Reactions

Quick table-side reactions every player at the table can see and react to in turn. No persistence, no log entry — purely a way for everyone around the screen to clap, cheer, gasp, or react to that critical hit without breaking the flow of the game.

How it works

• A rounded pill of six buttons sits in the bottom-right corner — applause, critical hit, oh no, battle, down they go, cheers.
• Tapping one fires off an emoji that floats up the screen for about two seconds, then disappears.
• Every other connected player sees the same emoji rise on their own screen, with a small horizontal drift so a flurry of identical reactions stays legible instead of stacking into a column.

Why it’s ephemeral

Reactions are deliberately not stored. The server’s reaction:send relay only validates that the payload carries a short emoji string, stamps it with the originating socket id, and broadcasts to every connected client. There’s no MongoDB write, no socket reconnect replay, no entry in the Chronicle. The only state is a short-lived array in each client’s Reactions component, which evicts entries after the animation completes.

Accessibility

Each button carries an aria-label (e.g. “Applause”, “Critical hit”) so screen readers announce the intent rather than the raw emoji. The flying field itself is aria-hidden — reactions are noise, not narrative — and the animation collapses to a static fade under prefers-reduced-motion.