How everything works

What it is

The GM Deck organises everything you build for your tabletop game into three nesting layers. A worldis the setting itself — its NPCs, locations, items, lore, and house rules. A campaign is one specific group of players adventuring through one or more of your worlds. A session is a single sit-down at the table inside that campaign.

When to use it

Start here on your first visit. The fastest way to understand The GM Deck is to walk the path most DMs take on their first session — build a world, point a campaign at it, plan a session, and run it.

How to use it

1. From the dashboard, click Worlds and create your first world. Give it a title — anything from a finished setting name to Untitled Setting works.
2. Inside the world, add a handful of entities you already know exist — a starting town (Location), a party patron (NPC), a quest hook (Plotline).
3. Click Campaigns and create one, then link it to the world you just made.
4. Add your players, set a Next Session date, and open the session’s planning page to assemble what you need at the table.
5. When game night arrives, hit Run on the session and the runner takes you the rest of the way.

What it is

Worlds are containers for everything in a setting. Inside a world, every fictional thing — a person, a place, a weapon, a faction, a roll table, a snippet of lore — lives on its own page. Pages are typed: each one is an NPC, Location, Item, Encounter, Mob, Roll Table, Shop Table, Notes page, Vehicle, Faction, or one of your own custom templates. Plotlines are a special kind of page covered separately below.

When to use it

Use entity pages whenever you would otherwise reach for a notebook page or a wiki entry — anytime you want a piece of your setting to be searchable, linkable, and reusable across sessions.

How to use it

1. Open a world from the Worlds tab.
2. Click New Page, pick an entity type and a template, then fill in the structured fields. Every type ships with templates that prompt you for the fields a DM actually uses (a Generic NPC asks for stats and faction; a Tavern asks for proprietor and rooms).
3. Add a portrait or map image, write description and notes in the rich-text editor, and use @ to mention any other page — mentions become live links.
4. Click any page in a list, in the search pane, or in a mention chip to open the entity drawer for a quick read without leaving where you were.
5. Use Templates on a world to design your own custom layouts when the built-in ones don’t fit.

What it is

Every world has a dedicated All Entitiespage that lists every entity, timeline, and plotline alongside the folders you build to organise them. The page is a split view — a file tree on the left, an inline editor on the right — so you can browse, search, and edit without bouncing between detail pages. Folders are containers; each one carries a name, a rich- text description, and the entities you file into it.

When to use it

Reach for it whenever your world has grown past the dozen-entity mark and the recent-activity tiles on the world page no longer cut it. The file-tree shape lets you sweep through everything at once, and the inline editor turns small edits into a single click rather than a navigation round-trip.

How to use it

1. Open the world, then click View all entities from the Entities tab. The page header carries a New folder button — click it to create a folder inline; the new row is selected immediately so you can give it a description right away.
2. Click any folder’s chevron to expand it. Sub-folders nest underneath, member entities sit inside, and pages that aren’t filed in any folder appear at the root alongside timelines and plotlines.
3. Use the chip row and search to filter content. Folders that hold no matching content drop out of view; folders that do match auto-expand so results always land on a visible row.
4. Drag any entity onto a folder to file it there, or drag a folder onto another folder to re-parent it. Drop a folder onto the strip that appears at the bottom of the list while you drag to send it back to the top level.
5. Pick Auto when editing a folder if you want membership to follow a tag rule — entities tagged with every rule tag fall in automatically. Otherwise leave it on Manual and curate the contents yourself. An Auto badge appears wherever a rule-driven folder shows up.
6. Use the Move to folder… action in a folder’s right pane to re-parent it. The picker hides self and descendants so you can’t accidentally tangle the tree.
7. Inside any rich-text field, type @ to mention a folder alongside pages and sessions. Folder mentions render as gold chips and click straight back into the All Entities page with that folder selected.
8. Open any entity’s detail page (or its drawer preview) to see every folder it sits inside as a clickable breadcrumb path — from root folder all the way down to the immediate parent.
9. Hit the collapse arrow on the divider between the two columns when you want the editor to take the full width. Your choice is remembered per world.

What it is

Any Location entity can carry a map image with interactive pins on top. Pins are tip-anchored teardrops that take their colour and inner glyph from whatever entity each pin links to — an NPC pin shows a person, a Mob pin shows a skull, a Shop pin shows a storefront.

When to use it

Drop a map onto a city and pin every shop, NPC home, and adventure hook to its physical position. At the table, you click a pin to jump straight to that entity’s page.

How to use it

1. Open a Location page and upload a map image in its Map panel.
2. Click anywhere on the map to drop a pin, then search for the entity you want to link it to.
3. Toggle each pin between Visible and Hidden to control whether players see it on a shared handout.
4. Group related pins (treasure caches, lore beats, encounters) into named groups so you can show or hide whole layers at once.
5. Use the Maps tab in the sidebar to see every map across every world in one gallery.

What it is

A campaign is the bridge between your world and the people you are playing with. It carries the player roster, the schedule, the master plan, the list of sessions you have run (and the recaps you have written), and per-campaign reputation notes for the NPCs, Locations, and Factions the party encounters.

When to use it

Create one campaign per playthrough. Two groups exploring the same world are two campaigns linked to one world — the world stays consistent while each campaign carries its own story.

How to use it

1. Click Campaigns and New Campaign. Give it a title and link it to one or more worlds.
2. Add each player with their name, character, and email address — emails are used for calendar invites.
3. Set the Next Session date and time. Pick a reminder lead time so each player gets pinged before kickoff.
4. Click Send Invites to Players to email a calendar invite the moment the schedule is set.
5. Move the campaign through its status lifecycle (Active → Paused → Completed) as the playthrough evolves.

What it is

Plotlines are world-level narrative arcs broken into ordered stages. Where a session captures one night at the table, a plotline captures a thread that runs across many — an ongoing war, a missing heir, a slow-burn mystery. Each stage can link to the entities involved and carries its own progress flag per campaign.

When to use it

Reach for a plotline whenever you have a story that is not a single encounter — anything you want to track across multiple sessions, with discrete beats between start and resolution.

How to use it

1. Inside a world, click New Page and pick Plotline.
2. Add stages in order. Each stage carries a title, prose, and optional links to the NPCs, Locations, and Items involved.
3. From a campaign, mark stage progress as the party advances. Each campaign tracks its own state independently — the same plotline can be at stage two in one game and resolved in another.
4. While running a session, plotline progress shows in the runner so you can see at a glance where the party is on every active arc.

What it is

Timelines chronicle the history of a setting independently of any single campaign. Events are partitioned into named eras and flow left to right inside each era as a horizontal ribbon, with stacked cards for events that share a date. The same ribbon turns vertical when the search pane or an entity drawer surfaces it inside a session.

When to use it

Build a timeline when you want a visual record of the past your players keep tripping over — the founding of an empire, a forgotten war, a string of disasters that explain why the ruins are where they are.

How to use it

1. Click Timelines in the sidebar and create one. Link it to the worlds it belongs to.
2. Add eras with start labels and either a duration or an open-ended Current flag. Each era can carry an accent colour.
3. Drop events into each era. Each event takes a title, a date label, prose, an optional image, a category, and an accent colour.
4. Drag events to reorder, group simultaneous events into a stack, and assign each event to a category.
5. Open the same timeline from the search pane or an entity drawer to see the era ribbon vertically while you are inside a session.

What it is

Every session has a dedicated planning page where you assemble what you will need at the table — the locations the party will probably visit, the NPCs they will meet, the encounters you have prepared, the plotline beats you want to advance, the timeline events that might come into play. The plan is for you, not the players; live notes you take during the game are kept on a separate panel.

When to use it

Use the planning page in the days before a session. Treat it as the prep doc you will glance at while running the night.

How to use it

1. Open the campaign and click New Session (or pick a session that is already on the schedule).
2. Click Plan to open the planning workspace.
3. Use the picker to add Locations, NPCs, Encounters, Plotlines, and Timelines you want at hand.
4. Pin the items you will definitely use so they sort to the top of the runner’s quick-links column.
5. Write your prep prose in the Session Plan rich-text panel — the runner shows this alongside your live notes during the game.

What it is

The session runner is the live workspace you sit inside while you are at the table. On desktop it is a three-column layout — pinned content on the left, your live notes in the middle, and a search pane on the right that finds anything in the world without leaving the page. On phones, the same three columns become a tab strip you can swipe between. The whole layout is locked to the viewport so nothing scrolls off the bottom while you are typing.

When to use it

Open the runner the moment your session starts. Everything else — search, drawers, the combat tracker, your prep notes — lives inside it.

How to use it

1. From the campaign, hit Run on the session you are about to play.
2. Use the Ambient chip in the header to set a music or atmosphere link the runner remembers between rounds.
3. Type your live session notes in the middle column — they auto-save as you write.
4. Use the search pane to pull up any NPC, location, or roll table mid-scene; click an entity to open its full detail without leaving the runner.
5. When the night ends, use Pause to keep the runner exactly as it was for next time, or End Session to close the session out.

What it is

The combat tracker is a live initiative, HP, and condition surface that takes over the runner’s middle column the moment combat begins. It manages NPC and Mob HP, condition chips on every combatant, the current turn marker, the round counter, and dropped or skipped state. Players still track their own HP at the table.

When to use it

Use the tracker any time you would otherwise be juggling initiative on a notepad. It launches from any Encounter page that has Non-Player Combatants linked.

How to use it

1. Open an Encounter page and click Launch Encounter (or start one from the search pane during a session).
2. In the setup form, click Roll on each NPC row to roll initiative, type each player’s roll into their cell, and drag rows to break ties.
3. Click Begin Combat to lock initiative and put the turn marker on the highest entry.
4. Click Next Turn each round. Tap an HP cell to open the Damage / Heal / Set HP popover; click + Condition on any combatant to apply one of the fifteen standard conditions.
5. Edit the encounter mid-fight to add reinforcements — they roll initiative the moment you save and slot into the order.
6. When combat ends, click End Combat. The tracker writes a one-line entry into your session log and your recap, then steps out of the way.

What it is

A recap is a short summary of what happened in a session, attached to the session record. The combat tracker writes its own one-line recap entry on End Combat; the rest you compose from your live notes.

When to use it

Write a recap right after the session ends, while the night is fresh. Recaps are what you will skim before next week’s game to remind yourself where the party left off.

How to use it

1. Open the session that just ended.
2. Use the Recap panel to write a summary of the night. Pull from your live session notes — they are right next to the recap in the same view.
3. Save when you are done; the recap surfaces on the campaign timeline so you can find it again later.

What it is

A Roll Table is an entity page whose contents are a numbered list of outcomes — random encounters, loot drops, weather, names, anything you would resolve with a die. The rich-text editor anywhere in the app also accepts inline dice expressions, so you can drop a roll into any prose field and click it later to resolve.

When to use it

Use a Roll Table for anything you want to randomise more than once. Use inline dice for one-off rolls inside a description or a session note.

How to use it

1. Inside a world, create a Roll Table page and add rows. Each row is a die range plus an outcome.
2. From the table’s page (or from any NPC, Location, or Faction that links to it) click Roll — the result lands in the dice toast.
3. To roll inline anywhere, type /d20, /2d6+3, /2d20kh1 (keep highest, i.e. advantage) or /2d20kl1 (keep lowest, i.e. disadvantage) into a rich-text field. The expression turns into a clickable chip the moment you press space.
4. The 3D dice tray on the floating action button rolls any expression you type.

What it is

A handout is a public, share-link view of a single entity page that you can hand to your players without giving them an account. You pick which surfaces of the page to expose — Image, Map, Details, Notes — and copy a URL.

When to use it

Use a handout when you want players to see the picture of the patron, the layout of the dungeon, or the cryptic note pinned to the door — and nothing else. You stay in control of what is visible and can revoke the link instantly.

How to use it

1. Open the entity page you want to share.
2. Click Share and tick the surfaces you want to expose. Toggles only appear for surfaces the page actually has.
3. Copy the link and send it to your players over your channel of choice.
4. Edits to the source page flow through to the share link automatically — you do not need to re-share.
5. Open the share dialog again to revoke the link the moment you want it dark.

What it is

The Web is a force-directed graph view of every world, campaign, plotline, timeline, page, session, and handout you own — drawn as nodes and connected by every reference your data already contains.

When to use it

Open The Web when you want to see the shape of a setting at a glance — which NPCs are tangled in which factions, which locations sit inside which regions, which plotlines touch which campaigns.

How to use it

1. Click The Web in the sidebar.
2. Pan with the mouse, zoom with the wheel.
3. Use the Worlds and Campaigns chips at the top to filter the canvas down to a subset.
4. Click any node to recentre the graph and open its detail in the right-hand pane.
5. Search the same pane to jump to anything by name without scrolling the canvas.

What it is

Every entity page can carry one or more tags — coloured labels you define once and reuse anywhere. The search pane (the same component used in the session runner and The Web) finds pages, plotlines, timelines, campaigns, and sessions across every world you own.

When to use it

Tag entities by anything you would want to slice on later — tavern, rival, act-one, haunted. Search anytime you cannot remember which world you put something in.

How to use it

1. Click Tags in the sidebar to browse, rename, recolour, and merge tags across all your worlds.
2. On any entity page, type into the tags field — autocomplete suggests existing tags and lets you create new ones inline.
3. Use the multi-tag filter on a world’s page list to narrow by combinations of tags.
4. Open the search pane (it is the right column of the runner and of The Web) and start typing — results group by type and surface every world.

What it is

The To-Do Queue is a personal bookmark list. Anything you want to come back to later — a half-written NPC, a campaign mid-prep, a session whose recap is not done — gets added with one click and surfaces on the queue page until you remove it.

When to use it

Use it whenever you notice work-in-progress — that NPC sketch you started during a session and want to flesh out tomorrow, that plotline whose stage list is still skeletal.

How to use it

1. Open To-Do Queue in the sidebar to see everything you have bookmarked, sortable by added date, title, or type.
2. From any Create form, click Save & add to Queue instead of Save to create the item and queue it in one move.
3. From any detail page header, click the queue icon to add the current page.
4. On the queue page, edit any item inline on the right — full editor for entity pages, lite editor for worlds, campaigns, timelines, and plotlines, and a jump into the session itself for sessions.
5. Remove an item to take it off the queue when you are done.

What it is

Reputations are short, free-text notes on how the party stands with a specific NPC, Location, or Faction — scoped to a single campaign, so the same entity can be friendly in one playthrough and hostile in another.

When to use it

Use reputation notes whenever the social standing matters. The note is plain prose rather than a numerical score, so it tells you exactly what you need at a glance — for example, suspicious of the party after the warehouse incident; will not trade openly but has not drawn weapons.

How to use it

1. Open the campaign and expand the All Reputations panel in the right-hand sidebar.
2. Find the NPC, Location, or Faction you want to annotate (filter by type, search by name, or page through the list).
3. Type the reputation note. It auto-saves and stamps the time of last edit.
4. From any individual NPC, Location, or Faction page in a campaign context, the same note is visible inline so you can update it during play.

What it is

The GM Deck runs on a 14-day free trial — full access to every feature, no card required. After the trial, two paid tiers (Standard and Premium) keep your access live; payment runs through Polar, which acts as the merchant of record and handles VAT and currency conversion for you.

When to use it

Open Settings whenever you want to see your trial countdown, switch tiers, change your payment details, or cancel.

How to use it

1. Sign up — your trial begins immediately. The countdown shows in the dashboard banner.
2. Open Settings from the sidebar to view your subscription state, plan, and renewal date.
3. Click Manage Subscription to upgrade, downgrade, change card, or cancel — the customer portal opens in a new tab.
4. To request a refund, follow the policy linked from Settings and from the public footer.