, and the questions are written from the article and then fact-checked against it a second time. Anything that can't be confirmed is thrown away rather than shown to you, so a round may come back a little short — that's the trade, and it's the right way round. It is still worth reading them before you go on: a specialist knows their subject better than any machine, and being wrong in front of them is the one thing this round can't survive.

You can't run out of questions mid-show — in any quiz game. The Bar Tab, Last Drinks and The Local Expert all protect the show the same way: you can load packs and generate with AI at any point in the game, not just before round one (mid-game additions append — questions already asked are never touched); the console warns you when you're down to your last five; and if the pool ever empties mid-round the game deploys its built-in emergency reserve of general-knowledge questions by itself — the round carries on and the console tells you the reserve is in play so you can stock a real pack for the next round.

Packs you build in the admin Question Bank show up in the host console live, no deploy needed — and each game gets its own kind of question: The Bar Tab is pure question-and-answer (answered out loud, no multiple choice), Front Bar Feud is survey boards, and Last Drinks is a quiz you order so it gets harder as it goes.

Print a table card

From your account you can generate a branded How-to-Play card for any game — with your venue's logo and your caller's name on it — and print it for the tables. It saves you explaining the QR code forty times.

If something goes wrong

• "Game not found" or "Not authorised" on the big screen. Usually a stale page. Hard-refresh it (or open it in a private window). If we've just shipped an update, the game reconnects on its own within a few seconds.
• A player can't join. Check the game hasn't locked its doors — some games shut new joiners out once they start, on purpose. Otherwise, get them to re-scan the QR.
• You lost your console link. Check your email if you sent the links to yourself. If not, create a fresh session — an abandoned one tidies itself up.
• The room went quiet mid-game. Your games survive a restart on our side, so a hiccup won't lose the game. Refresh and carry on.
• Still stuck? Email venues@frontbargames.app — The Events Concierge will pick it up, and a human is never far behind.

Signing in

When your account is created we email you a welcome from venues@frontbargames.app with a Set your password button. That link is good for seven days. Accounts start with no password at all, so until you either set one or sign in with Google, there's nothing to log in with.

Sign in with Google if you can — it's the safest and there's no password to lose. We never email you a password. If you've set one and forgotten it, hit Forgot password? on the login page: pop in your email and we'll send you a link to set a new one. The link is good for an hour — if it lapses, just ask for another. (Check your spam folder if it doesn't land.)

Your account is granted per site. Front Bar Games is one of several sites we run, and one login can cover more than one of them — but only the ones you've been given. If you're set up elsewhere and sign in here, we'll say so plainly instead of pretending your password is wrong; email venues@frontbargames.app and we'll add Front Bar Games to your account. If access is ever removed, the game you're running now keeps running — you'll find out next time you open your account.

Every email we send comes from venues@frontbargames.app. You can reply to any of them and it reaches us.

Pub Trivia: the captain is the answer sheet

The one rule that makes this feel like a real quiz night: anyone at a table can put an answer forward, but only the captain's submission is scored. Every suggestion a table makes shows up on every phone at that table and nowhere else — not on your console as their answer, not on the big screen, and never on another table's phones. The captain picks one, taps Use, and locks it in. They can change it right up until answers close, which is exactly what the pen-and-paper version allows and what the room expects.

The first person to join a team captains it. That is usually the right person and occasionally the person who has gone to the bar — so the captain is a dropdown on your console, next to the team. Change it whenever. If somebody joins the wrong table, move them from the roster; phones aren't allowed to switch teams themselves once the quiz has started, because a phone that can change tables can carry an answer across the room.

Register the teams before the doors open. Type them one per line when you create the game and the room just picks one off a list, which is faster and stops you ending up with four teams called "Team 1". You can still rename, add and remove right up to the start, and add a table number so you can find them in the room.

Everything that sets the room lives in the top bar of your console, the same as every other game: sound on or off, whether the sound comes out of your laptop or the big screen, the room theme, your venue's logo, and the way through to the big screen itself. Your venue's logo rides along to the punters' phones too, not just the board.

Pub Trivia: marking, and being generous

Answers close either when your clock runs out or when you press Close answers — the clock runs on the server, so a laptop that goes to sleep mid-question doesn't leave the question open. The moment they close, everything is marked for you. Spelling, accents, punctuation, a stray "the" and "&" for "and" are all forgiven; the answer itself is not.

Then read the grid, because the matcher cannot be generous and you can. Every team is on it, including the ones who put nothing in — an empty answer sheet is a decision the room made and it belongs on the grid like everyone else's. Right and Wrong overturn it, and the points box takes a half for a near miss. Underneath each team's answer you can see what the table threw around before the captain committed, which is usually how you decide whether "Sir Edmund" was worth the mark.

Reveal the answer when you're ready — the accepted answer never reaches a phone or the big screen before that, so there's nothing to leak by leaving it on screen. Then Next.

Pub Trivia: the picture and music rounds

The picture round shows on the big screen and on every phone at once, so nobody at the back is squinting. The music and video rounds do not play on phones — the big screen is the PA for this game, and sixty handsets playing the same eight seconds a fifth of a second apart is not a music round. Plug the screen into the system and drive the clip from your console: Play, Pause, Replay.

A phone can only load the picture the room is actually on. It cannot pull down the rest of the round early, so one curious punter can't hand their table ten free points.

Swapping in your own is a file picker: Swap in my own… on the question that's up. Your image or clip replaces the pack's for tonight only and goes when the game does. A quiz file can also carry its media inside it — the built-in quiz does exactly that, which is why its picture and music rounds work with nothing to download and nothing to go missing. If anything in a quiz can't be read, you're told when you create the game, on the screen you're already looking at, rather than at question six in front of the room.

Pub Trivia: rounds, scores and the interval

The leaderboard goes up on its own at the end of every round — you don't have to call it, and it's safe to show before you've finished marking, because an unmarked answer is simply worth nothing yet. Teams on the same score share a place and the next place skips, the way you'd call it out loud. Settle a tie the way you always have: ask them one more question.

From the leaderboard you can go straight into the next round, or take an Interval — a held card on the big screen with whatever you want written on it, while you run a raffle, sell some tickets or let the room go to the bar. After the last round the leaderboard is the end of the night, and Finish the quiz puts the final scores up with the fanfare.

Back a question re-opens the one the room has just shouted about; everything already submitted stands and the clock starts again.