Boards, lanes, and cards

A board is one big canvas a GM uses to organise a campaign. It works the way a real table works when you are about to run a session: piles of index cards for scenes, piles for NPCs, piles for combat, piles for handouts. The board is the table; the lanes are the piles; the cards are the index cards.

Three layers, in order: board contains lanes, lanes contain cards. Reading a board left-to-right walks the GM's plan in the order they intend to use it.

What each layer is for

Each layer has one job and only one. Mixing them produces messy boards that are hard to scan during a session.

• Boards are scope. One board per campaign is normal. Bigger campaigns sometimes use a second board for a long-running side plot, or a separate board per arc. There is no hard limit; pick whatever makes the table readable.
• Lanes are how you divide the board. Common divisions: by act ('Act 1 / Act 2 / Act 3'), by location ('The Inn / The Mine / The Capital'), by use ('Active scenes / Reserve NPCs / Loot'), or by session ('Tonight / Next week / Maybe'). Pick the division that matches how you actually prep.
• Cards are the prep units. A card can hold a description, a stat block, an image, a map fragment, a linked element from the Forge, or any mix. The rule of thumb is one idea per card; split if a card grows past what you can scan in a couple of seconds during play.

What a board looks like

Open a board and you see four areas:

• The header: board name, description, and a quick-launch button that drops the board into the virtual tabletop ready to run.
• The canvas: the main area. Lanes sit as columns, each with a title and a stack of cards beneath. Cards drag between lanes; lanes themselves drag to reorder.
• Search: a text field above the canvas. Filters cards by name or content live. Useful mid-session when 'where did I put the goblin's stat block?' becomes urgent.
• Unorganised content: a button in the bottom-right of the board that opens a right-hand drawer. Holds every element, media item, and card in the campaign that has not been placed on the board yet. Drag from here to a lane to add it.

GM-only boards vs party boards

Every board has a type. The default is GM-only: only the GM sees it, only the GM edits it, the party sees individual cards only when the GM shares them at the table. This is what you want for prep; your spoilers stay yours.

A board can also be a party board, visible to and editable by every player in the campaign. Party boards are good for shared world notes, collaborative session recaps, or a 'what we know so far' bulletin. Set the type at board creation; you can change it later from the board's settings.

Sharing a card at the table

Inside a session, a card can be revealed to the party without making the whole board public. Each card has a share control where you pick the player (or players) to share to; the card then appears in their view as a read-only panel. Sharing is per-card and per-recipient.

Shared cards land in the players' own Shared Lane on whatever board they are looking at, so they have one place to find everything the GM has revealed in this campaign without hunting through the GM's lanes.

From the board to the table

The quick-launch button on the board header takes the same board into the virtual tabletop. Lanes and cards stay in place; the difference is that the table view layers the dice roller, the voice channel, and the live state of every character sheet on top of the same prep canvas. You do not rebuild your prep for the session; you launch it.

How this differs from frameworks, elements, and frames

Both models have three layers, and the names rhyme. They are different shapes. Frameworks-elements-frames is a rules-and-data model: the framework defines what is allowed, an element is an instance with state, a frame is a display surface. Boards-lanes-cards is an organising model: the lanes have no state and no rules; the cards are just content holders.

Put simply: characters live in the rules model. Notes about characters live in the organising model. You do not need both to coexist; most tables use both side by side.

Where to go from here

• The Prepare a board how-to walks through creating a board, naming lanes, and dragging the first cards in.
• The Run a live session how-to picks up from a prepared board and walks the at-the-table flow: sharing cards, rolling dice, switching scenes.
• Per-card and per-lane sharing is controlled through the permissions model. See that concept page for the full picture of who can see what.