The Desktop App

localrpg gui opens the desktop application. The window has a launcher, where campaigns are chosen and created, and a campaign screen, where a campaign is played. The documentation reader, the Content Studio, the settings editor, and the two studios open above either of them.

This page maps what is on screen and gives each control its name. The guide for a topic is linked where the topic first appears.

The launcher

The launcher is a narrow icon dock on the left and a hero area for the selected campaign.

The dock

The dock runs down the left edge. From top to bottom:

Control	Opens
New Campaign (`+`)	The world strip, to choose the world the campaign will use.
Browse Campaigns	The campaign gallery.
Campaign icons	That campaign, as the hero. The selected campaign is highlighted.
Worlds Studio	The worlds studio. See Building Worlds: Studio Guide.
Systems Studio	The systems studio. See Building Custom Systems: Studio Guide.
Import Content Package	A file picker for a `.lrpgpack` or `.lrpgworld` package.
Content Registry	The registry modal, where registry URLs are added and packages are installed.
Settings	Global settings.
Help & Documentation	The documentation reader.

Each icon shows a label on hover, and a campaign icon's label also shows its turn count.

The hero stage

The hero area shows the selected campaign: its icon, name, world, system, and protagonist, with Play Time, Turns, and Last Played beside it. The PLAY button opens the campaign. Campaign Settings opens that campaign's own settings: the narrator voice, the start location and opening directives, the banner and icon artwork (each with Upload and AI Gen), and, in the Danger Zone, Restart Campaign and Delete Campaign.

With no campaigns yet, the hero shows a welcome card offering Create First World, Browse Systems, and the Local-First and Offline Play guide.

The galleries

Browse Campaigns opens the campaign gallery: a search field (Search campaigns, worlds, systems...), a sort control (Recently Played, Turn Count, Alphabetical), and a card per campaign. A click on a card plays the campaign, and the card shows its turn count and a settings gear.

The world strip is the horizontal row of icons behind the dock's + button. It shows one icon per world, a Create New World tile, and a button that expands into the world gallery. In the gallery, a click selects a world, and a world can be viewed full size or deleted.

Creating a campaign

Selecting a world opens New Campaign. The form has several sections:

Campaign Title, with a generate button beside it.
Rules System, a grid of systems, with compatible ones highlighted.
Voice & Narration: the narrator voice and the protagonist voice.
Protagonist Setup: name, age, gender, pronouns, appearance, and background, followed by the creation prompts the chosen system declares.
Story & World Seed: an optional start location and an optional opening scene directive.
Custom Campaign Artwork: a banner and an icon, each with Upload and AI Gen.

Auto-Fill Fields fills the fields that can be generated from the world and system; Create Campaign writes the campaign and opens it.

The campaign screen

The header shows the campaign name, a chip for whether mechanics are engaged, any provider limit chips, and a row of buttons:

Button	Opens
Character	The character sheet drawer.
Graph	The lore graph drawer.
Codex	The Codex drawer, the Markdown editor for the campaign's entities.
World Arcs	The living-world drawer.
Context	The turn context and continuity drawer.
Theater	Story Theatre, the visual-novel replay. See Story Theatre, Audio & Portraits.
Export	The export modal, for a web player or a video.
Settings	Global settings.
Docs	The documentation reader.

Back, at the left of the header, returns to the launcher.

The body of the screen is the chronicle: the illustration and narration of each turn, in order, with the newest at the bottom. A turn that produced a finding, a world tick, or a health effect shows a notice beside it.

Below the chronicle are the Mechanics strip, which reports whether mechanics are engaged, how many checks are pending, and how much image budget is left, and a pending check card when a check is waiting.

At the bottom is the action console.

The drawers

Each header button opens one drawer, and every drawer has the same frame: a title, a button that widens it, and a close button.

Character Sheet shows the player's name, level and type, a health bar, advancement currency with its costs and the reason one cannot be spent, the description, and the sheet's own attributes. The campaign's system defines the sheet, and the fields differ per game.
Lore Graph draws the campaign's entity graph, links and all, with a legend for characters, non-player characters, locations, and lore. Clicking a node opens the note behind it.
Codex Markdown Editor is the full note editor, and it shows a list of notes on the left, the Markdown, the frontmatter, the notes that link here, and the controls to save, merge a duplicate note, apply a voice archetype, or regenerate the note's portrait. See Codex YAML Frontmatter & Graph Reference.
Turn Context & Continuity shows what the last turn's prompt was assembled from: the mode and strategy, the continuity working set, the prompt sections with the share of the budget each took, and the assembled prompt itself.
Living World Arcs & Clocks shows the story so far, the open threads, the active narrative arcs, and the faction clocks.

Playing a turn

The action console has four tabs, and each one sets the mode for a turn:

Tab	Read as
DO	Something the character does.
SAY	Something the character says.
STORY	A narration or a scene-setting statement.
ROLL	A request for a check, shown only when the campaign has mechanics engaged.

Typing /do, /say, /story, or /roll at the start of a line sets the mode for that turn without moving the tab. The microphone button dictates input through the configured speech-to-text provider. Submit plays the turn; while the narrator is writing, the button becomes STOP.

A turn that ends on a check shows a Roll required card with the stakes, the notation, the modifiers, and the outcomes. The card offers Roll, a manual entry field, and Argue, which puts your case for a different check to the narrator.

A scene with no illustration yet offers Generate image on the turn. Speech controls appear per line on narrated turns; both are covered in Story Theatre, Audio & Portraits.

The prologue

A campaign with no turns yet shows the Prologue instead of the chronicle: the campaign's name, the optional opening prompt, and two buttons, Begin the story and I'll take the first step.

Settings

Settings opens from the dock or from the campaign header, and it is one editor with eight tabs.

Tab	Configures
Paths	The directories for systems, worlds, campaigns, and the media cache.
Providers	Cloud API keys, the embeddings provider, and the offline preset, in three sub-tabs.
AI Agents	Which provider serves each agent role, the routing and fallback order, and the context and generation limits.
Media Engines	Speech synthesis, speech recognition, and image generation providers, in three sub-tabs.
Batch Jobs	Speech backfill jobs, their progress, and their downloads.
Preferences	Cinematic overlays, type scale, the style pack, and story token streaming.
Usage	The spend ledger, by provider and by role, for this campaign or all of them.
Debug	The trace level and the trace file's bounds, plus the recorded events and raw provider lines.

A Show advanced settings toggle reveals the less common fields, and Save Settings writes the configuration. Problems the loader found are listed above the form rather than failing the save.

Press Alt to reveal the application menu bar, and Alt again to hide it. It has two menus: View (reload, full screen, zoom) and Help (Content Studio, Documentation, Report an Issue, Project Repository, and About LocalRPG).

Documentation opens the reader where this guide is read: a search box, a sidebar grouped by category, and the article itself. Content Studio is the raw editor for entities, prompts, and manifests, for editing outside a campaign.

Keyboard

The desktop app binds few keys.

Key	What it does
`Alt`	Show or hide the menu bar.
`Esc`	Close the menu bar, the reader, a drawer, or a modal.
`Enter` or `Space`	Advance the Story Theatre dialogue when it has focus.

The View menu lists the conventional shortcuts for reload, full screen, and zoom. The desktop shell handles those rather than the application.