Firebolt

After the First Convention

The first convention hosted on firebo.lt ended on 3 October. Most of these changes came out of running it, along with tools we built for it and for the next one.

For players:

• Race-proof registration — we now check free seats and register you in one locked step, so a game with two seats left can't end up with three players. A double-click registers you once, and a retried sign-up still gets you just one account.
• Open seats in My games — you'll now see how many seats are still free instead of the total. A full game used to say "5 players wanted" — thanks to the two GMs who reported it.
• Past games stay on the event page — the line-up is now a permanent record of what was played.
• Better rating tags in every language — we retranslated twenty-two of them. Three were wrong, and fourteen Lithuanian and Latvian tags were masculine adjectives, so every woman rated on the site was described in the masculine. They're now gender-neutral.
• Nothing kept when you cancel an event game — if you registered without an account, we wipe your email address and answer to the organizer's question on the spot.

For event organizers:

• Printable rating cards — cut-out cards, one per person per game, with the system, game and GM, plus a QR code to the game's page with the rating links.
• A printable player roster — grouped by session, with tick boxes for attendance and payment, a blank line per free seat for walk-ins, and a box for swaps.
• An audience page — see how many people viewed your event and each game. Privacy-respectful. Counts only: no names, no browsing trails, and no fingerprinting. With trackable links for Discord, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, so you can see which post actually brought people in.
• A nominations page — your games ranked by most viewed, fastest filled and best reviewed.
• Share a player's custom registration details with its GM — per game, revocable, with every disclosure logged. E-mail address is not shared.
• Two new switches — choose whether the early-bird line-up is public and whether your GMs can edit their own games.

For game masters:

• Edit your own event game — if the organizer allows it, you can change the title, system, language, description and seats. Time and place stay with the organizer.
• Short teaser, full description — put a horizontal rule (three dashes on their own line) where the teaser ends. Only the text above it appears on cards and in link previews; the game's page still has everything.
• Add players to a regular game — by username or by typing a name. Guests count toward the seats.
• Join the Game Master group at /promotion/ if you ran a game at an event. Organizer and Game Master badges now appear in the forum.

Privacy and housekeeping:

• Registration details disappear on a schedule — hidden two hours after an event ends, then deleted after 14 days along with email addresses and cancellation secrets. We updated the privacy policy in all five languages to match.
• A proper icon for saving the site to your phone, and a third-party notices page crediting the Solbera fonts (CC BY-SA 4.0), which we extended with Baltic glyphs.

Thank you for the feedback — keep it coming!

RPG Fiesta is Here — Registration is Open

RPG Fiesta, the traditional Lithuanian RPG convention, has moved to firebo.lt, and you can now register for its games.

3 October, Vilnius — Wargamer club, Šv. Stepono 5. Nineteen games are on the schedule, each with its own start time. Sessions run three to five hours, which is plenty of time for a table of strangers to get to know each other. Entry is free, and newcomers are welcome.

• Browse the games and register — you don't need an account, but signing in makes it quicker.
• Some tables are already full, but others still have free seats.
• If you have questions or just want to talk about it, join the forum thread.

See you at the table!

Event Tools Level Up

We've made a lot of improvements to event features, just in time for the first convention hosted on firebo.lt.

For players:

• Register right from the event page — each game card on an event page now has a Register button. If you're signed in, one click registers you and takes you to the game's player list. Without an account, you'll land on the game's page with the registration form ready to fill in.
• Sessions at a glance — organizers can sort an event's games into categories, such as morning and evening sessions, and you can jump between them using the buttons at the top of the event page.
• A friendly double-booking warning — if you're already registered for another game at the same event, you'll see a reminder before signing up again. You can still go ahead — the reminder is only there to prevent mistakes.

For event organizers:

• Event dashboard — one page with every game, seat counts, free seats, and all registrations. From there you can approve, reject, or remove players, add registrations yourself (for someone who signed up in person or by phone), see who's registered for several games — including games running at the same time — and export everything to a spreadsheet.
• Categories with start times — if you give a category a start time, games you add to it will have that time filled in automatically. You can still change it.
• All of this is explained in the updated event hosting guide.

Privacy and housekeeping:

• Email addresses of players registering without an account — we delete them automatically 14 days after the event ends. Only the name the player chose is kept.
• Player lists of event games — we hide them 30 days after the event ends. The events themselves stay online as a public history of tabletop RPG events in the Baltics.
• We've updated the privacy policy to match, and its translations are now in line with the English version.
• Staying signed in — you'll no longer be signed out when you open a firebo.lt link from Facebook Messenger or another app.
• We've retired the member counter at the top of the page — thank you to everyone who joined!

Thank you for the feedback — keep it coming!

The Roadmap, Delivered: Events, Forum & Group Chats

The roadmap in the launch post listed a forum system, private messaging improvements, and a special tool for event organizers. All three are now live — along with plenty of smaller improvements.

For event organizers:

• Host an Event — you can now create events with a venue, date range, free or paid entry, and visibility in three stages: first announce the event, then share game listings with your GMs through a secret link, then open everything to the public.
• Event games — attach game listings to your event and assign a dedicated Game Master to each table. You'll see who runs each game on its card, and all of an event's games in one place on the event page.
• Venues — venues are kept in a shared database with address, description, website, and map location. You can open a venue page straight from an event card.
• No account needed to join — players can register for event games without creating an account. You can ask them a custom question at sign-up and, if you like, let accountless players cancel their registration later through a private secret link — no email confirmation dance required.

The forum is live:

• A proper classic forum — categories, boards, topics, and posts with markdown formatting, avatars, and staff badges. Guests can read, and members can post. Come say hi!
• Quotes and reactions — hit Reply on any post to quote it neatly, or react with an emoji and open a popup to see who reacted with what.
• Comfortable on phones — we designed the forum and topic lists with narrow screens in mind.

Messaging grew up:

• Group chats — start a group conversation from your inbox: give it a name and add people by typing their names (with live suggestions and avatars). If you created the group, you can rename it, add members, and remove troublemakers. Everyone can see the member list and leave at any time — and take their messages with them if they want.
• One button to gather your party — as a GM or event organizer, you can start a group chat with all approved players at once, using the button under your game's approved players list.
• Edit your messages — click the pencil button on your own messages to fix typos in place. Edited messages get a small "edited" mark.
• Read indicators — checkmarks on your latest message tell you whether it was read. In group chats, you can tell "read by some" apart from "read by everyone".
• Reactions everywhere — react to private messages with emoji (in group chats too), see who reacted, and get notified about new reactions in your unread badge.
• Full conversation control — delete single messages for yourself or for everyone, or wipe a whole conversation.

We also gave every feature on the site a round of polish and security hardening.

Thank you for the feedback — keep it coming!

A Bunch of Improvements

We've made a round of improvements based on feedback from our first users:

• Share button — you can now share game listings directly to Facebook, Reddit, Discord, or WhatsApp, or just copy the link. On mobile, you'll get your device's native share menu.
• Better listing links — game URLs are now human-readable and include the system and title. Old links still work.
• Link previews — when you share a listing on social media or in a chat, you'll see the game description and image in the preview instead of the generic site info.
• Rules page navigation — you can jump between sections of the Rules page using a clickable table of contents, available in all five languages.
• Alphabetical systems — when creating or editing a game, you'll find the system list sorted A–Z for easier browsing.
• Free seats display — listing cards now tell you how many seats are still open instead of the total. Full games are marked as full.

Thank you for the feedback — keep it coming!

Ever Suspected Your Die is Cursed?

Now you can prove it. We made the Dice Bias Tester just for fun: use it to run a K–S statistical test on your physical die rolls and spot the kind of skew that actually affects your game — so you'll have more than a gut feeling to go on. It's based on a 1992 Usenet post by Glen Barnett.

→ Dice Bias Tester

Public Launch!

All the planned features are finished, and firebo.lt is now open to the public. We'll keep improving and optimizing the site, and add new features where there's demand. On the roadmap: a forum system, private messaging improvements (reactions and group chats), and a special tool for RPG convention organizers to advertise their games.

You can read the site in Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, and Finnish — just use the language switcher in the header. The Latvian, Estonian, and Finnish translations are machine-generated and haven't been proofread yet, so if you're a native speaker, your help with the localization would be very welcome. You can send corrections via personal message, through the contact links on my profile, or using the contact form — or just get in touch and ask me for the raw localization files to proofread.

Special thanks to Ema for these splendid CSS styles!

Development Started

We've started building firebo.lt, a platform for the TTRPG communities of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland — a place where players and Game Masters can find each other for in-person, online, and hybrid game sessions. The main features are game listings with locations on a map and a tag-based reputation system that's part of the post-session flow. You'll be able to use the site in Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Finnish, and English. Stay tuned.