Host guide
A scenario-based walkthrough for first-time hosts. Read it once end-to-end (15 min), then come back to the scenarios when something specific comes up.
The whole job in seven lines
- Approve applicants in apply.sinthebottle.com.
- Stage the event in Sin the Bottle (one button in apply's event admin).
- Print cards on Avery J8871 stock from Officeworks (one sheet per 10 attendees). Cards are physical name tags with number, name, pronouns, intentions.
- Email join links to approved applicants from the event admin in apply. Each attendee gets their own
/j/<token>URL to open on their phone. - Hand out the physical cards at the door so people can be identified by number in the room.
- Run rounds from the host panel. Speed rounds to warm up, main rounds once everyone's settled, breaks when the energy needs a reset.
- Respond to yellow and red lights by physically going to the person who tapped them.
You never pick pairs. You never see consent flags. You run the clock, the structure, and the safety check-ins. The card is a name tag; the email link is how they actually get into the app.
Timeline: one week out to closing time
Monday (one week out)
What to do
- Log into apply and review the pending applications. Approve the ones you want. Waitlist the ones you might want if spots open up. Decline the rest.
- If you're approving 10+ at once, use the checkbox-based bulk review bar at the top of the applications list.
- When declining, leave the reviewer note blank unless you want to say something warm or discourage re-application. The default email says they're welcome to apply again; the note overrides that if you need it to.
What attendees see
Anyone you approve gets "You're in" plus event details plus a link to the attendee guide (what to expect, how consent works). They also get a link to edit their details (name, pronouns, bio, intentions) until you stage.
Tuesday-Thursday
What to do
- Keep an eye on incoming applications. Approve/decline as they come in.
- Buy badge insert stock if you don't have any: Avery J8871, 90x55mm, 10-up on A4. Officeworks carries it. You want one sheet per 10 attendees; get one extra in case of printer misfeeds.
- Decide how many pairs per round you want (1-8). Bigger room = more pairs. 16 people with 4 pairs means a round takes 8 people; another 8 sit out that round and go first next round. Rough rule:
pairs = floor(attendees / 6).
Friday (day before)
What to do
- In apply, on the event admin page, click Stage in Sin the Bottle. Pick the bottle count you decided on.
- Open Sin the Bottle. On the home page you'll see the event under "Staged events". Click through. The host panel loads.
- In the roster panel, click Print all. A print page opens with one card per attendee. Print a test sheet on plain paper first, hold it against an Avery J8871 sheet under light to check alignment. Adjust if anything's off.
- Back in apply, click Email join links in the Sin the Bottle game section. Every approved applicant gets an email with their personal
/j/<token>URL. - Test one claim: open your own application's Copy join link (via the host-side roster action menu) in a private/incognito tab. The preview screen should say "You are about to join as #X [name]". Don't click continue; just check the preview. Close the tab.
Why test-claim?
It catches obvious bugs (wrong URL, wrong name) before the night. Reprint / rename anything that fails, then re-test.
Saturday morning
What to do
- Print all cards for real, on the Avery stock. Pop them out. The roster's default is number order; use Print A-Z if you want them alphabetical for the door stack.
- Any last-minute approvals auto-sync: approve someone at 2pm, they'll appear in the roster as pending. Print their card, then re-send join links with the "unclaimed only" option in apply so they get their URL too.
- Set up the venue: big screen if you have one (open
sinthebottle.com/spectate/CODEon a laptop connected to the TV; don't sign in as host there, it's read-only). - Confirm the wifi works at the venue. The app polls every 2 seconds; flaky wifi will make phones look frozen.
Saturday evening, arrival hour
What to do
- ID check anyone who looks under 25. Standard Australian practice for adult venues. Ask to see photo ID with a date of birth (driver licence, passport, keypass). If they don't have it, or the ID shows under 18, don't admit them. Refund them. Record in your own notes that you checked; the app doesn't store ID details.
- Remind everyone: no photography or recording. Say it on arrival and post a sign. Phone cameras covered or stowed once the session starts. This is a code-of-conduct rule; a breach is a one-warning-and-out situation.
- Attendees arrive. Many will have already opened their email link and claimed on the way over; they're already "claimed" in the roster. Hand them their physical card so everyone knows their number in the room.
- If someone didn't get / didn't open the email, hit Show QR on their roster row - a big QR opens on your screen and they scan it with their phone camera. (Also available: Copy join link to text/AirDrop, or re-send via apply's "Email join links (unclaimed only)".)
- Keep the host panel open; you'll see the roster status flip to "claimed" in real time.
- Walk-ins (vouched-for friend of an approved attendee, or someone whose approval came too late to print earlier): use the Add walk-in form in the roster. It creates + prints a card in one step and gives you the join URL to text/AirDrop to them.
- If anyone's card is damaged, use Reprint on their slot (same number, fresh URL). Their phone stays bound unless you also Unclaim.
- Don't start the session until the bulk of attendees have claimed. Looking at the roster: if 15 of 18 have claimed and the other 3 are stragglers, you can start and they can join mid-session.
Saturday evening, running the session
What to do
- Click Start session. State transitions from waiting to running.
- Start with a Speed round sequence (pick 2-3 iterations). Great for taking the edge off the room.
- When that's done, click Start round for the first main round. Attendees are paired based on consent.
- Between rounds, let attendees re-settle before the next pairing. 2-3 minutes is usually enough.
- Call a break after about an hour or when the room's energy feels off. Usually 15 min. Phones show a countdown.
- When a yellow light appears in the host panel, walk over to that person. Ask what they need. Wait for them to clear it (or clear it for them from the panel once you've checked in).
- When a red light appears: everyone's round ends immediately. Walk - don't run - to the person who hit red, and any pair you know was mid-activity. Check on everyone before you restart.
Saturday evening, closing time
What to do
- Call a final round or two, or just end after a big break.
- Click End session. Confirm. Attendees see the survey modal.
- Open the Post-session survey accordion in the host panel to see responses as they come in. You'll see a rating average + anonymous text answers.
- Encourage people to fill it in; it's short and it's how you improve next time.
- Click around, tidy up, go home.
Scenarios
"Sarah opened her link but her name on her phone is wrong"
Two possibilities. Either you swapped two people's URLs when emailing (use the swap or reassign action), or Sarah's application name was wrong and the card + slot both have the wrong name. Open the roster, find her slot, click Edit name/pronouns/intentions, fix it, then Reprint. Hand her the new physical card, discard the old one. Her phone binding survives the rename.
"Two attendees swapped cards at the door"
Easy to spot if they've both claimed already (their phones say the wrong name). Open the roster, find either of their slots, menu, Swap # with another. Enter the other number. Both get new URLs and get marked printed again. Reprint just those two (select both, click Print selected). Hand the fresh cards out and text them their new URLs via Copy join link.
"Jamie's phone died"
On the roster, find Jamie's slot, menu, Unclaim. This clears the phone binding and mints a new URL. Click Copy join link in the same menu. Hand Jamie a borrowed phone or their own once charged, paste the URL, tap Continue on the preview, they're back in. Jamie's name card number stays the same so nothing else in the room needs to change.
"Someone I approved dropped out last minute"
In apply, re-review their application as declined. The bridge auto-revokes their slot in Sin the Bottle. Their number stays parked to their revoked slot. If someone else needs that number, use Reassign # to selected on their revoked slot (select the target first).
"Half the room didn't read the join-link email"
Normal. On each row, hit Show QR - a big QR pops up on your screen and the attendee scans it with their phone camera. Takes five seconds per person. Copy join link is the AirDrop/SMS alternative. If you'd rather batch, go back to apply and click Email join links (unclaimed only); already-opened links are skipped.
"Taylor is vouched-for but didn't apply"
Ask the person who vouched. If you're happy, use Add walk-in in the roster. Type Taylor's name, optionally pronouns + intentions + number. On save, a QR for Taylor's join link pops up on your screen - they scan it on the spot. Then print their card (pops out in the next print batch) and hand it over.
"Attendee is on yellow but hasn't tapped clear and the next round is waiting"
You've already checked in with them. If they're good to rejoin, click the yellow light in the host panel's Players Needing Attention box to clear it yourself. If they're not rejoining (want to sit out the rest), leave them on yellow - they just won't get paired.
"Red hit during a main round"
The app ends the round for everyone. Walk to the person who hit red. If you know one of the pairs was in another room, walk to them too (or send a co-host if you have one). Don't restart rounds until you've physically confirmed everyone is okay. Check in with the red-hitter about whether they want to continue the night. If yes, they can tap clear and you can restart when ready. If no, mark them as spectating via their player menu, or just let them leave.
"The big screen isn't updating"
It polls every couple of seconds. Refresh the tab. If it still doesn't update, the wifi might be flaky - check your phone. Spectator is read-only, it won't break the session if it's down.
"Nobody's phones are updating"
Wifi problem, almost always. Try reconnecting on your phone first - if yours comes back, everyone else will too in the next poll cycle. If wifi is dead for the evening, announce that the app is paused and you'll run the rest manually. (This is rare; most venues are fine.)
"I ended the session by accident"
Click Reopen. You're back in waiting state. Everyone who had claimed is still claimed. Survey submissions are kept; they stop collecting once you reopen, and resume if you end again.
"My very first event and I'm nervous"
You're allowed to be nervous. Two tips that help: (1) do the Friday dry-run properly - print, test-claim one, walk through a mock round in your head. (2) Accept that the app's structure is doing the consent-gating work for you. You don't have to be a safety expert; you have to respond to yellow and red when they appear, and keep the room moving. That's it.
Rules of thumb
- Don't start with a main round. Do at least one speed round first. It calibrates expectations.
- Call breaks pre-emptively. If you're wondering whether to call one, call one.
- You don't need to know consent flags to run a round. The app's scheduler does that work.
- Reprint is not the same as unclaim. Reprint = new card, same phone. Unclaim = same card, new phone. If both are broken, do unclaim first then reprint.
- Revoked slots keep their number. Use Reassign explicitly to hand it to a new slot. Gaps-stay is intentional.
- A yellow light is not a failure. It's the system working. Same for red. Celebrate the people who use them.
- Refer to the in-app dashboard tooltips and the runtime spotlight/break prompts for runtime "what does this do" questions. This guide covers the whole arc.