Tabletop RPG Guide

Overview

Swashbuckler was built with tabletop RPGs in mind. This guide walks through setting up a campaign workspace, from creating templates for your world's entities to sharing lore with your players while keeping GM secrets hidden.

Setting Up Your Campaign

Create a Space

Start by creating a space for your campaign. Give it a name (e.g., "Curse of the Crimson Tide") and pick an icon. Each campaign gets its own space with isolated templates, entries, and tags.

Import the Roleplaying Starter Kit

Instead of building templates from scratch, import the Roleplaying starter kit:

1. Go to Settings > Templates
2. Click Starter Kits
3. Expand Roleplaying to preview the templates: Character, Location, Faction, Session Log, Item
4. Click Import

Each template comes with relevant properties already configured — Character has fields for race, class, and alignment; Location has region and description; and so on.

You can customize these templates after importing, or create additional templates for things like Quests, Lore, or Encounters.

Build Your World

Create entries for the people, places, and factions in your world. A few tips:

• Use @ mentions to connect entries as you write. Mention a Location in a Character's backstory, or reference an NPC in a Session Log. These connections build your knowledge graph organically.
• Add cover images to key entries — a portrait for an NPC, a map for a region.
• Use templates to speed up entry creation. Set up a template for Session Logs with a standard structure (date, location, NPCs present, events, loot) so each session starts the same way.
• Pin important entries to your dashboard — the current quest, the party roster, or a map of the region.

Sharing with Your Party

Share your campaign space with your players so they can browse the lore, read session recaps, and look up NPCs they've met.

Permissions

• View permission lets players browse and read, but not edit. Good for most players.
• Edit permission lets players create and modify entries. Useful if players maintain their own character journals or contribute to session notes.

Hiding GM Secrets with Exclusions

Not everything should be visible to players. Use exclusions to control what your party sees:

• Hide an entire template — Exclude your "Quests" or "Plot Threads" template so players can't see your plans.
• Hide specific entries — Share the Locations template but exclude the entries for places the party hasn't discovered yet.
• Hide specific fields — Share NPC entries but exclude a "Secret Motivation" property from players.

Exclusions can be set per-player or space-wide. Hidden content is completely invisible — no "locked" placeholders or hints that something is hidden.

Private Blocks for Inline Secrets

Sometimes you want to share an entry but keep certain details to yourself. Secret blocks let you add GM-only notes directly inside a shared entry.

Type /secret in the editor to insert a secret block. Write your notes inside — stat blocks, plot hooks, secret motivations — and they'll be completely invisible to your players. You can also mark inline text as secret with Cmd+Shift+P or the |||triple pipe||| syntax.

Example: share an NPC entry with your players showing personality, appearance, and known history, but hide a secret block at the bottom with their true allegiance and combat stats.

Collaborating in Real Time

If your players have edit permission, real-time collaboration activates automatically. You'll see each other's cursors and edits as they happen — useful for collaborative session notes or a shared party journal.

Using the Knowledge Graph

The graph view turns your campaign into a visual map of connections. Every @ mention and manual link creates an edge between entries.

• Force-directed layout lets clusters of related entries group naturally — you'll see factions form around their members, locations cluster by region.
• Clustered layout groups entries by template, so you can see how Characters connect to Locations, or which Factions are intertwined.
• Filter by template to focus on specific aspects of your world — show only Characters and Factions to map political alliances.

Maps & Battle Boards

Swashbuckler includes a full canvas editor for creating battle maps, interactive world maps, and freeform sketches.

World Maps

Upload a map image as a background, then place pins that link to entries in your notes. Click a pin to jump to its linked entry — perfect for creating an interactive world map where players can explore locations.

Battle Maps

Use the drawing tools to sketch out encounter areas, or use the tile-based map builder to assemble maps from uploaded assets. Features include:

• Grid overlay (square or hex) with configurable measurement units
• Fog of War — hide areas from players, reveal them as the party explores. Use Cover All to start hidden, then erase sections to reveal.
• Shapes, freehand drawing, and text labels for annotating the map
• Connector lines to show relationships or paths between elements
• Measurement tool with customizable scale (e.g., 1 cell = 5 ft)

Maps support real-time collaboration, so your whole group can see token movements and fog reveals as they happen.

Tips for Maps

• Use layers to organize your map: background terrain on one layer, tokens on another, fog on top
• Set up fog of war before the session — use Cover All, then pre-erase areas the party has already visited
• Place pins on your world map for key locations, linking them to Location entries with full descriptions
• Export finished maps as PNG images for sharing outside Swashbuckler

Chat & Dice Rolling

Shared spaces automatically get a chat channel. Your group can discuss in real time right alongside your notes.

The built-in dice roller supports full TTRPG notation — type /r 2d6+3 to roll publicly, or /rp 1d20+5 Stealth for a private GM roll. Results appear as structured cards showing individual dice, kept/dropped values, and totals.

Tips

• Session Logs as connective tissue: Mention every NPC, location, and item that appeared in a session. This creates a rich web of connections that makes the graph increasingly useful over time.
• Tags for cross-cutting concerns: Use tags for things that span templates — "Arc 1", "Completed", "Player Favorite" — so you can find related entries regardless of template.
• Board view for quest tracking: Create a Quest template with a Status property (e.g., "Available", "Active", "Completed") and use board view to manage quests as a kanban board.
• Quick Capture for mid-session ideas: Press Cmd+E to open Quick Capture and jot down an NPC name or plot hook without leaving what you're doing.