CritForge Product Glossary

CritForge has a handful of terms of its own. Most of them describe the same idea from different angles: your campaign is yours, the AI works from what you've told it, and you stay in control of what sticks. This page defines that vocabulary in plain language so you know what each one does for you and where to go for the full how-to.

If you only learn one term here, make it the Campaign Bible. Everything else hangs off it.

Campaign Bible

Your campaign's memory. The Campaign Bible is the canonical, persistent store of everything true about your world: your NPCs, locations, factions, items, timeline events, and plot threads, all compiled into one structured, cross-referenced page.

Here's why it matters more than any other concept in CritForge. Campaign-aware generation reads the Bible first. When you generate a new NPC, plot, or encounter inside a campaign, the AI grounds itself in what your Bible already knows, so new content stays consistent with the world you've built. The shopkeeper you created three sessions ago shows up the same way next time. The faction war you set in motion keeps its sides. The Bible is what makes CritForge campaign-aware instead of generating disconnected one-offs.

That means the Bible is also the single biggest lever on output quality. A thin Bible gives the AI little to work with, so its content feels generic. A well-fed Bible -- populated with the NPCs, places, and events that matter to you -- produces content that already fits your story. You feed it by generating content into a campaign, importing your session notes, and adding entries by hand. The more your Bible knows, the more your generations sound like your campaign.

You don't generate the Bible; it compiles itself from your campaign as you play. You stay in charge of what's in it through the controls below.

Learn more: Campaign Bible for the full tour, and Your Control: Authoring Your Campaign for the levers that keep it yours.

Generation Power

The credit currency that meters AI generation. Each tier grants a monthly amount of Generation Power (GP), and every time you hit Generate it spends some -- simple content costs the least, multi-step workflows like a complete module cost more. The exact cost shows next to the Generate button before you commit, so there are no surprises.

Learn more: Generation Power.

Campaign Intent

The creative direction you set for a campaign that every generation honors -- its tone, recurring themes, the experience you want at the table, and any content warnings. Set it once and the AI weaves it into the context behind every NPC, plot, and encounter you generate, so the whole campaign pulls in one direction.

Learn more: Your Control: Authoring Your Campaign.

Pinning / Canon

Marking a Bible fact as authoritative. When you pin a fact it's flagged as Canon, and the AI will not overwrite it the next time the Bible recompiles. Editing a fact pins it automatically, because an edit is you declaring "this is the truth now." Pinning is how you protect a detail you care about from drifting.

Learn more: Your Control: Authoring Your Campaign.

Retcon

Marking a Bible fact as never-happened without deleting it. A retconned fact is excluded from everything the AI reads, so it stops influencing future generation, but it isn't destroyed -- it moves to a struck-through drawer with a Restore button. Use retcon when you want to walk something back but might change your mind later.

Learn more: Your Control: Authoring Your Campaign.

Field locks

Locking an authored field on a piece of generated content -- an NPC or a plot -- so regeneration can't overwrite it. When you've written or refined a field in your own voice (an antagonist's motivation, an NPC's secrets, a resolution path), lock it and the AI leaves it untouched when it regenerates around it. Editing a field locks it automatically. Where pinning protects Bible facts, field locks protect the authored fields inside your content.

Learn more: Your Control: Authoring Your Campaign.

Materialize

Turning a roster or reference NPC into a full, saved NPC. Some generators give you a quick cast of characters first -- names, traits, and dynamics -- before any of them is a complete NPC. Materializing one promotes it into a full saved NPC with the complete detail, kept in your Library and your campaign.

Roster

The set of NPCs attached to a plot, encounter, or scene before they're individually materialized. A roster gives you the whole cast at a glance -- who's present, how they relate, what each one wants -- so you can pick the ones worth a full NPC and materialize just those.

Learn more: Scene Roster Generator.

Provenance

Where a piece of content came from and how you've used it. Open any saved entry from your Library and the Provenance panel in the right-hand rail tells you its history at a glance: when it was created and last edited, whether it was forked from another entry (its lineage), how many sessions it's appeared in, and when you last used it.

It's there so you can size up a piece before you lean on it. An NPC that was forked from another entry and has run in three sessions is established -- your players know them, and the AI has been generating around them for a while. Something you generated five minutes ago and have never used is still raw clay you can reshape freely. Provenance is the quick read on how settled a detail is before you reuse it, edit it, or treat it as canon.