The waterfall in practice

📝Note

What you'll do: Build a World Codex, run a campaign inside it, promote session-born content to canon, then start a second campaign and see what it inherits. By the end, the waterfall model will feel natural rather than abstract.

This walkthrough uses a concrete example throughout: a world called The Realm of Valdris with two campaigns — The Shattered Coast (your Monday group) and The Iron Marches (your Friday group). Substitute your own world and campaign names at each step.

Phase 1 — Build the World Codex

Before starting any campaign, spend some time in the World Codex. This is where you build the world independent of any specific game. Think of yourself as writing a sourcebook, not running a session.

Step 1: Open the World Codex

From the world page, click the World Codex card at the top of the waterfall. This opens the canonical entity browser — everything you create here belongs to the world, not to any campaign.

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The world landing page with the World Codex card at the top and the campaign grid below it.

Capture: world landing page — World Codex card highlighted at top, two example campaign cards below

Step 2: Create your foundational entities

Start with the structures of the world — the things that would exist whether any adventurers ever showed up or not.

Create a few Locations. Major cities, important regions, dangerous places. Write enough that you could describe each one at the table — a paragraph is plenty for now.
Create Factions with presence in those locations. Who controls what? Who's in conflict? A few lines on their goals and their methods.
Create NPCs who represent the world's power structures — the people who make things happen regardless of what any player group does. The city governor. The cult leader. The merchant who knows everyone.
Connect them with wikilinks. In the city article, type [[Governor Maren]]. In the governor's article, type [[the Harbor District]]. Let the graph form naturally as you write.

💡Tip

Write canon entities as if they're sourcebook entries, not session prep. "Governor Maren is a cautious pragmatist who has held power for twelve years by playing factions against each other" is canon. "In tonight's session, the party will confront Maren about the missing shipment" is session prep — that belongs in a campaign.

Step 3: Keep canon status-neutral

The most important discipline in the World Codex: do not write game state into lore.

Good canon: "Varek the blacksmith operates from a forge in the Coppergate district. He is a former soldier who lost his arm in the Valdris war and refuses to speak of it."

Avoid: "Varek was killed by the adventurers in session 4."

The first statement is true for every campaign. The second is only true for one. Canon captures what exists; campaigns capture what happened.

Phase 2 — Start your first campaign

With a populated World Codex, your first campaign starts with a full world already waiting.

Step 4: Create the campaign

From the world page, click New Campaign in the campaign grid below the World Codex card.

Give the campaign a name — something evocative of the story or the player group. The Shattered Coast for your Monday group.
Set the status to Prep if you're still planning sessions, or Active if you're starting immediately.
Click Create. You land on the campaign dashboard.

Step 5: See the world waiting for you

Open the campaign's entity browser — or look at anything campaign-facing. Every entity you built in the World Codex is already here. Governor Maren. The Harbor District. Every faction and location you created.

You did not have to import them, copy them, or set them up per-campaign. The campaign inherited everything the moment it was created.

/help/screenshots/waterfall/02-campaign-entity-view.png

The campaign entity browser showing inherited World Codex entities alongside campaign-born ones.

Capture: campaign entity list — mix of canon entities (no campaign badge) and campaign-born entities (with campaign badge)

📝Note

New entities you create in the campaign view start as campaign-born — they live only in this campaign and are invisible to other campaigns. You decide when, if ever, something earns its way into canon.

Step 6: Set campaign-specific state

Now you're in play territory. The things you set here belong to this campaign's version of the world.

Open any NPC from the World Codex — Governor Maren, say. In the campaign view, you'll see a Campaign State panel alongside her canonical article.
Set her status: alive, dead, missing, allied, unknown. This status is only true for this campaign. Your Friday group will see her as she is in canon until they interact with her.
Add campaign notes — private context specific to this group. "The party knows Maren is taking bribes from the Ironclad syndicate. They haven't confronted her yet." This note belongs to this campaign only.
Use visibility reveals to control what the players see. An entity set to GM Only in canon can be revealed to your party when the moment is right — without changing canon.

Phase 3 — Play and create at the table

Sessions generate content. Some of it is ephemeral — the name of a guard you invented. Some of it becomes important. The waterfall gives you a place for all of it.

Step 7: Create campaign-born content

When you invent something at the table — an NPC, a location, a detail — create it directly inside the campaign.

Click + New Entity while inside the campaign view. The entity is created with campaign_id set to this campaign — it belongs here, not to the world.
Give it a name and write what you know. "Rennick — dock worker, informant, clearly terrified of someone. Party met him in session 2."
Link him to canon entities he connects to. [[Harbor District]], [[Ironclad Syndicate]]. The wikilinks work across the canon/campaign boundary.

Session-born entities are marked with a campaign badge in the entity list so you always know what belongs to the world and what belongs to this story.

Step 8: Update state after sessions

After each session, do a quick sweep through the entities who appeared.

Open any NPC who had a significant encounter. Update their campaign status if something changed — death, capture, alliance shift.
Flip the visibility on any entity the players definitively learned about. If the party discovered the Ironclad Syndicate exists, reveal it to the party in the portal.
Add notes while they're fresh — what the players now know about this character, what they got wrong, what they suspect.

💡Tip

None of this touches the World Codex. Governor Maren is still the same person in canon. In your campaign, the party killed her in session 6 — that's true for this campaign. In your Friday campaign, she's still alive and the party doesn't know about the bribes yet.

Phase 4 — Promote content to canon

Some campaign-born content grows into permanent world lore. The dock worker informant appears in five sessions and becomes a fan favorite. A location the party discovered turns out to be the most interesting place in the world. These things have earned canonical status.

Step 9: Canonize an entity

Open Rennick's entity card inside the campaign view.
Click the ⋯ menu on the entity and select Canonize.
A preview shows what will be promoted — his name, type, article, and relationships. Campaign-specific status (like "party contact") is stripped; only the lore carries over.
If an entity with the same name already exists in canon, you'll be prompted to rename or cancel. Otherwise, click Confirm.
Rennick is now world-canonical. His entity moves to the World Codex.

/help/screenshots/waterfall/03-canonize-preview.png

The Canonize preview modal showing the entity name, type, article content, and the Confirm button.

Capture: Canonize modal for a campaign-born NPC — show the entity preview, the stripped fields note, and the Confirm button

What happens immediately:

Rennick appears in the World Codex
He becomes visible in every other campaign in this world (subject to visibility rules)
Your Friday campaign, which never met him, can now encounter him as a canon NPC
The lore you wrote during play becomes world truth

This is the waterfall running in reverse — deliberate, one-way promotion from campaign up to canon.

Phase 5 — Start a second campaign

This is where the architecture pays off most clearly.

Step 10: Create your second campaign

Go back to the world page and create a new campaign — The Iron Marches for your Friday group.

Click New Campaign in the campaign grid.
Name it and create it. Land on the new campaign dashboard.

Step 11: See what it inherited

Open the entity browser in the new campaign. Everything in the World Codex is here:

Every NPC you built during Phase 1
Every location, faction, and entity
Rennick — the character your Monday group discovered and you subsequently canonized

The Iron Marches campaign has never run a single session. It is already populated with a rich, connected world including characters that grew out of another campaign's play.

Your Friday group can meet Rennick for the first time in week one, knowing nothing about him. Your Monday group's story with him belongs entirely to their campaign. Both groups are running in the same world — Rennick is the same person — but each story is completely independent.

/help/screenshots/waterfall/04-second-campaign-entities.png

A second campaign's entity browser, showing the full World Codex plus the canonized NPC from the first campaign.

Capture: fresh campaign entity list — show a recently canonized NPC appearing alongside original World Codex entities

The complete workflow

Build World Codex
   └── Create foundational NPCs, locations, factions
   └── Write status-neutral lore

Start Campaign A
   └── World Codex flows in automatically
   └── Set campaign state (overrides) per entity
   └── Create campaign-born content during play

After sessions
   └── Update NPC statuses
   └── Reveal entities to players
   └── Canonize what earned it

Start Campaign B
   └── World Codex flows in automatically
   └── Canonized content from Campaign A is there
   └── Fresh game state — Campaign A's story stays in Campaign A

Common questions

Can I build campaign content first and promote it later? Yes. Many GMs start with a campaign, run a few sessions, and then go back and build out the World Codex from what emerged in play. Canonize works in any order. The world codex can grow backward from campaigns just as well as forward from planning.

What if two campaigns have the same NPC die? That's fine — and expected. Governor Maren can die in Campaign A in week 3 and still be alive in Campaign B in week 15. Both are true within their respective campaigns. Canon Maren is unaffected by either.

If I canonize an NPC, does Campaign A's version change? No. Campaign A's overrides — including status, campaign notes, and visibility reveals — remain untouched. The entity moves to canon, but Campaign A's game state for that entity stays exactly as it was.

What if I want to clean up an NPC from canon after the story ended? Soft-delete the canon entity. Any campaign that had overrides on that entity will automatically keep a campaign-owned copy. Campaigns without overrides simply stop seeing the entity. You will see a warning showing how many campaigns reference the entity before you confirm.