What the Game Remembers

You do not keep notes. The game does, and understanding roughly how it works will make you a better player, because you will know what sticks.

The Campaign State

@Missing file is the live picture of the campaign. It holds the current scene, where the party is standing, the date in the world's own calendar, how the party is doing, and the Promises list.

Promises is the one to watch. Everything anyone owes, threatened, swore, or agreed to goes on that list and stays there until it gets kept or broken on screen. If you promise a stranger you will come back for their brother, that sentence is now written down somewhere and it is coming back for you.

The same file carries a Journal, which gains one line every single turn. Past tense, names rather than pronouns, just the fact of what happened. Over a long campaign that becomes the spine of the whole story.

Chronicles

The journal only ever grows, so eventually it gets folded. The oldest stretch is retold as proper prose in a Chronicle file, along with the facts that still matter, like open debts, who died, who left, and where standings ended up. @Missing file is the example.

Chronicles are the bound volumes of your campaign. Once one closes it is never edited and never deleted, and it stays searchable forever. Something from forty sessions ago can be looked up and brought back.

Story Arcs

An arc is an open question the table is chasing, like @Missing file. Each one carries the question itself, what is at stake and who gets hurt, and a running trail of how it has moved. There is also a hidden field underneath that you are not meant to read, which is where the actual answer lives.

Arcs are how a campaign keeps more than one thread alive without any of them quietly getting dropped.

Lore

Lasting truths about the world get their own files, like @Missing file. History, customs, beliefs, legends, how a craft actually works.

Here is the part that touches you directly. What your character can recall from a Lore file is gated by their Knowledge Feats. Unranked catches the rumor version. Master knows the whole thing, including the part everyone else got wrong. Investing in Knowledge is not flavor, it changes what the world will tell you.

What this means at the table

Everything you do lands somewhere permanent. Say a name, help a stranger, take a job, break a promise, and it goes on file. Nothing you build is lost to somebody's memory, which is the real reason long campaigns hold together here.