Family-tree boards

Family-tree boards are a dedicated board type for laying out lineages in your TTRPG world — noble houses, NPC bloodlines, ancestral charts. Unlike a generic board, the layout, toolbar, and inspector are tuned for genealogy: couples stay adjacent, children sit under their parents, and a single click swaps the view to focus on one person’s ancestors, descendants, or both.

A family-tree board with five generations, partner and parent-child edges, lineage colours, and generation labels down the left

Creating a family-tree board

From the Boards page click + Create Board.
Give it a name (e.g. House Targaryen).
Set Board type to Family Tree.
Optional — attach to a world to inherit its share list.

A fresh family-tree board opens with a centred Build a family tree prompt and a single button to add the first person.

Person cards

Every entry on a family-tree board is a Person card. Each card has:

A photo or initials placeholder.
A name and lifespan (e.g. 1850 – 1932) along the bottom.
A small ✝ when the person is deceased.
A coloured lineage stripe across the top (off when Colour by lineage is disabled — see Lineage colour).
A + N descendants badge when the subtree below is collapsed.

When you select a person, four perimeter buttons appear so you can grow the tree without leaving the canvas:

Button	Position	Adds
+	Top	Parent
♥	Right	Spouse
+	Bottom	Child
👥	Left	Sibling (only shown when the person already has a parent)

The FamilyToolbar (a floating pill above the selected card) gives you the same actions as buttons, plus Mark deceased, Co-parent partner’s children, Focus on this person, Collapse subtree, and Delete.

Adding relationships

There are several ways to connect people; pick whichever feels natural:

From the perimeter buttons

Select a person, click any of the four + / ♥ / 👥 buttons. A new person card is created in the right place and an auto-layout pass re-tidies the tree.

From the FamilyToolbar

Select a person → the toolbar appears at the top of the card. Click Add Parent / Spouse / Child / Sibling.

Drag a relationship

Select a person.
Drag from any of its handles outward.
Drop on empty canvas → the Relationship picker appears (Parent / Partner / Child / Sibling). Pick one and a new person is created on the canvas at the drop point.
Drop on another person → the picker appears too, pre-filled with the inferred relation (vertical position infers parent vs child; same row infers partner). Confirm or change.

From the library

Open the Library (the rail down the left, or a drawer on a phone). On a family-tree board, the Person tile sits at the top of the components list. Drag it onto the canvas to add an unrelated person, or tap on mobile to drop one at the canvas centre.

Editing a person

Click any person card and the right-rail Inspector opens to its details. Five sections:

Identity

Given name, family name, maiden name, pronouns, display name, gender (picker + free-text), and a portrait uploader. The display name overrides the auto-built Given Family if you want a specific in-character spelling.

Lifespan

Born and Died accept partial / approximate dates (“c. 1850”, “Jan 1850”, “1850-03-12”) so dates that aren’t exactly known can still be recorded. The Deceased toggle defaults to inferred from death date and you can override either way (deceased without a known date, or living despite a death date).

Background

Occupation and free-form notes.

Lineage

A Lineage group override and a Lineage colour override — see Lineage colour below.

Style

Per-card font family — board-local, doesn’t affect the canonical record.

Partnerships

Partner edges are pink lines that connect the inner edges of two partner cards. When both partners are also parents of the same child, the edge sprouts a L-step connector down to the child — neutral black, routed through the gap between rows so it stays visible.

Partner status

Click a partner edge to open its inspector. Status options:

Married / Engaged / Partnered / Dating — current relationship.
Separated — paused but not formally ended.
Divorced — formally ended.
Widowed — ended by death.
Ex — generic past partner.

The line styling reflects the status: solid pink for current, dotted/dashed pink for paused / past, dashed grey for divorced, solid grey for widowed.

Spouse added after children

If you create person A, add A’s children, then add A’s spouse D, the children stay biologically modelled as A’s only — they sit under A because that’s the actual data. To upgrade them to co-parented:

Select D (the new spouse).
The FamilyToolbar shows a Co-parent N children of [partner] button.
Click it. New parent_child edges from D are added to each of A’s children, layout re-runs, and the children re-centre under the partnership.

Floating partner edge

Partner edges always render between the inner edges of the two partner cards based on current positions — so dragging a partner from the right side of A to the left side never crisscrosses the line. The heart button stays on the visible midpoint.

Adoption and other parent kinds

Click any parent_child edge → the inspector shows a Kind picker:

Biological (default)
Adoptive
Step
Foster
Surrogate
Unknown

Non-biological kinds render the line with a distinct dash pattern and add a single-letter badge near the elbow (A / S / F / Su). Adopted children are positioned exactly the same as biological children — kind is purely a rendering / record-keeping distinction.

Lineage colour

Each person card gets a lineage colour — a coloured stripe across the top that groups people who share a surname (or an explicit lineage group). The same colour also tints the row dot in the People panel and the dot in the mini-map.

How the colour is picked:

If you set an explicit Lineage colour override on a person (Inspector → Lineage), that wins.
Otherwise the Lineage group field on the person, if set.
Otherwise the person’s Family name.
The chosen string is hashed deterministically into a 12-colour palette — same surname always gets the same colour, even after reload.

Use Lineage group when several family names share a house (a spouse-in’s lineage) or to split one big surname into branches. Use the Lineage colour override when a specific lineage demands a specific colour (House Lannister always red).

Toggle Colour by lineage off in the People panel header if the palette is too noisy on a busy board — every card / dot reverts to neutral grey.

The People panel

Open the People panel from the right of the toolbar (Users icon — only visible on family-tree boards).

The panel lists every person on the board with:

A search box (matches name parts and nicknames).
Sort by Name / Birth date / Lineage.
Filter All / Living / Deceased.
A coloured lineage dot next to each name (when Colour by lineage is on).

Click a row to pan + zoom the canvas to that person and select it (the inspector opens to identity).

Hover a row to reveal a crosshair — click it to enter focus mode on that person.

Focus mode

Focus mode highlights one person (“ego”) and dims everyone unrelated. Use it to find your way around a busy tree.

To enter:

Select a person and press F.
Or click the crosshair on the FamilyToolbar.
Or hover a person in the People panel and click its crosshair.

Visual treatment:

Ego — gold ring, full opacity.
Ancestors (parents, grandparents, …) — gold ring.
Descendants (children, grandchildren, …) — teal ring.
Direct partners — pink ring.
Everyone else — dimmed to 35% opacity.

Press F again on the same person, or with no person selected, to clear focus.

View modes

When focus mode is on, the View dropdown in the People panel header becomes useful. It restricts what’s drawn on the canvas:

Everyone (default) — show all people.
Ancestors of focus — keep ego + every ancestor.
Descendants of focus — keep ego + every descendant.
Hourglass — keep ego + ancestors + descendants.

Frames, drawings, and annotations stay visible regardless — only person cards get filtered.

Collapsing a subtree

Long branches can clutter the canvas. To collapse:

Select the person you want to collapse below.
On the FamilyToolbar click the chevrons-down icon (only shown when the person actually has descendants).
Every descendant disappears from the canvas. A + N badge appears bottom-right of the collapsed person card.
Click the badge (or click the chevrons icon again) to expand.

The bottom Add Child + button is hidden while the subtree is collapsed — adding a child you can’t see would be confusing.

Auto layout

Family-tree boards run a purpose-built tidy-tree layout every time you add a relationship. You normally don’t need to trigger it manually. The rules it follows:

Couples are never split — partners always sit immediately adjacent, even between siblings.
Children sit directly under their actual parent (or the partnership midpoint if they’re co-parented by both).
Generations are strict horizontal rows.
Disconnected family trees on the same board sit in separate horizontal lanes — they don’t overlap.

If the layout drifts after manual edits, click Auto-layout in the toolbar to re-tidy.

Generation labels

A faint Gen 0 / Gen 1 / Gen 2 … label sits along the canvas left edge, anchored to each generation’s row. The labels move and scale with the canvas as you pan and zoom.

Validation

A few protective checks run when you save:

Self-loops (a partner / parent_child edge from a person to themselves) are silently removed.
Duplicate partner edges between the same pair are silently removed.
Cycles in parent_child (someone is their own ancestor) surface a toast warning — they’re kept in the data so you don’t lose work, but flagged for you to fix.
Multiple in-effect partners (e.g. two simultaneous married edges from the same person) surface a toast warning — polyamorous structures are valid, but the warning helps catch accidents.

Tips

Build top-down or bottom-up

The perimeter + buttons let you grow in either direction. Add a person, then their parents (top +) to extend ancestry, or their children (bottom +) to extend descendancy.

Drag for unfamiliar shapes

Use the connection-drag relationship picker when the perimeter buttons don’t fit your layout — e.g. linking two existing people who aren’t currently adjacent.

Co-parent with one click

After adding a spouse to someone with existing children, look for the Co-parent N children of [partner] button on the toolbar. One click adopts them all into the partnership.

Focus + Hourglass = the readable tree

On large trees, hit F on a person and switch view to Hourglass. You’ll see only the line of ancestry and descent around them, with everyone unrelated hidden.

Pin lineage colours that matter

Override the lineage colour for the houses your campaign cares about most (House Lannister red, House Stark grey). Auto-derived colours fill in the rest.

Collapse to keep things scannable

Collapse minor branches you’ve already detailed. The descendants are still searchable in the People panel and one click on the badge brings them back.