Introduction
GMTales is a collaborative writing space for tabletop role-playing campaigns: a wiki that still feels like a writer's notebook. You write plain Markdown. GMTales handles the linking, the permissions, and the record of what changed.
Why GMTales Exists
Campaign writing piles up fast, and half of it is a spoiler for somebody. Personal notes don't collaborate, and a generic wiki that does leaves link upkeep to you and treats spoilers as an afterthought. GMTales holds the same writing without either failure.
Core Principles
Plain Markdown is the source of truth. An article is an ordinary Markdown file. Every GMTales control is an HTML comment, so your files stay readable in any editor and versionable in git. See Writing.
Write naturally, and GMTales does the bookkeeping. Mention an article by name and the mention becomes a link. Relations, backlinks, and disambiguation are computed when you save, never maintained by hand. See Linking.
Visibility lives in the text. Who may read what is declared in the article itself, for the whole article or for a single paragraph. Everything else follows from placement: a thing is read by whoever can read a place it is shown. See Secrets.
The table stays informed without effort. Every change is kept as a revision. Unread markers, activity feeds, and comparison views replace manual announcements. See History and Discovery.
Players write too. Players keep articles of their own — journals, backstories, theories — and discuss everything in notes. See Collaboration.
What you write is yours. Not even the Creator can edit or delete another member's article, note, or image. Everything you wrote stays yours to edit, delete, or withdraw. See Content Belongs to Its Author.
What GMTales Is Not
Some things are left out on purpose.
A full-blown wiki. There are no talk pages, moderation queues, or edit approvals. Every article has exactly one author, and ownership does not transfer. Members collaborate by writing their own articles and discussing in notes, never by editing each other's text. If a campaign cannot live with something a member wrote, the only remedy is removing the member, not editing the post.
A virtual tabletop. Maps and markers document the world; they don't run the session. Nothing here plays it: no tokens, initiative tracker, fog of war, or real-time play.
A rules companion. No character sheets, dice, or system mechanics. In return, GMTales fits any system equally well, published or homebrew.
Infinitely customizable. Themes, assets and custom CSS restyle the surface, but layout and structure are fixed and not yours to rearrange.
Where to Start
Definitions is the vocabulary. Writing is the complete syntax reference. Everything else can wait until you need it.