Key concepts

These are the building blocks of Skryrún. Understanding how these concepts relate to each other makes the rest of the platform click into place.

World

A world is the top-level container. Everything in Skryrún lives inside a world: your entities, campaigns, sessions, uploaded images, and the knowledge graph. Worlds are independent — entities in one world cannot be linked to entities in another.

A world does not have to be a fantasy setting. It can be a city, a solar system, a city block for a mystery campaign, or a military unit in a historical game. The scope is yours to define.

Campaign

A campaign is a play group inside a world. It has its own player roster, session log, and campaign-specific notes. One world can have multiple campaigns running simultaneously — useful if you run the same setting with different groups, or run a historical arc alongside a present-day one.

Campaign membership determines which players can access the player portal for that campaign. Visibility rules (GM Only, Party, Character-Tagged) apply at the campaign level.

Entity

An entity is any named thing in your world worth tracking. NPCs, locations, factions, items, spells, events, secrets — all of these are entities. Skryrún has 20 typed entity types, each with its own structured fields and behavior.

Every entity has:

• A name and type
• An article — the rich text body
• Metadata — tags, visibility level, system data
• Relationships — explicit labeled connections to other entities
• Blocks — structured data sections (for entity types that support them)

See Entity types for descriptions of all 20 types.

Article

An article is the rich text body attached to an entity. It is where you write the actual lore, descriptions, and narrative content. Articles support:

• Headings (H2, H3, H4)
• Bold and italic
• Ordered and unordered lists
• Tables
• Blockquotes
• Images
• [[Wikilinks]]

Every entity has exactly one article. The article is for prose; structured data lives in Blocks. Both are part of the same entity — you are always editing one thing.

Wikilink

A wikilink is an inline link between entities, typed directly in the article editor using [[double brackets]].

Type [[ anywhere in an article to open the wikilink picker. Start typing a name to filter existing entities. If the entity you type does not exist yet, pressing Enter creates a stub — a placeholder entity with the name and type, no article content yet.

Wikilinks do two things at once:

1. Create a clickable cross-reference between entities (clickable in both GM and player views)
2. Add an edge to the Knowledge Graph automatically

Relationship

A relationship is an explicit labeled edge between two entities — separate from wikilinks. While wikilinks are created inline as you write, relationships are structured entries with a label like "member of," "allied with," "rules," or "created."

Relationships appear in both entities' relationship panels and in the knowledge graph as labeled edges. Use them when the connection between two entities is significant enough to name and track — not just a reference in passing.

Visibility

Every entity has a visibility level that controls which users can see it.

New entities default to GM Only. This lets you draft freely and reveal content deliberately. Visibility can be changed at any time — including live during a session, with changes reflecting immediately in the player portal.

Character-Tagged visibility requires 👑 Runekeeper.

See Visibility levels for the full breakdown including tag examples and inheritance behavior.

Block

A block is a structured data section attached to an entity. Blocks are type-specific — an NPC entity can have personality, equipment, secrets, and stat block sections. A Faction entity might have a goals block and a hierarchy block.

Blocks make information scannable at the table. Instead of hunting through prose for a stat, the stat block is its own section. Blocks also support visibility independently from the entity itself: you can set an NPC to Party visibility while keeping its Secrets block GM Only.

The three prep canvases

Session prep in Skryrún is shaped as three canvases that feed each other:

• Scene Canvas — build one scene at a time: NPCs, beats, branches, read-aloud text. Scenes are reusable prep artifacts; one scene can appear in any number of session plans.
• Session Canvas — arrange prepped scenes into a session plan with story threads, decision branches, and spotlight tracking. Think of it as the spine of a session.
• GM Screen — the live at-the-table view. The scene rail (from your Session Canvas) runs along the side; entity chips, dice, audio, maps, and the session log live on the canvas.

You don't have to use all three. You can run straight off a Session Canvas, or improv at the GM Screen with no prep at all. The canvases stack when you want structure; they get out of the way when you want to wing it.

Companion Link

A companion link is a login-free URL you can share with players during a live session. Players who open a companion link get access to the party's visible content without creating an account.

Companion links are scoped to a single campaign and expire after the session ends (or at a time you set). They are useful for drop-in players, one-shots, or players who do not want to create an account.

Knowledge Graph

The knowledge graph is an automatic map of all entities in your world and the connections between them. Every wikilink and every explicit relationship you create adds an edge to the graph.

You can view it by clicking Graph in your world sidebar. Nodes are entities; edges are connections. Click any node to open that entity.

The graph is not something you maintain separately — it builds itself as you write. It is most useful for finding orphaned entities with no connections, spotting relationship clusters, and exploring a complex world structure visually.

Player Portal

The player portal is a read-only view of your world, scoped to what the players are allowed to see. Players access it via a campaign invite link (persistent, account-based) or a companion link (session-scoped, no account needed).

The portal shows only Party and Character-Tagged entities. GM Only entities are completely absent — no placeholder, no trace. The portal updates in real time as you change visibility settings.

Players can browse entities, follow wikilinks between party-visible content, and view their character arc logs. They cannot edit anything.

See also

• Entity types — all 20 entity types and when to use each
• Visibility levels — complete reference for GM Only, Party, and Character-Tagged
• Wikilinks and the graph — creating connections and reading the knowledge graph
• GM Screen — the live at-table view
• Scene Canvas — building individual scenes
• Session Canvas — arranging scenes into a session plan
• Pricing and tiers — what each tier includes