Session Runner boards

A Session Runner board is the running order for an evening. Each node is a cue — a handful of things that happen to your table at once — and you fire them as you go.

Building a cue

Add a Cue, give it a name you’ll recognise mid-sentence, then add what should happen:

• Scene — switch everyone to a scene, or pause the table
• Sound — a music bed, a sound effect, stop everything
• Show them — a handout, a card, nodes on a board
• Dice — a roll, or a secret one
• Chat — post to the room, publicly or GM-only
• Combat — start it, end it, advance the turn
• Story state — remember something

Each action shows you what it will do in plain words, so a cue reads as “switch to the Crypt · fade in Dread · reveal the Ledger” rather than as settings.

Note

An action that needs something you haven’t got yet — a room, an active scene — says so instead of failing quietly. You can still write the cue now and attach the table later.

Opening a scene in one press

A Stage the scene node is the composed version of a cue: bind a map, some music and optionally a handout, and pressing it does all three in the order a room actually wants them — the map first, so nobody is looking at the old one when the rest lands; then the bed; then the handout, once everything has settled.

It wears the scene’s own picture, so a session board reads as a storyboard rather than a list of grey boxes. Bind only what you need — a stage node with just music is fine, and it says on the node what it will do.

Tip

Stage nodes work on Narrative Flow boards too, where the story opens the scene as the party arrives rather than waiting for you to press anything.

Firing

Every cue has a Fire button on the node. That’s deliberate: the edges are a suggested running order, not a rail. When the party walks into the tavern three scenes early, you hit the tavern cue and carry on.

The Runner in the toolbar walks the order for you — it shows the current cue, what it will do, and Fire / Next. A cue you can’t take back can be marked ask before firing.

Running from the room

Attach the board to a room and a Runner tab appears in the room’s sidebar. Same controls, and you never leave the table.

Connecting a board to a table

On the board page, open the Runner and pick a room under Driving. Only rooms you GM are offered — cues change what everyone sees, so that isn’t something a guest can do.

Without a table, everything that doesn’t need one still works, and everything that does tells you what it’s waiting for.