Most worldbuilding lives in scattered documents. A character sits in one file. A map sits in another. The history sits in a third. Nothing knows about anything else. When a name changes, you fix it in ten places, or you miss one.
We built Chronicler to fix that. It is one connected home for the worlds you build and the games you run.
What else did we try?
- Generic note-taking and management tools like Notion, Capacities & Obsidian.
- Other hosted-only solutions designed for world-building
The main take-aways - You didn't own your data.
A modern, sleek application that focuses on user experience. Auditability and history from the get-go - Every change is an internal event in Chronicler, and we have the ability to go back to any point in time. While this feeds other versionign systems that the app exposes, it also means that under the hood, we can add new features without any loss in fidelity.
Core principals
- Resources - Everything is a 'resource'
- Relationships
Everything is connected
In Chronicler, every character, place, faction, and event 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.
Reveal your world at your pace
A world has secrets. Chronicler keeps your lore yours until you choose to share it. You reveal a whole resource, or just one fact about it, at the pace of your campaign. Players get their own view. They only ever see 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.
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.
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, or build every word the old-fashioned way. You stay the author.
That is Chronicler. Build a connected world, reveal it at your pace, and keep it yours.