Sharing things, and finding them again
The GM shares a person, place or thing so players can see it. Then anyone can stick their own tags on it.
Two things sharing a tag are connected — that's the whole filing system. There's no “link these” button to go hunting for, because tags already did it.
For GMs: sharing one thing at a time
Everything you make starts private. On any Cast member, Backdrop, Prop or Ensemble, press Share with players and that one thing becomes visible.
What they get, and what stays yours
Two description boxes, and the difference is the point. Public description is what players read. Notes is yours — the twist, the real name, what they'll do when cornered.
Sharing hands over the first and never the second. There's a What players see preview so you can check before you commit, and it's the same code that renders it for them, so it can't quietly drift from the truth.
Something unshared isn't merely absent from their list — it can't be reached by guessing its address either.
Changing your mind
Stop sharing takes it back. Any party notes stuck to that thing go quiet with it — there's no second switch to remember, which is exactly why those notes live on the thing rather than on a separate board.
Players keep their own private notes and tags on it, because those were never yours to withdraw. They just have nothing to hang off for now.
Tagging as you go
Add a tag to anything you can see. Six kinds take tags: characters, Backdrops, Props, Ensemble, Scenes, and individual fields on a character sheet.
Open a tag and you get everything else carrying it — across all six kinds, filtered to what you're allowed to see.
Your tags are yours. All of them.
Every tag belongs to whoever made it. Your GM can't see yours, other players can't see yours, and nobody can see how you've connected things up. There is no shared tag and no campaign-wide tag — the GM has their own set and so does everyone else.
Which means you can tag the friendly baker definitely-a-vampire and take that entirely to your grave.
What to actually tag things with
The trick is to tag things with each other. Make a tag named after an NPC, then put it on the tavern they run, the rumour about them, and the dagger they're looking for. Now their page answers "what do I know about this person" by itself.
That's why there's a tickbox when you create something offering to tag it as itself — it's building that habit for you. Leave it on.
Beyond that: tag by arc, by session, by who-cares-about-it, by unresolved-question. It costs a second at the time and pays out four months later, which is the only honest pitch for any note-taking system.
Tagging one field on a sheet
Individual fields can be tagged too — the odd one out, since it's part of a character rather than a thing of its own. A tag on a field takes you back to that field on that sheet rather than to the top of a long page.
Useful for the field that's actually a plot thread: a Bond, a Debt, a curse someone's tracking.
Twenty things at once
When a GM shares a lot at once, your campaign page grows a Shared With You list — everything shared with you that you haven't tagged yet, with a tick next to each.
The two buttons do different jobs
- Tag all with one name — one tag across everything ticked. Tick nine things and call them all
Marketplace. - Tag each with its own name — one tag per thing, named after it. Tick nine things and get nine tags, so each becomes something else can be filed against.
The list is what you haven't tagged rather than what's newest, so it empties as you work and stops nagging when you're done.
Finding it again in four months
Open Tags, search, and follow it. That's the payoff, and it only works if the tagging already happened.
The habit that makes this work
Tag at the moment of invention, not later. The innkeeper you named on the spot gets a tag in the ten seconds while your players are arguing about something else — that's the entire investment.
The version of this that fails is the one where you promise to tidy up after the session. Nobody tidies up after the session.
This is help for ACT VI: The Tabletop Turns — a system-agnostic companion app for running tabletop RPGs. Players never pay, and a GM's first campaign is free.