Build, track, and share your stories.

The Chronodex is a thoughtful, versatile and personal narrative tool. And it’s totally free. It’s been carefully designed to guide and organize RPG and literary pursuits. The Chronodex will help you:

Map out, brainstorm, and expound upon existing ideas and stories.

Provide a visual resource of your world and the actors in it for your players.

Record favorite details about characters, their world, events, and everything in between to be enshrined for years to come.

The Chronodex works with any system, and should feel natural to use with any style or setting you want to play. It’s not a character sheet, and doesn’t track stat points or spells. You’ve already got great solutions for that. But if you find yourself thinking about something bigger, it does really unique things:

Visualize your adventures with idea generating forms and graphs.


Deep Insights

Balanced, challenging questions help you define the core of your key characters. You know the party will end up bonding with that shop owner whether you like it or not.

Chart your progress

Visualize character traits with custom-designed graphs, so you can easily sketch each scar and piece of jewelry as they’re earned. Never forget which eye has a patch again!

Character History

Generous space for notes ensures your stories never fade into history, and you can finally remember WHY not to trust that elf ranger.


Timeline

When did the empire fall again? Plot the events relevant to your campaign to maintain continuity without a lot of paper shuffling.

NPCs

Quickly craft believable new personas, and keep track of their names and personalities! Boost player engagement by handing out fact sheets with the deets.

Lore

Memories may be fleeting but your adventures don't have to be. Preserve your myths and legends for campaigns to come and create a living world with real consequences.


Factions

Keep track of active groups, gangs or political parties. Record their goals, territory, assets, and aspirations to help your characters feel like part of something bigger.

Artifacts

The hammer of… what was it again? Make your Macguffins less Macguffiny with guided questions to help insert them into your world and track their linage and influence.

Assets

You don't have to be an artist to visualize characters and events for your players! Draw over the provided character and item templates to create something unique!

Print the Chronodex for yourself,
or order a fancy consolidated tome.

The Chronodex comes in three versions to accommodate your needs.


The Chronodex Core

Download this PDF for free and you’ve got as many pages as you could ever want. Print ‘em blank and complete as you go, or prefill a hand out.


- Maps for Regions, Major Regions, Minor and Major Locations.
- Pages for Characters and Factions (in Minor & Major flavors).
- Extended Character Page for the ones that need a bit extra.
- Timeline, Items and Statistics Log.
- 11 pages of Achievements. Yes. 11 pages.

Download the Core

Assets Add-On

Build character portraits, location-establishing art, and item pics on these foundational elements. Use them whole, modify or trace over them. Heck, decoupage ‘em if you want.


- Blank timelines with slots for icons in various sizes.
- Draw-over character sketches with modular equipment.
- Item, location and event icons
- Revised pages of the Core with spots for icon placement.


If you enjoy the Chronodex enough to use this extension, please consider supporting my hard work, it really helps.

Coming September

The Chronodex in Print

Start your new campaign on the right track. Weighing in at 92 pages, this curated physical book includes everything you need for a major plot arch.


- 2 Map pages, 4 Region pages and 4 Location pages.
- 8 pages for Player Characters, plus 12 for NPCs.
- 4 Faction pages, 6 for Timelines and 6 for Items.
- 1 page to track, statistics and 11 Achievement pages.
- 18 organized Note pages for everything else.
- Available September, 2018. Makes a great gift!

Coming September!

FAQ

How do I use this?

Any way you like! There are a few ways that immediately come to mind.

For Players
  • Download the PDF and print out the pages you like for yourself and your group to keep track of ongoing info.
  • Purchase a book for yourself to keep track of a new or ongoing campaign, or to celebrate a new arch.
  • Print out a set to give to the group note-taker
  • As a suggestion to your group for collaborative world building
  • As a tool to organize your own favorite characters and locations across campaigns and keep them for years to come.

    • For GMs
  • Download the PDF and print out a set for yourself, your group's notetaker, or everyone at the table.
  • Purchase a book for yourself to keep track of your world as your players wreak havoc upon it.
  • Use it to brainstorm your world from the ground up, or put the world you have in your head on paper.
  • Invite the players to all fill out a number of sections as a group world-building exercise.
  • Fill out the PDF with your editor of choice, print and cut out key sections, and hand them out as players discover new towns, people, and things.

    • For Writers
  • Download as a PDF and print out more sections on demand. (The book is more geared towards campaigns.)
  • Record your world and characters, cut them out and scrapbook them. Draw lines, see how they interact.
  • Use the questions and graphs to help tease out details and trigger ideas you might not have consitered otherwise.
  • Use the timeline to plot out your general chain of events, visualize A-to-B.

    • Is this really free?

    It is. The Chronodex as a PDF is published as a Pay-What-You-Like on RPGDriveThru, and the minimum price is set to 0. That said, if you're excited by the project or use it a lot, I'd appreciate any support you might lend. The book, however, has to be bought!

    Who made this?

    I did! My name is Sarah Kaiser, and I'm a UX designer and sometimes-illustrator by trade. I wrote, designed, drew, and built the book and this site. However, it wouldn't have been possible without the creative mind of Kasper Dupris Richter or the watchful eyes of Dylan Hill, Siobhan Robson, Michael Tilbrook, Matthew Cowles, Moses Nester, and the helpful denizens of the Chronodex Discord.

    Why did you make this?

    Because I recently realized I've been remaking parts of this very thing again and again and again for the last 10 years for nearly every game I'm in, so I decided to sit down and do it right. I love character and world building, and I love making forms. My aberration of character is your gain.

    Is this a fancy character sheet?

    Nope! The Chronodex is not built to keep track of hitpoints or system specific attributes.
    It's made to help figure out WHO your character is as opposed to what they can do.

    Will this work for [insert system] / Is there system specific sheets?

    This project is system agnostic, meaning it will work for nearly any setting.

    Can I send the files to my friends?

    For raw files, I would prefer you point them to RPGDriveThru to download it themselves. It's free! And it gives me analytics to keep track of how the project is doing. As for files you've edited or filled out, please, send away! That's what they're made for.

    Can I print the files out for my group?

    Absolutely!

    Can I print out and sell booklets to my local groups?

    No, this project is licensed under a Creative Commons licence that allows sharing and remixing, but disallows commercial use. For more information, check out this link

    Why is this licensed under Creative Commons / What is Creative Commons?

    Applying a Creative Commons licence to this project protects the work that I put into the design while allowing the spread and reuse of the ideas contained within. I want people to feel free to build on this idea, use it in their own works and even use it commercially (with permission.) Cool ideas should be shared.

    If I want to use this project or part of it in my own source book / gaming aid/ project that I intend to sell, would I have to buy a licence off of you?

    No, I'll happily grant a licence to anyone who remixes it into their own projects. The by-nc was specificly chosen to prevent direct reproduction and retail, and allow me to proof for quality. If you're interested in obtaining a commercial licence, contact me at TheChronodex (at) gmail.com.

    I have an idea for this! Can you make x?

    As I've just started on a new role at my dream job, my personal focus is elsewhere at the moment. But perhaps if a community of remixers springs up around the project they can help!

    Can I contact you for questions / work?

    Absolutely. I may not always have the time to do what you need, but there's a good chance I can help you find someone who can.
    Reach me at TheChronodex (at) gmail.