Hot seat - how does it work ?

[MarkUllman]

Hello,

I'm relatively new, with a premium account, I enjoy Board Game Arena, and today with two friends of mine I wanted to play using the hot seat option.
We have tried several times to start a game from my Premium account, and that I would invite them: the option to invite in hot seat doesn't appear.

I've search in FAQ, on google, on youtube, to find examples on how it should look like: doesn't work
My friends get a notification that they are connected from the same IP, and nowhere we saw a button or a control to switch to hot seat mode.

Some clear instructions and help would be welcome here.
Thanks

Mark

[ViolentSilence]

If they have devices they can access the site on, they don't need the hotseat. You can simply choose to ignore the warning about the same IP address in that circumstance

To create a hotseat player, you click on the 'Invite friends' button and at the buttom you get an option for a hotseat player. When you add it, you can give the hotseat a name, and then add additional hotseat players by the same process. When you play the game, you get a hold screen as the players switch position and it announces which player it is switching to of the hotseat players. You can combine hotseat players with players on other devices.

Does that make sense?

[Jest Phulin]

And one piece of information that may be missing from your understanding of hotseat:

Hotseat is for multiple players to use the same device as the premium member hosting the table. It was designed for players who only had one computer to be able to play multiplayer games.

So, yeah, as ViolentSilence said, if the other players have devices to access the site, hotseat isn't needed.

[MarkUllman]

Hi ViolentSilence and Jest,

Thank yo so much for your answers.
Yes, we only had my laptop here, so we needed real hotseat.
Finally, we played by having each of them logging in from a different browser on my device.

Reading your posts, I played a little more with the BGA interface, and I realized how it works, although it is nowhere described:

Once choosing the settings of your game, if one of your friends joins in hotseat mode, even if they appear on your list of friends, DON'T CLICK ON THEIR ICONS TO INVITE THEM !
You should click the rightmost, "Add a Friend" button.

This is completely counter-intuitive, since I would normally only Add a Friend if I would play with a new friend who is not listed.

Then you get the question : "Will both you and your friend share the same screen?"
Answer Yes.
Fill in a username.
Add any other player (online by clicking their icon in the proposed list or hotseat by typing an additional username in the Hotseat field.)

Start your game.

I think the FAQ should be clarified, but I don't know how to notify this to the admins...

Best,
Mark

[MsBeeHaven]

Thanks Mark for the extra help with Hotseat mode. I kept getting the following error on different computers and browsers and could never get Hotseat to work...
"Unexpected error: Error while processing Database request(boardgamearena.com date/time)".

I finally figured it out! I was in the "Play with Friends only" mode, but I needed to be in "Manual" mode. Once I created a table, I could invite friends in Hotseat mode.