Most worldbuilding lives in scattered notes and documents - a location name here; an idea for a character there; some scattered images saved for later. Nothing knows about anything else, and when you inevitably come to collect these pieces, it's hard to know what tool to use.
Chronicler was built to fix that. First as a place to dump all of my random ideas, and then developed to solve the problems I faced when running my own home TTRPG campaigns.
I tried a number of tools before committing to adding another one into the mix, and along the way I found that many of them covered a lot of my needs - but they all had gaps that I wanted to fix.
Comparing the 'jack-of-all-trades'
Let's start with the general-use, hosted-only tools like Notion and Capacities.io.
These first two focus on writing rich content; provide a great editing & linking experience; and provide the ability to create typed properties. Both are great for planning, note-taking and generally being organised.
But they're not purpose-built for worldbuilding.
- Documents & objects are linked, but the relationships aren't rich, with their own properties and types.
- Documents change over time, but their versioning doesn't coincide with the timeline of the worlds they're building.
- Resources can be shared, but not incrementally revealed in a meaningful way.
Next up is the power-house - Obsidian.
Obsidian is local-first, so you own your data, and it's suited to building a connected graph via backlinks. There's also a slew of plugins - and even some dedicated to game systems and worldbuilding.
But getting the system to be focused on collaborative worldbuilding still means piecing together different plugins - or building new ones - all within the constraints and quirks of the system.
And of course, collaborating and sharing data in a secure, restricted way is much harder because it's not Obsidian's focus - and it's not something that you want to bolt on.
On top of this, there's Google Docs, VTTs, wikis - none of them quite hit the mark.
Comparing the 'competitors'
I'm hesitant to say 'competitors' as there's enough of us nerds with differing needs to go around!
A big gripe with the existing worldbuilding platforms, is that they are not self-hostable. In a world where people are trying to claw back control of their data, there's a big overlap with worldbuilders and self-hosters. And Chronicler is shipped as a single binary for people who want to run it from their own PC on demand, or host it on a local server running Docker.
Then there's the issue of cost. Lots of the existing services have a free tier, but anyone trying to really dive in is forced into a real monthly cost.
Of course, Chronicler is also available as a hosted service - but this is for convenience, not lock-in. You can export your data at any time and run it from a self-hosted version, and Chronicler was built with secure multi-tenancy and the right to be forgotten as a first principle. We keep it as affordable as we can, and offset the costs by keeping the app source-available and self-hostable.
A lot of the existing systems also don't feel good to use. They may lean heavily into the theming of the world they are portraying, and this is great if you want it, but it's my opinion that it's better to have a clear, sleek UI first and add additional frills on top. I want to focus on the experience and the content, not try to decipher a fantasy font or read text against a badly contrasted background.
If Chronicler isn't what you're looking for, honourable mentions in this space go out to worldanvil.com & kanka.io - check them out instead!
How does Chronicler compare?
Everything is connected
In Chronicler, every character, place, faction, event (and so on...) is a real entity. You link them with typed relationships, so "ally of" and "ruler of" carry meaning. Both ends of a link see the connection.
You write lore in a rich editor, and a mention becomes a real link back into the graph. Open any entity, and everything it touches is a click away.
Flexible but firm
You define the resource your world wants - Character, Lore, Belief, Deity,
Magical school, Hyper-space craft. Flexible enough to fit all genres and use cases.
On top of this, schemas provide a 'mould' for your resources - which attributes each kind has in common, what is mandatory, what is preset, etc.. This system allows conformity when you want it, but never restricts or enforces something when you don't.
Reveal your world at your pace
A world has secrets - a lot of them.
Chronicler keeps your lore yours until you choose to share it. You can reveal a whole resource; specific facts about it; a specific version at a point in time; or even just some of its relationships - all at the pace of your campaign.
Each player only ever sees what you have revealed, so nothing leaks by a filter you forgot to set.
Your world changes, and so do the things in it
A character starts as a sellsword and ends as a regent - Chronicler tracks that. A resource has a life across your timeline, and you can see it as it was at any moment. You mark the turning points that redefine it.
Players & campaigns as an (optional) first class
If you want to use Chronicler for TTRPG purposes, that's a first class feature. Players get their own view, their own notes, and even their own characters in your evolving world.
Yours to own
Many tools like this are hosted services you can never truly own. Chronicler is open core and source-available. It is one binary you run yourself, with your data on your server. No cluster, no vendor lock-in. If you would rather not run it, we host it for you, and the hosted version adds features like webhooks and support.
Under the hood, every change in Chronicler is saved as an 'event' in the system, which means that we can add or improve functionality freely and the system has time-travelling powers, by being able to rewind to any point in time.
AI, only if you want it
We will add optional AI to spark ideas and suggest connections. It is opt-in and off by default.
You can lean on it for inspiration, ask questions about the state of the world - or just build every word the old-fashioned way. No matter what, you're still in control.
And that's just the beginning
There's a whole host more not mentioned here...
- Import and share your worlds, or try out somebody else's
- A robust access & role system to help you share and secure your resources
- Integrations with Discord and VTTs (Coming soon!)
- And more to come!
Check out the features for what has landed already, and the roadmap for what's to come. We also have a feature request & feedback hub and will be posting more updates on this blog.
That is Chronicler. Build a connected world, reveal it at your pace, and keep it yours.