Seats and readiness
Seats
A seat at a Volity table is a lot like a seat in a real-life game table: to play a game, you must be sitting in a seat. If you're not sitting, then you're simply standing around and watching the game. So, if you wish to play, you've got to sit, and there's two ways to do that:
- Click the Seat button that's above the seat pane. If any unoccupied seats at the table are available, the referee will choose one for you, and sit you in it.
- Within the seat pane, drag your name into a seat box.
You can also drag other players around, but unless you know what you're doing - you're setting bots into place, say, or you are setting up teams of players along agreed-upon principles - you should probably avoid doing this.
Also, rather unlike real life, many players can comfortably sit in the same seat together. Shared seats are effectively a single "player" as far as the game is concerned; they are, in other words, a de facto team.
Readiness
A Volity game does not begin until all seated players at the table have declared themselves ready. This means that they are each prepared to start the game exactly as it is currently set up, and with the players who are currently seated. To declare readiness, simply click the Ready button above the seat pane. A green check-mark will appear next to your name, signifying your readiness to play now.
After you declare readiness, if anything happens that changes the game's configuration - someone changes the number of points being played to, say, or a seated player leaves the table - then you (and everyone else who was ready) become unready, since the game setup you had agreed to is no longer the case. You can respond to this by simply re-readying yourself, or you can change the game configuration yet again or otherwise negotiate the setup with your fellow players. (The chat panes come in handy, here.)