Hello Board Games

The score of the game, in the chat you already have open.

Open in Telegram Use it in the browser

@hello_board_games_bot · free, no account to create

Hello Board Games is a Telegram bot that keeps the score of a board game, so that nobody at the table has to be the bank. There is nothing to install and no account to create. One person creates the game, the others join it from their own phones, and everybody sees the same numbers: how much each player has, who paid whom and why, how long the game has been going.

The bank

The first module is a bank. It turns the paper notes of a property-trading game, or of an 18xx, into accounts with a record behind them.

• BalancesThe bank and every seat have an account. Everybody sees every balance, as paper money lies open on the table.
• Payments and requestsYou move your own money freely. Asking somebody else for money is a request, and it only goes through when the payer presses Pay.
• A ledger, with reversalsEvery movement is a line: from whom, to whom, how much, who pressed the button, when, and why. A mistake is corrected by a reversal, which is a line too. Nothing is edited or deleted.
• A clock, with pausesThe game records when it started, every pause and when it ended. The play time is what is left without the pauses.

“Where did my 200 go?” has an answer, and the answer is the list.

How it works

1. The admin creates the game from a preset: a classic property-trading game, 1830, or a custom one. Starting money, the size of the bank and the shortcuts (Pass GO +200, Income tax −200) can be changed before the start.
2. Players join by scanning a QR code on the admin’s screen, or by opening a link. Joining is something you do yourself: nobody is put into a game because somebody typed their username.
3. A seat can be just a name, for somebody who does not have Telegram. The admin plays it for them, and a Telegram user can claim it later.
4. Everybody plays from their own phone. Each player has one message in the chat with the balances, the last movements and the clock, kept up to date in place. You get a notification only when something touches your money that you did not do yourself: money received, a request to pay, a reversal, the bank breaking.

Mini App and web app

The Mini App opens from the bot and shows the table: every player in a grid, big buttons, a keypad. The same game also works in a browser at hello-board-games-app.gpm.name, which is handy on a tablet standing in the middle of the table. It is the same game and the same data as in the chat. Nothing depends on keeping an app open: everything can be done from the chat.

What is free, and what Pro is

• FreeOne open game at a time, up to 6 seats, the built-in presets and the clock. That is a whole game night.
• ProMore open games at once, more seats, saved presets, and the CSV of a game's moves.

Pro belongs to whoever organises. One person pays for a table, and the friends who scan the code never see a price.

It is paid in Telegram Stars, two ways: 150 Stars every 30 days, a real subscription that renews itself and is cancelled from Telegram’s own settings, or 1500 Stars for a year, paid once, which does not renew: when it runs out you are back on the free plan, having been asked for nothing in the meantime.

Nothing is charged to a card and no payment details ever reach the bot. Stars is the only way Telegram allows digital goods to be paid for.

What it is not

• Not a rules engine. It does not know what a rent costs or whose turn it is. The table decides, and the bot writes it down.
• Not an online game. Nobody plays through it. It assumes everybody is at the same table, or on the same video call.
• Not dice or cards. It rolls, draws and shuffles nothing.
• Not money. The units belong to the game and are worth nothing outside it. Nothing can be bought with them and nothing leaves the game.

Hello Board Games is not made by, or connected to, the publisher of any game.

When something is broken, or missing

In the information section, in the bot and in the app alike, you can write what does not work, or an idea. What you send goes to apps-management, the service that answers for the apps in this family, with the exact build you were using attached to it.

An email address is optional and nothing above needs it. If you link one, the same address lets you read the replies to your reports, vote on what should be built next, and take your Pro licence with you if you ever change Telegram account. A licence is for one Telegram account at a time.

Your data

A game lasts an evening, and its data does not last much longer. A game is deleted 6 months after anybody in it last opened it, and in any case 12 months after it was created. If you do not open the bot for 6 months, you are deleted too, and you are told 7 days before. There are no analytics, no advertising and no third party with a copy. The privacy policy says exactly what is stored and who can see it.