GM Screen

Run the game from one screen: tabs, Ctrl K search with your system's compendium, the Notebook, drag to link, the Journal editor ([[links]], @mentions, callouts, code), the GM board and showing to the whole campaign.

The GM Screen is where you run the game from: the whole campaign one search away, in tabs, with the World, the Journal, the NPCs, the character sheets, your system's compendium and the usual tools. Open it with the campaign's GM Screen button and, inside the table, from GM → Full screen.

It is one world with several views. What you link in a note shows up in the graph, what you drag onto the board is still the same entry, and what you show is seen by the whole table.

At a glance

The screen has three parts:

• The rail (on the left; on a phone, a bar at the bottom) with the destinations: Home, Notebook, World, Characters, NPCs, Compendium, Scenes, Journal, Library, Tools and Settings.
• The tabs, at the top. Everything you open (an entry, a sheet, a spell, a tool) opens in its own tab. You can Pin one so it doesn't close, Close the others, or drag a tab to reorder it. Tabs are saved: when you come back, they are still there.
• The Context panel, on the right: the open tabs and what's related to what you are looking at. On tablets and phones it is a sheet that covers the view, so it starts closed and you open it with its button in the header.

Home

What you need when the session starts:

• On the table now: the active scene and encounter.
• Shown to the table: what you are showing the players right now, with Remove for everyone on each card and Remove all when there are several.
• Go to: every destination with how many things it holds.
• Players: the table's sheets with their quick roll data.

Search the whole campaign: Ctrl K

Ctrl K (⌘K on Mac), or the search box in the header, opens the palette: type and you get sheets, NPCs, World entries, Journal entries, scenes and entries from your system's compendium. Enter opens the choice in a tab.

A prefix narrows the search:

For example, c: fireball searches only the compendium. The palette also has actions: New World entry, New NPC, Reload the index and going to any destination.

The compendium is your system's. In D&D you get spells, creatures, items and feats; in a custom system, its catalogs, its bestiary and its rulebook; in a Foundry system, the compendiums in its package; in Fate, its bestiary.

The Notebook

The Notebook puts World, Journal, NPCs and characters in one tree, like Obsidian, with the chosen note beside it, so you can read, edit and link it without leaving the tree. Open in a tab sends it to its own tab. On a phone the tree and the note don't fit at once: opening a note hides the tree and Back to the tree brings it back.

The same notebook lives in the campaign's World tab, for everyone: it is the Text (tree and note, like a notebook) view, next to Cards and the World graph. All three are views of the same thing, with the same relations.

Dragging

Almost everything can be dragged:

• Into a text you are writing (a note, a Journal entry): it writes its [[link]].
• Onto the tab bar: it opens in a tab of its own.
• Onto the table's map (an NPC, a bestiary creature): it becomes a token.

Writing: the Journal and notes

The Journal, World entries and the screen's notes share the same editor. While writing:

• [[ opens autocomplete to link something from the campaign: World entries, NPCs, characters, the Journal or the compendium. [[Name|other text]] links showing other text; [[Name#Section]] points at a heading.
• @ mentions a player, character or team; @máster pings whoever runs the game. Mentions notify on publish.
• / at the start of a line opens the commands: Large heading, List, Task list, Table, Code block, Spoiler, Highlight, Footnote and the Note, Warning and Secret (folded) boxes.

With advanced markdown: callouts > [!note] Title (note, tip, warning, danger, secret, question, example; with [!secret]- it starts folded), ==highlight==, ||spoiler|| and highlighted code blocks (js, ts, css, html, json, md). The How to write button sums it up.

In the Journal, also:

• Three modes: write, Write and preview side by side and read. Focus (hide folders and list) leaves only the text and Expand to the whole window uses the full screen.
• What you write is kept as a Draft saved until you publish; if the window closes, coming back shows Recovered what you were writing and had not published.
• The Session template gives you the structure: summary, moments, characters and NPCs, loot, loose ends.
• Link names finds the campaign names you wrote without brackets, and Link them all turns them into links at once.
• Every entry shows what it links to and what links to it. In the World graph, the Journal button shows Journal entries as dots and their [[links]] as lines.

The GM board

The plot corkboard is now a view of the graph: GM board. World entries are connected there as in the graph, and you can also add loose cards (Note, Image) just for you and tie them with threads. Threads between two entries are hidden World relations: players don't see them. If you had an old corkboard, it converts itself the first time you open the graph.

The World graph

The World graph (in the World tab) draws the entries and their relations. The top bar keeps it short: search, Filters (which categories and types are shown, the Journal, the lines, "Hide entries without links" and dot colour by category or attitude; the button counts the active ones), the saved View and Design.

Pressing Design brings up a tools panel, and the line at the bottom tells you the next step:

• Move and select: drag a dot to place it; tap it to see its card.
• Connect: tap one entry, then another, and pick the relation type.
• New entry: click the empty spot where you want it.
• Note and Image: loose ones on the board (they need a saved view).
• Relation types: your own, with both directions.
• Done: leaves the mode. Esc drops the current tool.

On a phone the panel is an icon bar at the bottom, so it doesn't cover the map.

Tools

Tools gathers everything you use to run the game, in groups: During the session (GM notes, Players, Tables, Rolls, Dialogues, Music and sound), The world (Board, Timeline, Places, NPCs), Rules and creatures (Bestiary, Compendium, Adventure) and Prep (Sessions, Generators, Items and Services, Resources). Type at the top to find one.

Each tool opens in its own tab, full width, or can be dragged onto the tab bar. Only tools your system supports are offered (the bestiary shows up if your system has one).

• GM notes brings notes, secrets and plots together: on a wide screen, the three columns at once; on a phone, one with its selector. They are the same notes as the table's.
• The Board is shown inside its tab, without extra windows.
• Bestiary and Compendium, on a wide screen, put the list on the left and the full card on the right.
• The star (Keep handy on Home) puts the tool under Handy on Home, one click away. You start with GM notes, Players and Tables.

From almost all of them you can Show at the table and drag onto the map or into a text:

• Dialogues: in "At the table", each line is shown as is.
• Tables: a roll's result is shown or sent to chat.
• Places, Timeline and NPCs: their description with its links, and opening their World entry.

Showing at the table

What you show is seen by the whole campaign: whoever is at the table, in Combat, in the World, in the Journal or in Channels. Each player can Set aside a card (it comes back from the tray) or close it for themselves; only you can Remove for everyone, from the card itself or from Shown to the table on Home.

With the whiteboard open, what's shown gets out of the way so people can draw, and comes back when it closes. To draw on top of an image, use Send to the whiteboard from its card or from "Show to the table".

Inside the table

In Immersion mode, the GM button opens the tools as floating windows over the scene, and Full screen opens this same screen on top. What you show from there appears at the table. Esc closes it (unless the palette or a dialog is open).

Known limits

• Players don't have a GM Screen: they see the World, the Journal and what's shown.
• In GUMSHOE and Ánima the screen works, but their compendium is not in the palette: it is used from their usual sheets and panels.
• The Foundry compendium searches the indexes of the installed package: if the system ships no compendiums, there is nothing to search.

Common problems

• "I don't get the bestiary / compendium." They are only offered if the campaign's system has them. In a custom system, the bestiary is filled in the builder's Bestiary tab.
• "A link says “Doesn't exist yet”." There is no entry with that name: create it and the link will work.
• "On my phone I can't see the right-hand panel." That's the Context panel: open it with its button in the header.

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