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PostRoll Help

Dating events

A timeline event’s precision tells PostRoll how exact its date is. You can mix any precision with any other — King Aldren born in 1247 SR sits on the same axis as Something terrible during the Sundering Age and The party arrives at Vael, Session 8. Each appears correctly in the right view.

The smart When field in the create dialog picks a precision based on what you type. You can always override it from the Inspector.

The ten modes

Section titled “The ten modes”
Precision When to use Example input
exact Time-of-day-precise (tactical or in-fiction-precise). 2026-04-04T14:30
day A specific day. 2026-04-04, 12 Brightember 1247
month A specific month. Brightember 1247, April 2026
year A specific year. 1247 SR, 1086
era “During the Sundering Age” — no narrower than that. (set in Inspector)
range Something that lasted from year X to year Y. (set both the year and its end position in the Inspector)
relative “Three nights before the Burning of Vael”. (pick anchor event + offset in Inspector)
session “Session 8” — anchored to a campaign session, not a calendar date. Session 8
unknown “Before the Shattering” — no date at all. ?, unknown, freeform text
floating “When the players reach the Hollow Saint” — no date because it hasn’t happened yet. soon, someday, when …

How precision affects each view

Section titled “How precision affects each view”
  • Timeline canvas — exact and day-precision events appear as small pins, month, year, and era events as wider bands, and ranges as bars. Relative events appear as chips connected to their anchor by a leader line. Session events sit on the Sessions layer. Events with an unknown date or a floating date don’t appear on the canvas — they live in the Unplaced drawer and the Agenda tab respectively.
  • Calendar grid — only events that have a master timeline position show up in day cells. Year-precision events appear at Jan 1 of their year; month-precision events appear at day 1 of their month.
  • Chronicle — groups by era → year → session. Unplaced events sink to the bottom under “Undated”.
  • Agenda — only events with a floating date, an unknown date, or an agenda date set appear here.

How the When field reads what you type

Section titled “How the When field reads what you type”

The When field in the create dialog (and the Cycles tab’s “Go to” input) reads what you type like this:

  1. An ISO YYYY-MM-DD date → day precision.
  2. A bare number (1–6 digits, optionally negative) → year precision.
  3. A number plus a suffix that matches one of your eras’ short names → year precision, tagged to that era.
  4. Day Month Year using your primary calendar’s month names → day precision.
  5. Month Year → month precision.
  6. Session N → session precision, with N keeping a stable order.
  7. Text starting with soon / someday / eventually / when / if → a floating date.
  8. ? or unknown → an unknown date.
  9. Anything else → an unknown date, with your text kept as the event’s display text.

When the When field can’t work out a master timeline position, the event is still saved — it just won’t anchor on the canvas or calendar grid.

Setting the other precisions

Section titled “Setting the other precisions”

Exact, range, relative, and era dates aren’t directly typeable in the When field — you set them from the Inspector after creating the event. Open the Inspector, change the Precision dropdown to the mode you want, and the matching date inputs appear.

Section titled “Related”