The favor owed to Maraveth
Opened Session 3
Open 5 sessionsThe campaign's memory
A campaign journal that remembers forward.
Session recaps whose key events become canon. Open threads that age in public until you resolve them. Arcs that span months of play. This journal does not just record what happened; it keeps what happened working for you.
Five minutes after each session. The system does the rest.
What is a campaign journal?
A campaign journal is the running record of a game as it is actually played: what happened each session, in order, with the promises, debts, and mysteries the story accumulated along the way. If yours lives in a beloved notebook, keep it; the ritual is real. The difference is that paper remembers backward, and this journal's job is to remember forward: what you record drives the timeline, ages your open threads, and decides what your players get to see.
The record of record
Recaps whose key events become canon
Every session gets a recap: what happened, who was there, what changed. Inside the recap you mark key events, and a key event marked canon becomes a fact the campaign can no longer misplace.
Canon is a load-bearing word here. Canonical events take a date and a place on the campaign timeline. They anchor the entities they touched, so the duke's betrayal is recorded on the duke, not just in Tuesday's notes. And they are the record you check when two players remember the same night differently, which is to say weekly.
Recaps are written in the same block editor as everything else, so the session notes your table takes during play are already most of the recap by the time the pizza boxes are cleared.
The signature
Open threads age in public
A thread is a typed loose end: a promise made, a mystery opened, a debt unpaid. Threads record when they opened and stay visible until resolved, so the ones you are neglecting raise their hands instead of dissolving into old notes.
What sings under the abbey
Opened Session 7
Open 1 sessionThe forged harbor ledgers
Opened Session 2
Resolved Session 6Threads can link to a quest, and resolving the thread asks what should happen to the quest, so the story's bookkeeping closes itself. Arcs sit above both: named stories that span sessions, collecting the threads and canon events that belong to them, so "the Tidewrit affair" is a thing you can open, not a vibe you reconstruct.
Not a dead end
The journal drives the world
Most session logs are where information goes to rest. This one is plumbing. Write the recap and two other systems move.
Reveals, through the portal
Under the Revealed world setting, a recap reveals what the session touched: the NPCs met, the places entered, the items found appear in your players' codex on their own. See how the player portal works.
Time, on the graph
Sessions and dated canon events populate the campaign timeline, one of the knowledge graph's built-in projections, so the order of events is something you can look at, not something you argue about.
Recently shipped
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Grimoire 1.5: The UX Revamp
Threads can now link a quest (resolving one prompts about the other), and the dashboard chronicle became fully clickable, opening any entity in the peek drawer.
Optional
A memory your AI can consult
Grimoire runs fully without a single AI feature. If you already use Claude, ChatGPT, or another MCP-compatible client for prep, Grimoire MCP can hand your assistant the narrative state this journal maintains: recent sessions, open threads, canonical facts, and active arcs, as structured data rather than a pasted wall of notes.
That means "what loose ends should tonight's session pull on" gets answered from your actual record. You bring your own client; there is no token markup and no model lock-in.
See how Grimoire MCP works →FAQ
Campaign journal questions, answered
What is a campaign journal?
A campaign journal is the running record of what actually happened at the table: session by session, in order, with the promises and loose ends the story picked up along the way. A good one does more than store the past. It keeps the campaign's open questions visible so they resolve on purpose instead of evaporating.
Why not just use a paper journal?
Many GMs love one, and nothing here replaces the ritual of writing after a session. The difference is what happens next: a paper journal remembers backward, while Grimoire's journal feeds the campaign forward. A recap's key events become canon your whole system uses: the timeline gains the session, the player portal reveals what the party encountered, and open threads keep waving until you resolve them.
What are open threads?
Typed loose ends: a promise made, a mystery opened, a debt owed, a rumor left hanging. Each thread records when it opened and ages in public, so the favor the party promised in Session 3 is still raising its hand in Session 8. Threads can link to a quest, and resolving the thread asks about the quest, so the story's bookkeeping closes itself.
Do my players see the journal?
The parts you choose. Session recaps are portal-eligible, so under your portal settings the table can reread what happened, and under the Revealed world setting a recap also reveals the NPCs, places, and items it touched. Open threads, arcs, and session prep stay on your side of the screen.
Do I have to write recaps for the rest of Grimoire to work?
No. The database, wiki, and graphs all stand on their own. Recaps are the flywheel rather than a requirement: each one you write updates the timeline, ages your threads honestly, and drives portal reveals, which is why most GMs find the five-minute recap habit pays for itself by the next session.
Promises age in public here.
Write five minutes of recap. Get a timeline, honest threads, and reveals that keep pace with the story.
Free tier, no credit card. Your campaign's memory, working.