Docs/Dynamic Components

Dynamic Components

Dynamic Components are the interactive parts of a story: a choice the reader makes, a dice roll, a conversation with a character, a fight that plays out turn by turn, the scene it all happens in. You build each one once, give it a name, and open it through a Trigger wherever the story needs it.

What a Dynamic Component is

A Dynamic Component is an interactive moment you prepare in advance. You set it up once: pick the dice, write the choices, stock the merchant's shop. Then you can call the same component from anywhere in the book, as many times as you need.

You build each one by filling out a form. What you type into the fields is exactly what your reader sees: the question they're asked and the items in the shop.

The seven kinds

Decision Templates

Your reader picks one of the options you've written. Their pick decides what happens next.

Dialogue Templates

A branching conversation with a character. Your reader picks a line, the character answers, and the next layer of choices opens. Each pick can change how the character feels.

Dice Templates

A roll for moments where the outcome should be uncertain. Set up the roll, name the bands, and the dice decide where the story goes.

Combat Templates

A fight that plays out turn by turn. You set the sides and the rules, and the outcome feeds back into your story.

Trade Screens

A shop screen. Your reader buys, sells, or barters, and the stock on both sides updates as they trade.

Calculations

A number computed from facts your story already tracks: strength plus a sword's bonus, or gold minus a toll. The other Dynamic Components read the result as a single number.

Backgrounds

A picture, a video, or a flat colour behind the story, with the passage set into a shape you draw on it. It opens nothing: it changes what the page looks like.

Where they live

The sidebar has a Dynamic Components tab, and every component you've built for this book lives there, one kind per sub-page. Each template gets its own row: you can click it to open and edit it, and the duplicate and delete actions sit right there beside it.

Dynamic Components belong to one book. A Dice Template you build for one story is not available in another.

How they reach the reader

A Dynamic Component always reaches the reader through a Trigger. Place a Trigger in the chapter where the story should pause, and point one of its results at the component you want to run. When your reader reaches that spot and the conditions you set are met, the component opens.

Note

A Trigger's result list can open one Dynamic Component at a time. A Decision Template's options can't open one directly; they can only set a fact or reveal another part of the book. To chain a component off an option, set a fact and have another Trigger watch for it.

Calculations are the exception: nothing fires them. Another Dynamic Component asks them for a number. A dice roll might use your reader's seamanship plus their ship's bonus as its modifier; the Calculation works that number out from facts the story already tracks and returns it.

The shape every page follows

Each component has its own page below. Every page uses the same structure, so you always know where to look:

Where to find it: the sidebar path and the list view.
The modals: the editor where you build it.
The template: the settings that apply to the whole template.
Per-component anatomy: the parts unique to each kind, such as items, modifiers, and outcomes.
Published templates are locked: what happens to the template once an expansion goes out.
Validation: what stops a save and what stops a publish.