Story Beats
A campaign has a plot, and until now the only place to keep it was a block of prose. Story Beats give the Campaign Host a list of the things this Crusade is actually about: the siege that has to break, the gate that has to hold, the betrayal nobody has spotted yet. Each one is written down, placed where it belongs, and marked off once it has happened.
Nothing here is enforced. A Story Beat does not award XP, gate a battle or change a roster. It is the campaign's memory, and the host is the one keeping it.
Only the Campaign Host writes Story Beats. Every participant can read them.
Where a beat sits
Every beat is scoped to one of three places, and the scope decides where it shows up.
| Scope | Set by | Appears on |
|---|---|---|
| The whole campaign | Leaving Stage empty | The campaign overview |
| A stage | Picking a Stage | The campaign overview, and that stage on the Stages page |
| A battle | Picking a Stage, then a Battle | The campaign overview, and that stage |
The campaign overview lists every beat whatever its scope, and labels each one with where it sits. Giving a beat a stage moves it into that stage without taking it off the overview, so the overview stays the whole story in one place.
A battle can only be chosen after a stage, and only from that stage's battles. A beat attached to a battle in a different stage would be unreachable from the Stages page, so the two are saved together or not at all.
Open and closed
A beat is either Open or Closed. That is the whole lifecycle.
Click the circle beside a beat to close it, and click it again to reopen it. Closed beats fold into a collapsed list at the bottom of the panel, so a campaign five stages deep does not bury the things still in play.
There is deliberately no "failed". An earlier version offered Achieved and Failed, which asked the host to score a narrative event as good news or bad, and that usually depends on which side of it you were standing. Whether it has happened yet is the part the campaign needs. The description says the rest.
Photos
A beat takes one photo, which shows above its text. The pivotal moments of a campaign are usually the ones somebody photographed, and a picture of the table carries them better than the prose does.
Photos are a Supporter feature, and they count towards your image storage allowance along with your avatars, banners and Crusade Card photos. See Subscriptions & Tiers for the allowance on each plan.
Landscape images work best. The photo is cropped to a band above the beat's description.
Writing a beat
- Open the campaign and find the Story Beats panel.
- Click +.
- Give it a Title. This is the line people will scan, so make it the thing that happens: "Break the siege of Hive Helsreach".
- Add a Description if the title needs context. What has to happen, and what it means for the campaign.
- Pick a Stage, and a Battle if it belongs to one game.
- Add a Photo if you have one.
- Save.
Write them before they happen
A beat added after the fact is a diary entry. A beat added before is something the group can aim at, and the moment you close it means more for having been open.
Story Beats are not Missions
Both are host-authored and both get marked off, so it is worth being clear about which is which.
A Story Beat is about the campaign. It happens to everyone, nobody is assigned it, and closing it is a statement that the campaign has moved on.
A Mission is about a player. The host hands it to specific people, each of them passes or fails it separately, and passing earns a reward.