The pinned grid is the most-used feature in session mode. Here's how five different GMs described using it — and what that told us about how to design it.
When we shipped the pinned grid in session mode, we expected GMs to use it as a quick-reference panel — a few key NPCs, maybe a location or two.
What we didn't expect was the range of ways GMs would actually use it. After talking to GMs in early access, five distinct patterns emerged.
The most common use. GMs pin every active threat: the pursuing cult, the unstable patron, the faction that knows too much. Before each session, they review the board and ask: "Which of these is going to act tonight?"
The key behavior: pins don't stay the same between sessions. GMs actively add and remove entities as the political situation shifts. The board is a snapshot of current pressure, not a permanent list.
"I pin whatever could kill my players if I forgot about it. When something's resolved, I remove it. The board should always feel dangerous."
Session mode pins function as a cast list. A GM pins every NPC their players might encounter that session — then uses it as a cheat sheet for names, motivations, and relationships during play.
This pattern is especially common in social-heavy campaigns. When a player says "I want to introduce my character to the innkeeper" and you've forgotten whether the innkeeper is hostile or friendly to outsiders, the pin gets you the answer in two seconds.
Some GMs pin the last three to five entities their players interacted with — not upcoming content, but recent history. When a player says "wait, didn't we meet someone at the docks who knew about this?", the recent-interaction board gives the GM a memory.
This is a recency bias workaround. The most important context in an ongoing campaign isn't always what's coming next — it's what just happened.
Before a session, some GMs pin the two or three "decision points" they've set up — moments where player choices will meaningfully change the story. During play, the pins remind them to steer toward those moments instead of getting lost in tangents.
"I pin the choices I've prepped for. Not the outcomes — the choices. It keeps me from improvising past the fork in the road."
In campaigns with large parties, some GMs pin their players' characters alongside the NPCs. Before each scene, they scan the character pins and ask: "Who hasn't had a meaningful moment lately?" Then they engineer one.
This is a use case we didn't anticipate at all when we designed the feature. It turns the pinned grid into a party management tool, not just a world reference tool.
The pinned grid is more useful than we designed for, which means we probably constrained it too much.
In the next cycle, we're adding pin categories (so you can separate threats from NPCs from breadcrumbs), a session-end pin review that asks which pins should persist to the next session, and drag-to-reorder for prioritizing within the grid.
If you use the pinned grid in a way that doesn't fit any of these patterns, we want to hear about it — drop us a message through the in-app support chat.
— The Skryrún Team