Spotlight tracker

The Spotlight Tracker records how many sessions have passed since each character had a meaningful narrative moment. It is a counter driven entirely by player self-report, visible to the GM in the Stakes Dashboard.

How the count works

After each session, players have 48 hours to make one choice:

"This was a meaningful session for my character" — resets the counter to zero
"Background session for me" — increments the counter by one

That is the entire input. No further detail is required or collected.

❗Important

Skryrún does not define "meaningful." Only the player knows whether a session mattered to their character. A quiet moment of realization can be meaningful. A major combat encounter might not be. The tracker measures player experience, not narrative events.

If a player does not respond within 48 hours, the session is recorded as background by default.

What the GM sees

The counter appears on each character card in the Stakes Dashboard. The visual state changes at two thresholds:

Counter	GM view
0–2 sessions	No indicator
3–4 sessions	Card shading shifts
5+ sessions	Explicit flag: "Consider a spotlight moment for [Character] soon"

These flags are prompts, not requirements.

💡Tip

Some players genuinely prefer stretches of background play while they are processing events or enjoying other characters' moments. Check in with the player before treating a high counter as a problem. The flag means "worth a conversation," not "this player is unhappy."

What the tracker does not do

The tracker does not:

Tell you what kind of moment to run
Tell you why a player marked a session as background
Create obligations for the GM or player
Expose player responses to other players

It surfaces one data point — time since a player felt their character had a meaningful moment — and leaves all interpretation to you.

Connection to the Stakes Dashboard

The spotlight counter feeds directly into the Stakes Dashboard character cards. A character with a high counter and one or more threatened anchors is a strong signal for session prep: there is emotional investment here, and it has not been touched in a while.

The tracker prompts you to check in. What you do next is your call.

Troubleshooting

A player's counter hasn't moved in several sessions. The counter only updates when a player makes a session report. If a player isn't submitting their post-session report, their counter defaults to background (incrementing by one) after 48 hours. Check whether the player is receiving post-session notification emails — they may have missed them.

A player reset their counter but the flag is still showing on their card. The Stakes Dashboard refreshes periodically. Hard-refresh the page to pull the latest counter state. If the flag persists after a refresh, check whether the player's session report was actually submitted or just drafted.

I want to disable the 48-hour auto-default. The 48-hour default window is not adjustable per campaign. If a player prefers not to use the tracker, they can mark every session as meaningful — that keeps their counter at zero without requiring any change on your end.

The Spotlight Tracker isn't visible on character cards. The tracker appears in the Character Stakes Dashboard, not on world entity pages. Open the campaign dashboard and navigate to the Stakes panel. If that panel is missing, check that your campaign has active player characters with character profiles created.