No sign-up sheets. No lines. 70 Riftbound trials in one day.
On-demand events are still running on pen and paper. Players have to get in line, buy a voucher, and then wait around till more people show up and a judge starts the pod. In 2016, Grand Prix judges handed out restaurant pagers to thin out the crowd at registration. Ten years later we're still doing funny tricks on paper to facilitate pods.
Your players came to play, not stand around in line.
Today we're launching On-Demand Queues. Players join your on-demand events from the TopDeck app and go enjoy the con. When enough players are queued, a pod forms automatically and everyone gets a check-in notification on their phone. Your staff presses Launch and the event pairs itself. Payment is handled automatically. No other tournament platform does this.
Laughing Dragon Events ran LDXP Sacramento with this feature on October 23–25. They usually expect 30 to 40 trials. They ran 70, and in the busiest hour alone, 120 players sat down to play.
| On paper | With On-Demand Queues | |
|---|---|---|
| Joining | Wait in line, buy a voucher and stand around | Join from your phone and wait anywhere |
| Calling a pod | Shout names across the hall | One click; players answer in about 10 seconds |
| A no-show | The pod waits | The next player in line is called |
| Starting the event | Collect vouchers and enter pairings | Press Launch; round 1 is paired in seconds |
| Knocked out | Get back in line for another voucher | Tap Queue again |
| After the con | A stack of sign-up sheets | Every wait, peak and pod in the Stats tab |
Players open your convention in the app and join every queue they want. One temporary hold on their card covers every queue. They only pay for the event they end up playing in.
They're free to walk the vendor hall and get food or shop at vendors. When their pod forms, the app notifies them, with a countdown to check in. At LDXP, players answered in a median of 10 seconds.
Being in several queues never causes a clash. A player is only called for one pod at a time. When they accept, their spot in every other line is held. Once their pod launches they leave the other lines, and when they're knocked out, Queue again puts them back in line for all of them.
Pods form the moment enough players are waiting. One click calls the whole pod. No microphone needed.
If someone declines or doesn't answer in time, we call the next player in line. At LDXP, 13 Riftbound pods were refilled this way, and not a single one was cancelled.
When a pod checks in, a staff member simply presses Launch. Seconds later the event is created, round 1 is paired, players are charged, and every phone shows a table number.
From there, Autopilot takes over. It ends each round when the last result is in, pairs the next one, and closes the event after the final. At LDXP, 3 out of 4 pods went from launch to winner without anyone on staff touching them, even with 40 pods running at once.
On paper, a player who gets knocked out has to walk back to the line, buy another voucher and find another table. With On-Demand Queues, their phone asks them to Queue again the moment they're out. One tap puts them back in every line, and a saved card makes payment simple too.
At LDXP, half of all queue joins came from players going again. 97 players played three or more pods. Every one of those was another paid entry. You can even set a cooldown if you want players to wait before going again.
The more pods you run, the more entries you sell. On paper, there's a limit to how many your staff can keep up with. Every pod waits on a judge, a voucher count and someone entering pairings. Every player who gets knocked out has to decide whether waiting in line is worth it, and many don't come back.
Take those steps away and the only limits left are how many tables you have available. LDXP's Friday ran 70 Riftbound trials when Laughing Dragon usually expects 30 to 40. That's at least 30 extra pods in a single day, and every one of them was eight more paid entries. The line never got longer than 22 people, and 91% of Riftbound joins ended with a seat in a pod.
When players join, a temporary hold goes on their card, sized for the most expensive queue they're in. A hold isn't a payment, so nothing is charged yet. When their pod launches, they're charged for that one event and the rest of the hold is released. If they leave the queue or their pod never fires, the hold is cancelled and nothing is charged, so there's nothing to refund. Payments go to your Stripe account, like the rest of your ticket sales.
At LDXP, 95% of seats were paid in the app, with zero refunds. Walk-ups still work: staff can add them to a queue and mark them paid at the booth.
A sign-up sheet tells you who played. It can't tell you how long anyone waited, when your lines peaked, or how many people gave up and left. On-Demand Queues records all of it, and the Stats tab shows it for every day of your convention: waits, the busiest hour of each line, launches by hour, players who left without playing, missed check-ins, and how many players came back.
At LDXP, the Riftbound trials launched 13 pods in the 10 AM hour and 3 in the 5 PM hour. That's next year's staffing plan, built from what actually happened. Export any of it as a spreadsheet for your own reports.
On-Demand Queues are available to every convention on TopDeck today. Open your convention, go to On-demand, and press New on-demand event. Set the game, format, price and pod size, and choose when the queue opens and when last call is each day. Your players will find it on your convention's page in the TopDeck app.
The full guide is in the Help Center. Planning a convention? Get in touch and we'll help you set up your on-demand events.
