Adventure Builder

The Adventure Builder lets you organize a narrative into acts and scenes with GM guidance attached to each. It is a prep tool — adventures are private by default and not visible to players during play.

Structure

Adventures follow a three-level hierarchy:

Adventure — the top-level container. Attached to a world and optionally linked to a campaign. Gives the narrative a title and a brief premise note for your own reference.

Acts — major divisions within the adventure. Think of an act as a chapter. You can have as many as you need; most adventures work with two to four. Drag to reorder acts.

Scenes — ordered narrative beats within an act. Each scene is where the real planning lives. Drag to reorder within an act, or drag a scene from one act to another.

Scene beat types

Every scene has a beat type. Beat types are a vocabulary for what kind of narrative moment this is:

Setting a beat type does not enforce any mechanical behavior. It is a label that helps you vary the rhythm of a session and avoid stacking five consecutive React beats.

Scene contents

Each scene contains:

• Title — a short label for your reference ("The Ambush," "Elara Explains the Pact")
• GM guidance — a rich-text field with four sub-sections: read-aloud text, GM notes, contingencies (what if players do the unexpected), and pacing notes
• Linked encounter — attach an encounter entity you built in the Encounter Builder. A launch button appears directly in the scene view during a GM Screen session.
• Linked entities — NPCs, locations, or items relevant to this scene. These appear as quick-access cards when the scene is active.
• Branch point — see below

Branch points

A branch point is a trigger question plus two or more outcome options. Each outcome points to a different scene. Example:

• Trigger: "Do they let Caretaker Voss go, or do they detain him?"
• Outcome A → Scene 6 (Voss delivers the warning, faction shifts)
• Outcome B → Scene 7 (Voss's contacts retaliate at dawn)

Branch points are planning scaffolding. During play, click the outcome that matches what actually happened and the builder highlights that path. You can override at any time — plans change.

The flowchart canvas

The Flowchart view shows the whole adventure as a graph rather than a list — acts as containers, scenes as cards inside them, and connectors showing how the story can actually move. It is where the shape of an adventure becomes visible: which scenes are dead ends, which branch, and which thread runs through them.

Drawing connectors

Hover a scene card and four small dots appear on its edges. Drag from any dot to another scene to draw a connector — including to a scene in a different act. There is no limit on how many connectors a scene can have, so "these two scenes both lead into the confrontation" is something you can simply draw.

A scene with no connectors of its own still shows a line to the next scene in its act. That is the implied running order, not something you authored; the moment you draw or change anything in that act, the implied order is written down as real connectors and stops shifting when you reorder scenes elsewhere.

Changing flow direction

Right-click a connector to cycle its arrow: forward, reverse, then no direction at all. Use "no direction" for a relationship between two scenes that isn't a sequence — two scenes that inform each other, or that can happen in either order.

Threads on connectors

Create a thread in the Thread Tracker panel, then either:

• Activate it and draw a new connector — the line takes the thread's colour, or
• Drag the thread chip onto a connector that already exists.

This is what turns a thread from a checklist item into something you can see: the mystery you planted in act one becomes a coloured line running all the way to where it pays off.

Captions

Double-click a connector to caption it. On a branching connector this is the player-facing choice — "Take the mountain pass" — and it is the same text the scene editor's branch options show, so captioning here and editing there stay in step.

Moving a scene to another act

Drag a scene card into another act's container. The scene keeps its content and its connectors; it gets a new number at the end of its new act, because scene numbers are unique within an act. A toast offers Undo immediately after.

Keyboard and screen readers

The canvas mirrors itself as a navigable list for keyboard and screen-reader users. Tab into it and the list appears:

Connector direction, threads, and removal live in the Connections section of the scene panel, which is where you reach them without a pointer.

The Adventure Cast

The Cast is a panel listing the key entities in this adventure and their narrative roles:

Cast entries link to your world entities. If the NPC's article gets updated, the cast entry reflects it automatically.

Narrative Threads

Threads are cross-cutting story elements that span multiple scenes or acts. Add a thread for:

• Foreshadowing — a detail planted early that pays off later
• Recurring NPC — a character who appears across multiple scenes
• Escalation trigger — a condition that changes the stakes (if the party takes too long, the ritual begins)
• Mystery — a question that drives investigation
• Theme — a thematic element you are weaving through the adventure

Threads live at the adventure level rather than belonging to any one scene. During prep, they are a checklist to ensure you have planted what you intend to plant. During play, glancing at the thread list reminds you what is still unresolved.

On the flowchart canvas you can also assign a thread to a connector, which draws it as a coloured line through the scenes it touches — see Threads on connectors.

Running an adventure on the GM Screen

Adventures appear in the GM Screen sidebar under Adventures. Open the active adventure to see the scene list. Click a scene to expand it — GM guidance, linked entities, and the encounter launch button are all accessible from the scene view without leaving the GM Screen.

Troubleshooting

My adventure isn't appearing on the GM Screen. Adventures appear in the GM Screen sidebar under Adventures. Confirm the adventure is attached to the same world you opened the GM Screen from. If you created the adventure in a different world, it won't appear. Also check that the adventure has at least one scene — adventures with no scenes may not surface in the sidebar.

I linked an encounter to a scene but the launch button isn't showing. The encounter launch button appears only when the scene is the active/expanded scene on the GM Screen. Click the scene to expand it — the linked encounter and its launch button should appear in the scene content area.

I reordered scenes by dragging but the order didn't save. Scene reordering saves immediately on drop. If the order reverted after a page refresh, check your connection at the time of the drag — a dropped connection can prevent the save. Reorder and wait a moment before navigating away.

A connector I drew disappeared after I reloaded. Connectors save a moment after you stop editing, not on every change. If you drew a line and navigated away immediately, it may not have been written. Draw it again and give it a second before leaving the page. A connector between two scenes in different acts only draws once both acts have loaded — in the acts overview, drill into each one first.

I deleted a connector and it came back. Dotted lines between the last scene of one act and the first of the next are drawn from act order, not authored, so they can't be deleted — reorder the acts to change them. Solid lines you drew yourself do delete; if one returned, the save didn't land (see above).

The Cast panel is empty even though I have linked entities. Cast entries are distinct from the linked entities on individual scenes. You add cast members from the Cast tab at the adventure level — they're not auto-populated from scene links. Open the Cast tab and use Add Cast Member to link the relevant entities with their roles.

See also

• Encounter Builder — creating the encounters linked to adventure scenes
• GM Screen — running the adventure at the table
• Scene Canvas — freeform flow planning alongside structured adventure prep
• Narrative threads — tracking cross-session story threads from the adventure