Knife
A Knife is a detail from a PC's backstory that you can use to make a Scene personal. Find knives pulls them out of the backstory; you use them by adding them to Scenes.
Ultimo aggiornamento 19/10/26
Wyrdli · Aiuto e documentazioneA Knife is a detail from a PC's backstory that you can use to make a Scene personal. Find knives pulls them out of the backstory; you use them by adding them to Scenes.
A Knife is a detail from a PC's backstory that you can turn on the character to make a Scene personal. The sister they left behind, the debt they never paid, the crime somebody pinned on them: each of those is a Knife. Wyrdli keeps one record per detail, so it's ready when you prep.
Players put work into their backstories, and a detail that never comes back into play is work thrown away. A Knife puts it in front of you while you decide what the next session holds, and it stays there after you've used it once. The best ones come back again and again.
A Knife has a name and a description. The description says what the backstory says about the detail, then gives two or three ideas for a Scene built on it. Every idea is something the world does to the character. What the character does about it stays with the player. A Knife belongs to one or more PCs and links to the NPCs, Locations, Factions, Items and Secrets it involves.
Knives are GM-only. Players don't see them on the PC page, in the sidebar or on a Scene, and the Knife pages don't open for them.
A PC's backstory says she ran away from her village and left her younger sister with an uncle who drinks. The Knife is called "The sister left behind". Its description repeats those facts and suggests Scenes: a letter from the sister reaches the party in handwriting that isn't hers, the uncle turns up in town selling the family's land, a traveller at the inn mentions a girl from that village who went missing.
The sister and the uncle are NPCs. If the Campaign already has them, the Knife links them. If it doesn't, their names wait on the Knife until you create them.
Open a PC's page and go to the Knives tab. Find knives reads the PC's description as the backstory and creates a Knife for each detail you could use. It uses AI credits. The button is hidden when AI is off, and disabled while the PC's description is empty.
Wyrdli looks for the people the character cares about, living or dead, their fears and old wounds, open mysteries, enemies, promises kept or broken, crimes they committed or were wrongly blamed for, the way people treated them, objects they treasure and the secrets they keep. One thing stays one Knife, so a large family or a whole criminal career can be a single Knife. Every Knife comes from something the backstory says. Wyrdli doesn't invent details to fill a gap.
Names in the backstory that match records already in the Campaign become links on the Knife. A name the Campaign doesn't have yet goes on the Knife as an unlinked name. Wyrdli never creates an NPC, Location, Faction, Item or Secret by itself.
Run Find knives again after the backstory grows. It only adds. Knives you edited, linked or put in Scenes stay as they are, and Wyrdli skips any detail an existing Knife already covers. It has no memory of deletions, so a Knife you deleted can come back on the next run. Delete it again if you don't want it.
Two backstories often share something, like an enemy or a home town. When the detail Wyrdli finds is already a Knife on another PC, it adds this PC to that Knife instead of making a second one. That is the only change Find knives ever makes to an existing Knife.
You can also write Knives by hand, from the add button in the Knives toolbar on a PC's page, on the Campaign page or on the Knives list. Starting from a PC's page selects that PC for you. The editor opens. Fill in:
A name you'll recognise in a list. "The sister left behind" works better than "Family".
A description with the backstory detail and a few ways to bring it into a Scene.
The PCs it belongs to. A Knife can belong to several PCs at once.
The NPCs, Locations, Factions, Items and Secrets it involves.
You use a Knife by putting it in a Scene. Open the Scene editor and pick the Knife in the Knives field. A Knife can go in any number of Scenes, and you can bring the same one back sessions later. The Knife's page lists its Scenes but doesn't edit them; you add and remove Knives from the Scene.
To see what you haven't used yet, open the Knives tab on the Campaign page or the Knives list in the sidebar. Both list every Knife in the Campaign with its PCs and its Scenes. The filter switches between all, unused and used. A Knife counts as used once it's in at least one Scene.
The Knife's page lists the unlinked names under its links. Each one has a button:
Create opens the editor for that kind of record with the name and the description already filled in from the backstory. Save it, and Wyrdli links the new record to the Knife and removes the name from the list.
Link shows instead when the Campaign already has a record with that name, for example one you created after the Knife. Click it to link that record and remove the name.