Concepts

Stratastax is built around a set of foundational principles that define how tabletop gaming data is represented, connected, and shared. Together these principles distinguish Stratastax from traditional score trackers by treating tabletop gaming as a connected identity network rather than a collection of isolated matches.

Canonical Player Identity

A Canonical Player Identity is the persistent representation of a player within the Stratastax network. It provides a stable identity that gaming history, statistics, achievements, and player relationships can be associated with over time, regardless of where or with whom the player participates. It answers the question: How do we know that all these gaming records belong to the same player?

Example:

Emma records a board game session and adds Alain as a Ghost Player because he does not yet have a Stratastax account.
Two weeks later, Alain registers with Stratastax. A Canonical Player Identity is created for him, and the previously recorded Ghost Player can be linked to that identity.
From that point on, both past and future gaming history are associated with Alain’s Canonical Player Identity.

Identity Resolution

Stratastax believes gaming history should not depend on when someone creates an account. Stratastax continuously improves identity quality by allowing player identities to be linked, merged, verified, and claimed over time.

Stratastax is guided by the fundamental principle: There should ultimately be one identity representing one real player. This Canonical Player Identity is the authoritative representation of a real player. Identity resolution continuously moves the graph toward that single, canonical identity.

Ghost Players

Stratastax uses Ghost Players as a mechanism to enable identity resolution. Users can record matches immediately by creating temporary player identities without requiring a Stratastax account.

Example:

A user records:

Peter
Sarah
Mark

Mark and Sarah have a Stratastax account, so the recorded match is linked to their identities. Peter does not have a Stratastax account, so for him a Ghost Player is created. Later Peter registers an account on Stratastax and claims the existing player identity, recovering all historical gaming data.

Stratastax enables gradual adoption without losing information. Identity resolution transforms unlinked records into a coherent gaming history, retroactively.

Claim Requests

Linking a Ghost Player to a Canonical Player Identity is not automatic. Stratastax requires confirmation from the person who originally recorded the match, so that gaming history cannot be claimed by someone it does not belong to.

A Claim Request represents this pending link, from the moment it is proposed until it is confirmed. Once confirmed, the Ghost Player’s history becomes part of the claiming player’s Personal Gaming Archive.

Example:

Alain registers with Stratastax and finds a Ghost Player matching his name in Emma’s match history.
Alain submits a Claim Request for that Ghost Player.
Emma, who recorded the original match, confirms the request.
The match becomes part of Alain’s Personal Gaming Archive, alongside his other gaming history.

Data Linking

Stratastax ensures every piece of information is a connection point. It connects players to matches, matches to games, games to playsets, expansions, and publishers.

Stratastax is not a collection of isolated records; it is a graph. Stratastax increases the value of that graph with every new connection made between players, matches, and identities.

Rich Game Data

A tabletop game is more than a winner and a score. Stratastax preserves the complete context of every gaming experience, including expansions, setup configurations, characters, factions, cards, scenarios, variants, and custom rules. This functions as a long-term archive, detailed enough to reconstruct a session years later and meaningful enough to reveal the patterns behind it. Depending on the game, Stratastax can also preserve strategic decisions and game-specific state, enabling much richer analysis than final scores alone.

Playsets

Two matches of the same game are not necessarily played under the same conditions. A Playset captures a shared configuration: which expansions were used, which variants or custom rules were active, and which scenario or map was played. It is the context that applies equally to every participant in a match.

A Playset is not tied to a single match. The same Playset can be linked to many matches that share the same configuration, so a group that always plays with the same expansion and house rules only has to define it once, and can reuse it every time they play again.

What each player did within that context — their faction, their score, their outcome — is recorded separately, as part of their individual participation in the match.

Example:

Emma and Alain regularly play Scythe with the “Invaders from Afar” expansion, on the automated variant. They save this once as a Playset called “Our Scythe Setup”.
Every time they play Scythe together under the same conditions, they reuse “Our Scythe Setup” instead of configuring it again.
Emma plays as Crimean Khanate, Alain as Nordic Kingdom in one of those matches — these are recorded separately, as each player’s individual result.

Match Media

A match is a social event, not just a result. Photos capture what data alone cannot: the table setup, the players, the moment someone won. Attached to a match record, they become part of a player’s Personal Gaming Archive — searchable, tied to a specific game and group, and governed by the same Privacy Levels as any other match data.

A photo is more than decoration. It is part of the record itself, and can in time become a source of data — a photo of a scoresheet or a game’s final state could be scanned to help extract results automatically, turning a memory into structured history.

Example:

After a game night, Emma uploads photos of the group playing Wingspan, including a shot of the final scoreboard.
The photos are attached to the match record, visible to participants according to their configured Privacy Levels.
Years later, viewing that match also shows the photos — the people, the table, the moment it happened.

Personal Gaming Archive

Stratastax is designed to preserve a player’s gaming history and turn it into meaningful insight over a lifetime. It transforms raw session data into win percentages, faction statistics, historical rivalries, and strategic patterns that only become visible across hundreds of matches. Over time, this becomes a player’s Personal Gaming Archive or better yet, a Digital Trophy Cabinet – a living record of their tabletop history to explore, analyze, and celebrate.

Statistic Snapshots

The Personal Gaming Archive continuously computes statistics across a player’s entire history. Sometimes a player wants something narrower: their win rate with one faction, their record in a single Playset, their history against one opponent, or their results within one Group.

A Statistic Snapshot captures this: a specific scope — a game, a Playset, a date range, an opponent, or a Group — computed into a fixed result at the moment it is generated. Unlike the archive itself, a Snapshot does not continue to change as new matches are recorded. It represents a single, point-in-time picture, which makes it something a player can trust to share: what someone sees today is exactly what was shared, not a live view that might shift tomorrow.

A Statistic Snapshot is treated like any other data type: it carries its own Privacy Level, independent of the match records it was computed from. Setting a Privacy Level makes a Snapshot visible to an audience, but visibility alone does not guarantee attention. Stratastax also lets a player actively share a Snapshot — drawing someone’s notice to it directly, for example through a shareable link or a notification. Sharing complements Privacy Levels: it directs attention, but does not bypass them. The audience must still have the access their Privacy Level allows.

Example:

Emma wants to share her performance in Scythe with her gaming club, without exposing her full archive.
She creates a Statistic Snapshot scoped to the game Scythe: win rate, favourite faction, and total matches played.
She sets this Snapshot’s Privacy Level to Privileged Access for the “Board Game Club” Group.
The club can see Emma’s Scythe performance. Her other games, and the underlying match records, remain private.

Data Ownership & Privacy

Stratastax is built on the principle that users own their gaming data. Stratastax holds data on your behalf, but it does not own it. Each resource carries its own configurable Privacy Level, allowing different types of data to have different audiences.

Privacy Levels

Stratastax allows every user to control visibility at three levels:

Private: Stratastax restricts access to your data to you alone.
Privileged Access: Stratastax enables data sharing selectively with specific people: family members, friends, gaming groups, or tournament organizers.
Public: Stratastax allows selected data to be made publicly visible, such as a player profile or tournament history.

Each piece of data carries its own Privacy Level. Setting a default applies a starting point across your data, but every data type can be configured independently, as described below.

Groups

Privileged Access is granted through Groups: named collections of people you define, such as your family, a regular playgroup, or a tournament committee. A Group has no meaning on its own — its only purpose is to determine who gets Privileged Access to the data types you choose to share with it.

You can belong to multiple Groups, and a Group’s access can be configured per data type, just like your default Privacy Level.

Example:

Emma creates a Group called “Board Game Club” and adds five regular playmates.
She grants this Group access to her match history and statistics, but not to her player profile.
Members of “Board Game Club” can now see Emma’s match history; everyone else cannot.

Fine-Grained Controls

Stratastax applies Privacy Levels per data type, not per account. It allows users to compose their own privacy model from individual choices across Groups and data types.

Example:

Family group → full access to match history and statistics

Friends group → full access to match history and statistics

Public → player profile only; match details remain private

Stratastax ensures a player can have a discoverable public identity without exposing the details behind it.

Anonymous Aggregation

Stratastax supports anonymous aggregation so that private data can contribute to collective knowledge. It ensures individual records remain private while surfacing statistical patterns at the community level.

Example:

“Terraforming Mars has an average win rate of 52% for Corporation X.”

Stratastax ensures no individual player identity is exposed in these aggregations. Collective intelligence and personal privacy are not in conflict — they are designed to coexist.

Communities

A Group determines who has access to your data. A Community builds on top of a Group: it gives that collection of people a shared identity, a shared history, and shared statistics — the context in which players play, compare, and grow together.

Every Community has a Group at its core, but adds:

A shared match history — the matches its members have played together.
Community statistics and leaderboards — computed only from what members have already made visible to the Community’s Group.
An identity of its own — a name, a description, a story that outlives any single match.

How someone becomes a member depends on the kind of Community. Some are curated by an existing member, the way a Group is today — a family or a regular playgroup, for example. Others require approval from an administrator, such as a club or a tournament organizer. Others are open, and anyone can join freely, such as a community built around a shared interest rather than shared people.

Joining a Community never changes a member’s Privacy Levels. It only makes membership possible — what a Community can show about its members is always limited to what each member has individually chosen to share with it.

Example:

Emma’s local board game café runs a Community called “Board Game Café Utrecht”.
Members join by request, approved by the café’s organizers.
Emma has shared her match history with the Community’s Group, so her matches contribute to the Community’s shared history and leaderboard.
Alain, a member who keeps his match history private, is still a member — he simply does not appear in the Community’s statistics until he chooses to share them.

Membership Requests

Joining a Community that requires approval is not immediate. A Membership Request represents this pending step, from the moment someone asks to join until an administrator confirms or declines it. For Communities that do not require approval, membership is confirmed directly, without this step.

Example:

Alain finds “Board Game Café Utrecht” and requests to join.
His Membership Request is visible to the Community’s administrators.
An administrator confirms the request, and Alain becomes a member.

Network Effects

Stratastax becomes more useful as the community grows. Every recorded match adds knowledge, every linked identity improves accuracy, and every new connection enriches the graph. It ensures that a player’s archive is enriched by the people they play with, making growth both quantitative and qualitative.

Open Ecosystem

Stratastax is designed to integrate rather than replace. It prioritizes compatibility over isolation: clubs can manage events, tournament organizers can track competitive history, and players can bring their history with them or export it whenever they choose.

Stratastax enables developers, clubs, and third-party applications to participate in the same identity network through open standards and APIs.

Developer Platform

Stratastax is designed as a platform, not just an application. It provides access to data through:

Documented REST API
OpenAPI specification
SDKs
Import/export tools
Integrations

Stratastax allows users and developers to build on top of the ecosystem.