Everything in one project

Rules, characters, items, areas, conversations, quests, locations and story share one project, so the checks follow a reference from any part into any other. Use what your game needs, from a visual novel with the rules left out entirely to the deepest RPG.

Advisory Conversations

A required role no character can play

What's wrong
This required role allows only character kinds that no character in the project has, so it can never be cast and the conversation can never start.
Why it matters
The scene never plays.
Usual fix
Add a character of a kind the role allows, or allow a kind the project already has.
This is fine while...
the roster is still being written.

Illustrative. The app's own wording may differ.

  • Rules

    Built to model any game's ruleset: the values characters carry and spend, the capabilities and tags they gain, and the triggers that change them in play, written as formulas and checked as one system.

    • Stats, resources and capabilities, with costs and prerequisites
    • Actions, reactions and passive effects, with conditions, dice and chains of effects
    • Bonuses and penalties that stack, replace or cancel the way your game decides
    • Classes with inheritance, world and combat time, and reusable named formulas
  • Characters

    Playable characters, NPCs and enemies in one model, built from templates and attached to your rules.

    • A goblin warrior built on the goblin, changing only what differs
    • Starting stats that roll once for each creature
    • Body parts with rules of their own, such as an arm with its own hit points
    • Random names from pools, so an alien never draws a human name
  • Items

    One item model for weapons, ammo, consumables, quest items, containers and devices, each checked against your rules and your characters.

    • Weapon damage with dice, and ammo matched to the weapon by tags
    • Temporary enchantments, such as fire on an arrow, that wear off when the spell ends
    • Equipment checked against the slots of every body plan
    • List or grid inventories, and containers with an inventory of their own
  • Areas

    What a spell or a hazard leaves behind: fire, oil and ice on the ground, fog, walls and auras above it.

    • An interaction table, so water and fire make steam
    • Fire that runs through a whole oil slick
    • Clouds that drift on the wind and thin out
    • Formulas that ask whether a creature stands in one
  • Conversations

    Branching dialogue on a canvas, with roles that a named character, anyone from a pool, or whoever starts the scene can fill.

    • Skill checks with success, partial and failure outcomes
    • Choices the player sees greyed out, or doesn't see until they're open
    • Interrupts for when the player walks away mid-scene
    • A preview you step through line by line before any engine exists
  • Quests

    Quests as graphs of entries, objectives and endings, with a journal that follows along.

    • Objective sets: all of them, at least three, or a rule of your own
    • Progress counters such as 3 of 5 enemies defeated
    • Repeatable quests with a cooldown, and conditions that fail a quest
    • A preview you play through as a character, conditions checked as you go, before any engine exists
  • Locations

    The world as places inside places and the ways between them, drawn on a map over your own images.

    • Paths that open only when a condition is met, one-way drops, and fast travel between waypoints
    • Flat, layered or 3D maps
    • The characters you can meet in each place
    • Quest destinations checked for a path that reaches them
  • Story

    One chapter graph for the whole story, with its endings, the quests each chapter opens and closes, and New Game Plus.

    • Victories, defeats and neutral endings, and room for a sandbox or a tragedy
    • World-state flags and a glossary the whole story shares
    • Translations of dialogue, quest journals, chapters and the glossary into as many languages as you need
    • A preview that steps the story from chapter to chapter
  • Project and data

    Your design is a folder of readable JSON you can diff, keep in version control and load in your own engine.

    • A runtime contract built into the project: it marks what your engine must supply, such as events, distances and line of sight
    • Each system in its own files, so version control shows a rules change apart from a dialogue change

One project, every reference followed

Everything in the project has an ID of its own, so two characters can share a name and every reference still finds the right one. That's what lets a check run from a trigger into a quest, or from a conversation role to the characters who could play it.

  • Rename an ID once, and every formula, condition and reference follows
  • Used By lists everything that depends on what you're looking at
  • Find in Project (Ctrl+F) opens any entity by its name or ID
  • Validate All checks every part, and a click on a finding opens what it's about

Every part, checked as one