Build your first story
Ten minutes from blank page to a playable adventure with a branch, a real dice check, a fight, and two endings.
1. Create the adventure
Open the Story Studio → New. You can start from a blank adventure, remix the tutorial (“A String of Pearls”), or clone a starter template. Every new adventure begins valid — a start scene that leads to an ending — so you can test-play from second one.
2. The building blocks (node kinds)
- Scene — read-aloud prose + optional art; leads to the next beat.
- Choice — branch the story; each option can be gated (
requires) and can run effects (then). - Skill check — roll an ability/skill vs a DC; write prose + effects for each of the five outcome bands.
- Combat — drop into the real 5e engine with authored foes (and optional flag-gated allies).
- Loot / Consequence — grant items, coins, XP, or set flags.
- Gate — silently route by condition (the first matching branch wins).
- Ending — a labeled outcome with epilogue prose; an adventure can have many.
3. Add a branching choice
In Beats, add a Choice node. Give it two options. On one, set a requires condition (say, hasItem: iron_key) so it only appears when the hero is carrying the key — the engine hides or locks the option automatically. Point each option’s next at a different node. That’s a real branch.
4. A skill check with consequences
Add a Skill check node — e.g. STR (Athletics) vs DC 13. For each band, write what happens: a critical success might recruit a companion (set a flag); a failuremight cost HP (an applyDamage effect); a critical failure might add a condition. Turn on Pause on the result so the player reads the roll and the outcome before a deliberate Continue — the difference between “rules fired at me” and a game.
5. A fight, then an ending
Add a Combat node and attach a foe from Cast & Content (SRD monsters or your own homebrew). Route onVictory to a loot beat and onDefeat to a defeat ending (or a softer model — revived at 1 HP, an alternate path). Add two Ending nodes so the story can end more than one way; that’s what makes players replay.
6. Test, measure, fix
Hit ▶ Test play to run your draft in the real themed runner (nothing is saved). Hit 🔬 Simulate to run hundreds of headless playthroughs at once — it reports average length, death rate, ending distribution, and any unreachable beats so you can find dead ends before a player does. The status bar shows live validation (reachability + the closed vocabulary).
- 🎯 Play From Here — jump the runner to any beat with a forced state (flags, relationships, objectives, clues, hero level). Test node 50’s loot drop with the right quest done and a ration in your pack — without replaying from node 1. It’s ephemeral: nothing is saved and your character isn’t touched.
- 🩺 Campaign Health — an advisory design report (it never blocks publishing) that scores your draft and flags smells: dead-end nodes, fake-agency choices (options that change nothing), stranded rewards, single-source clues (the Three-Clue Rule), mobile choice density, lethality vs the hero’s level, currency in-vs-out, and your length spread (short spine vs completionist run). Click a flagged node to jump to it.
When a run ends, players see a post-game summary — the key choices they made and the roads they didn’t take, each ghost path labelled with why it was locked (“Mira’s trust too low”). That visible branching is what makes a second playthrough feel different — design for it.
Not sure where to start? The Studio gallery ships opinionated starter templates — a one-branch story, a three-ending moral choice, a working shop, a crafting bench, a quest board — each with a “why this works” note. Fork one and re-skin it.
Next: Triggers & actions →