# Campaigns **This directory holds TEMPLATES. A played campaign does not live here.** ``` campaigns/ modules// an adventure converted to schema · portable · MAY SHIP candidates/ adventures under consideration reference/ third-party source text · ⛔ never committed ``` > ### ⛔ THE PLAYTHROUGH LIVES IN `LIVE//` — corrected 2026-08-27 > > **This README described the instance tree as `campaigns//` until > today.** [`../LIVE/README.md`](../LIVE/README.md) is the authority: > > ``` > campaigns/modules// template · portable · MAY SHIP > LIVE// instance · yours · NEVER SHIPS > ``` > > ⚠️ **A campaign folder here would ship with the repo.** `.gitignore` > excludes `LIVE/*` and has never excluded anything under `campaigns/`. > > ⭐ **Four documents described that tree and no two agreed.** SRN-42. The > canonical shape is [`../docs/campaign-start.md`](../docs/campaign-start.md) > §1 — **this file no longer restates it**, per the rule that nothing holds > state another file maintains. **A campaign is an instance.** The masters in [`../characters/`](../characters/) and the world in [`../npcs/`](../npcs/) are shared; a campaign binds them to a level, a map, a set of fronts, and a history — **in `LIVE/`.** --- ## The three kinds of DM knowledge Keeping these separate is what stops the DM either railroading or improvising mush. They differ by **commitment** and **attachment**: | | committed? | attached to? | behaviour | |---|---|---|---| | **fronts.md** | ✅ yes | a faction | **advances on its own clock** whether or not the player engages | | **secrets.md** | ✅ yes | one character or NPC | true *now*, hidden from the player | | **ideas.md** | ❌ **no** | nothing yet | **does not exist** until a matching thread opens | An idea is not yet true. That's the point — it costs nothing to hold a hundred of them, and none of them constrain the world until one is spent. --- ## ideas.md — the improv bank The failure mode of an idea list is that it becomes a graveyard nobody reads mid-session. Two rules prevent that: **1. Every idea records its TRIGGER.** Not "what it is" — *"what would have to happen at the table for this to fit."* The DM doesn't browse the list; it gets retrieved when a thread matches. **2. A spent idea is promoted, not ticked off.** The moment it enters play it stops being an idea and becomes a **front** (if it's now in motion) or **canon** (if it's now just true). Delete it from `ideas.md` in the same breath. An idea left in the pool after being used will get introduced twice. ### Entry format ```markdown ### **Trigger:** the kind of thread that makes this fit **Hook:** one or two sentences — what the player actually encounters **Cost:** what it commits the world to, if spent **Source:** where it came from (a character sheet, a session, invention) ``` **Cost** is the field people skip and shouldn't. Some ideas are free scenery. Others, once introduced, permanently change what the setting is. Knowing which before you spend it is the whole discipline. --- ## Where ideas come from Three feeds, in descending order of quality: 1. **Unexplained things already on the character sheets.** The strongest ideas are the ones the players *already made true* without meaning to. See [`IDEAS.md`](IDEAS.md) — the seed pool is entirely of this kind. 2. **Threads the players open and walk away from.** Anything a player asked about once and then dropped is pre-validated interest. 3. **Invention.** Cheapest to produce, weakest to land, because nothing in the fiction is already pointing at it. --- ## If Seren ever goes public **Decided 2026-08-24 (Jay). Not in scope — recorded so the decision isn't re-litigated later, and so nothing gets built in a way that forecloses it.** > ### The schema ships. The adventures we ran do not. Two artifacts, and only one of them is ever distributable: | | what it is | ships? | |---|---|---| | **the schema** | the module format, the campaign folder spec, `campaign-start.md` and its conversion step, the container and antagonist formats | ✅ **yes** — entirely ours, no third-party content in it | | **a module we derived from someone's adventure** | Welton, or any other published one-shot rendered into our format | ⛔ **never** | **A derived module is not ours to publish**, regardless of how freely the original was given away. Free to download and run is not free to redistribute in a new wrapper, and *"we reformatted it"* is not a defence anybody should want to make. **This is not a licence-risk calculation. It is not okay, and that's the end of it.** ### What goes out instead **An original sample one-shot**, written by us, in the format — so that anyone adopting the schema has a worked example to read and something to play on day one. A format without a filled example is not adoptable. **That costs less than it sounds.** Seren already holds 42 role templates, 6 antagonists, 26 homebrew feat shapes, 10 item shapes, and an idea pool harvested from real character sheets. A sample module is assembly from parts we own, not authorship from nothing. ### What this means for anyone building now Nothing changes in how work proceeds, with one exception: **Keep the format and the instances in separate directories from the start.** `campaigns/modules/` is the format's home; a specific playthrough lives elsewhere. If a derived module ever sits in the same tree as the shippable schema, someone eventually publishes it by accident — and the fix is a directory choice today versus a migration and an apology later. **If we ever do want to ship a Welton module, the answer is to ask its author.** Richard Jansen-Parkes, one person, contact address on [his About page](https://winghornpress.com/winghorn-press-about/), explicitly open to collaboration. A conversation, not a workaround.