Do I need to decide the system and setting now?

No. Only the name is required. The system, setting and tone help the assistant write things that fit your world, but you can add them at any point from campaign settings.

How many campaigns can I have?

It depends on your plan — one on Loremaster, three on Worldkeeper, six on Forever DM. During the trial you can have up to six. Going over never deletes anything: campaigns past the limit become read-only and come back if you move up again.

Can I change my mind about how I filled it?

Yes. Nothing about that screen is permanent, and the same three doors are in the codex whenever you want them. You can also import more notes later, as many times as you like.

Do my players need accounts?

No. Yarnfold is for you. The player recap is written separately from your own notes and you send it however you normally talk to your group.

Your first campaign

What a campaign is

A campaign is the container for everything: your world, your party, your sessions and everything that happens in them. You can have several, and nothing is shared between them unless you copy it across deliberately.

This guide takes about twenty minutes end to end, and by the finish you will have a campaign with your world in it and a session ready to prepare.

The whole of this guide, from an empty account to a prepared session · 6 minutes

Step 1 — Make the campaign

From Your campaigns, press Start a campaign. If this is your first, the whole page is that invitation.

Give it a name. That is the only required field.
Optionally add the system, the setting and the tone. These matter later — the assistant reads them so that what it drafts fits your world rather than a generic one.
Press create.

The new campaign form, with name, system, setting and tone — Everything except the name can wait

Step 2 — Choose how to fill it

This is the screen worth thinking about, because it decides whether your first twenty minutes are typing or reading.

Read in notes you already have. Best if you are already running this campaign somewhere else — Notion, Obsidian, a Word file, a Google doc.
Answer nine questions. Best if it is all in your head.
Bring things from another campaign. Best if this is not your first campaign here.

Or skip all three and start from nothing.

Three options: read in notes, answer nine questions, or bring from another campaign — What you see the moment a campaign exists

Tip.If you have notes anywhere at all, use the first one. It has a guide of its own because it is the thing most worth getting right — and it is the difference between starting with a year of campaign and starting with a blank page.

Step 3 — Answer the nine questions

Nine questions, all skippable, going from easy to interesting: where it happens, who the players are, who they have met — and then the ones worth thinking about.

Answer in whatever detail you like. A sentence is fine; a paragraph is better.
Skip anything you have not decided yet. Grey dots are fine.
Jump back with the dots when an answer reminds you of something earlier.
Press Finish early whenever you have said enough.

The panel on the right fills in as you go. Nothing is written to your campaign until you have read the list and said yes.

The interview, with a question on the left and the codex filling in on the right — Question five, with what it has found so far beside it

Talk instead of typing

Every answer takes dictation. Hold 🎙 Hold to talk and describe your world out loud — it is considerably faster than typing and tends to produce better answers, because people describe their campaigns better than they write them up.

Holding the microphone button to dictate an answer — Hold to talk — it adds to what is there rather than replacing it

Note.The most valuable question is the last one: what are you most afraid of forgetting? Whatever you answer there is usually the thing your campaign most needs written down.

Step 4 — Find your way around

There are three rooms, and the header carries all of them:

Forge — thirteen specialists who draft things for you.
Codex — everything your campaign knows, and the world map.
Sessions — every session, past and planned.

The dashboard always shows one next step, whatever state you are in: prep it, run it, debrief it, or plan the next one.

The campaign dashboard showing the next step and the three rooms — The dashboard leads with whatever you should do next

Step 5 — Reach your first debrief

The loop is short: prepare a session, run it, and debrief it.

Try to reach the debrief rather than stopping after prep. Prep is the bit you were doing anyway; the debrief is the bit that is new, and it is where Yarnfold starts earning its place.

Questions

Questions people ask

No. Drop in a Notion or Obsidian export, a Word file, or paste anything at all. Yarnfold reads the people, places, factions and past sessions out of it and shows you every one before a word is written. If it is all in your head instead, answer nine questions and it builds from that.