Your Control: Authoring Your Campaign

CritForge generates a lot for you: NPCs, plots, encounters, and a Campaign Bible that compiles everything into one reference. But the AI is your assistant, not your co-author. The system proposes; you dispose. This page is the full map of where you assert authorship: what you control, where the control lives, and what CritForge will never change without your say-so.

If you've ever worried that the next refresh or regeneration might quietly overwrite a detail you cared about, this is the page that puts your mind at rest.

Authoring the Bible directly

You don't have to wait for the AI to surface something. You can put it in the Bible yourself.

Add an entity manually. Click Add Entry in the Campaign Bible header to add an NPC, faction, location, or item by hand. Useful for the tavern keeper who matters to you but hasn't shown up in any generated content yet.
Set your campaign's shape. In Campaign Settings → General Settings, the Story Spine section lets you set your current act (I through Finale) and how far into it you are. This drives the act progress your dashboard shows.
Keep your own translation dictionary. The Translation Dictionary tab in Campaign Settings lets you define how CritForge renders specific terms in your world, so generated content speaks your campaign's language.

For the full tour of the Bible's sections, see the Campaign Bible doc. This page focuses on the levers that make it yours.

Correcting AI-generated content

Everything the AI extracts into your Bible is editable, deletable, and protectable. Open the Campaign Bible, expand any entity card, and you have three controls on every fact.

Edit a fact inline

Hover any known fact and click its value to edit it in place. Type your correction, press Enter to save (or Escape to cancel).

Editing a fact automatically pins it. An edit is you asserting "this is the canon now," so CritForge marks it as pinned the moment you save. The next time the Bible recompiles, the AI won't touch it.

Delete an AI entity

If the AI extracted something that doesn't belong, click the trash icon on the entity card header. You'll get a one-click confirmation step, and the card warns you if the entity has linked content or pinned facts before you commit. The entity is removed from your Bible.

Pin a fact so the AI can't overwrite it

Each fact has a pin toggle. Pin it, and it's marked Canon with an amber badge. Pinned facts are protected: when the Bible recompiles from new session notes or generated content, the AI will not overwrite a pinned fact. Unpin it any time to let the AI update it again.

One fact per property can be pinned at a time. If you try to pin a second value for the same property (say, two different "status" facts), CritForge asks you to unpin the first one so there's never any ambiguity about what's canon.

Recap and session corrections

After a session, the fastest way to update your world is the Session Notes Import wizard (the Import Notes button in the Bible header). Paste your notes, and CritForge extracts characters, locations, events, and relationships for you to review.

You review before anything is saved

The import wizard never writes blindly. Every extracted item lands in a review step where you Accept, Edit, or Reject it before it enters your Bible. Nothing is committed until you say so. A confidence score on each item helps you spot the AI's shakier guesses. On your first import, a short panel explains that your pasted text is processed to extract facts and then discarded, never stored or used for training.

Mark a session fact as never-happened (retcon)

Sometimes a session goes a direction you want to walk back, or a fact got recorded that you've since changed your mind about. On any fact, open the More actions menu (the three-dot icon) and choose Retcon (mark didn't happen).

A retconned fact is excluded from everything the AI reads. It won't influence future generation, recompiles, or suggestions. But it's not deleted -- it moves into a collapsible Retconned facts drawer on the entity card, struck through, with a Restore button. The correction is fully reversible. Restore it and it returns to your Bible.

One detail worth knowing: retconning a fact releases its pin (a "this didn't happen" ruling overrides a "protect this" pin). If you restore a fact that was pinned before, it comes back unpinned -- re-pin it if you still want it protected. CritForge remembers it was pinned so the restore prompt can remind you.

Resolving contradictions

As your campaign grows, the AI sometimes extracts facts that conflict -- Captain Voss listed as both alive and deceased, a location with two different rulers. The Bible flags these on the entity card with an amber conflict badge and lists the competing values under Unresolved Conflicts.

You decide which version is true. Two ways to resolve:

Edit the fact to the correct value. Because an edit auto-pins, your chosen version becomes protected canon and the conflict clears.
Use the resolution suggestions. From the Prep Digest's "Help me resolve these," contradictions get an AI-suggested resolution you can Accept to lock in, or Re-roll for a different take. Accepting resolves the conflict in the Bible.

Either way, the AI surfaces the conflict; you make the ruling.

Campaign Intent: steering all generation

Your Campaign Intent is the creative direction that grounds every generation across the campaign. You set it during onboarding, but you can edit it any time in Campaign Settings → General Settings → Campaign Intent.

You control:

Tonal register -- the feel of your campaign ("grim but hopeful," "pulp-adventure swashbuckling")
Themes -- one to five recurring themes (betrayal, redemption, survival)
Target experience -- what you want players to feel by the end of a session
Content warnings -- topics to handle carefully or avoid
Recent decisions -- big table moments that should inform what comes next

Save it, and CritForge weaves this into the context behind your generations. Update your recent decisions after a pivotal session and the next NPC or plot you generate will reflect where your story actually went.

Field-level locks: protecting authored content from drift

Pinning protects Bible facts. Field locks protect the authored fields inside your generated content -- the lines you wrote or refined yourself -- from being changed when the AI regenerates around them.

A locked field shows an amber padlock. Locked, the AI will not rewrite it during regeneration. Click the padlock to unlock and allow updates again. Editing a field also locks it automatically -- if you took the time to rewrite it, CritForge assumes you want it protected.

On plots

Open a plot's detail page (/plots/[id]). In the Antagonist and Resolution Paths sections you can edit and lock:

Antagonist motivation
Antagonist voice notes
Resolution paths (the possible endings)

A Lock all button locks every authored antagonist field at once.

On adventure NPCs

For NPCs in a generated adventure's cast (the NPC roster), you can edit and lock the roleplay fields that carry your voice:

First words (their opening line)
Secrets
Lie when pressed
Breaks when (what cracks their composure)

Lock these and a later roster regeneration leaves your character's voice untouched.

The trust contract

Here's the promise, stated plainly. CritForge will not change the following without your action:

A fact you've edited or pinned in the Bible. Protected from AI recompile.
A field you've locked on a plot or adventure NPC. Protected from AI regeneration.
A fact you've retconned. Excluded from AI reads until you restore it -- and never destroyed.
Your Campaign Intent. It only changes when you edit it.
An entity you've deleted. It stays gone.

And everything the AI does surface -- extracted facts from an import, contradiction resolutions, content suggestions -- passes through a review step or a card action where you accept, edit, reject, or re-roll before it sticks.

You are the final author. CritForge keeps the lights on and the notes organized, but the canon is yours.

Tips

Edit instead of fighting the AI. If a recompile keeps "correcting" a detail you care about, just edit the fact once. The auto-pin stops the tug-of-war for good.

Lock your best lines. When an NPC's first words or an antagonist's voice notes land exactly right, lock them before you regenerate anything else in that adventure.

Retcon, don't delete, when you might change your mind. Retcon is reversible and keeps a record. Delete is for entities that simply don't belong.

Keep Campaign Intent current. A two-minute update to your recent decisions after a big session pays off in every generation that follows.