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Knowledge Graphs: Maps You Get by Filling In the Database

You do not draw graphs in Grimoire. You fill in alliance fields, parent locations, and dates, and the political web, geography tree, and timeline draw themselves.

Most tools make you build relationship maps by hand and watch them go stale. Grimoire inverts that: the graphs are projections of your database, so they are as current as your records. This page walks each graph and the exact fields that feed it.

Everything lives at Knowledge → Graphs, a workspace with a tab rail: World Foundations first, then the three built-in lenses (Political Web, Timeline, Geography), then any graphs you create yourself.

The Political Web

Who is allied with whom, who is feuding, and where every NPC's loyalty sits.

Alliance, rivalry, and membership fields in the database become the edges of the Political Web graph. What you fill in Silver Hand Allies: Merchant Guild Merchant Guild Rivals: Crimson Pact Thrain (NPC) Faction: Silver Hand Faction and NPC records What the Political Web draws Silver Hand Merchant Guild Crimson Pact Thrain
Three ordinary database edits on the left; the map they produce on the right.

To put an edge on this map, edit the records at either end of it:

  1. Open a faction and add another faction under Allies or Rivals. That single edit draws an alliance or rivalry edge.
  2. Open an NPC and set their Faction. That draws a membership edge and pulls the NPC into the web.
  3. Relationships between individual characters (rival captains, old flames, sworn enemies) edge the web too, from the Relationships field on either NPC.

A faction with no allies, no rivals, and no members floats alone, which is itself useful: an unconnected node on this map is a faction you have not yet made matter.

The Timeline

Your world's history and your table's history on one axis.

Dated sessions, lore entries, and quests fall into place on the campaign timeline. Session 6 The Queen's audience Lore: The Sundering Era: 1,000 years ago Quest: Missing shipments Started this spring distant past recent sessions now Anything with a date takes its place. No extra setup.
The timeline reads dates from three record types. Give a record a date and it appears.

The timeline pulls from every record that carries a date:

  • Sessions as you log them, so actual play accumulates into campaign history
  • Lore entries via their era or date, so deep history sits at the far end
  • Quests via their start and resolution

If your timeline looks empty, the fix is never on the graph: it is a missing date on a lore entry or an unlogged session.

Geography

Where everything is, as a containment tree: continent holds region, region holds city, city holds tavern.

Parent Location fields on location records become a containment tree in the Geography view. What you fill in Highvale parent: The Sundered Reach Millbrook parent: Highvale Broken Crown Tavern parent: Millbrook Location records with a Parent Location What Geography draws The Sundered Reach Highvale Millbrook Broken Crown Tavern
One field, Parent Location, builds the whole tree.

Set Parent Location on each location you create and the tree assembles itself. Locations without a parent sit at the top level, so a quick audit of this view shows you exactly which places you have left floating.

World Foundations

The one graph you author directly. Foundations holds the deep canon that is not really a "record": your creation myth, the cosmological order, the ancient pact that explains everything. You create foundation nodes and connect them by hand, and the result reads as a map of what is fundamentally true in your world. It sits first in the tab rail because everything else rests on it.

Graphs you define yourself

+ New graph at the end of the tab rail creates a custom graph:

  1. Name it and choose which categories it can contain (a heist graph might take NPCs, locations, and items).
  2. Add records from the graph canvas itself: the add button searches your world without leaving the view.
  3. Connect any two nodes and name the connection. Custom edges are yours; they do not have to correspond to a database field.

Custom graphs are the right tool for one-off structures: a conspiracy board, a tournament bracket, a web of debts.

Reading a graph

The canvas controls are the same across graphs:

  • 2D or 3D rendering, whichever reads better for the layout
  • Focus on one entity and limit depth to see just its neighborhood
  • Filter by relation type to isolate, say, only rivalries
  • Click any node to open its detail panel: summary, connections, and a jump to the full record
  • Fit re-centers when you get lost

Each graph can also be included in your campaign's AI context; the AI Integration guide covers that switch.