The Play Screen

The Play screen is where the story happens. It’s built around one idea: a clean, full-bleed journal in the middle, with everything else tucked into thin edges that step forward only when it’s your turn to act.

What sits around the journal depends on your campaign’s style of play:

  • Mythweave — freeform, steered by oracles and the entropy dial. See How Mythweave Plays.
  • Vowbound / Delve / Starsworn — rules-driven, with a character sheet, real dice, moves, and progress tracks. See How Vowbound Plays.

On a phone the screen is a single column: top bar, journal, action tray, and a row of reference tabs at the very bottom. On a wide screen it opens into three panes — a left library rail, the journal in the center, and a right reference rail — so the surfaces that are drawers on mobile become always-visible rails on desktop.

This page starts with the controls shared by both styles, then tours the specifics of each.

Shared controls

The top bar

A slim bar above the journal:

  • ‹ (phone) — back to Home. On desktop the ✦ Soliloquest wordmark in the left rail does the same.
  • Campaign name, with the scene picker folded into it: Scene N ▾. Tap to open the scene list and jump anywhere; ‹ › step to the previous/next scene. In Vowbound / Starsworn the picker also offers ✎ (rename the scene) and ↻ (ask the Storyteller to re-scribe its prose).
  • On the right: Read ↗ to the reading view; on a phone, a ⋯ to Settings.
  • A small status marker also lives here:
    • Mythweave: the entropy control − ◴ N + (phone). In control? Lower it. Overwhelmed? Raise it. See Omens & Entropy.
    • Vowbound / Starsworn: a small β badge naming the ruleset.

Browsing a past scene makes the journal read-only: the action tray is replaced by a notice with a Return to current scene link. Browsing never disturbs the story, and writing a new action snaps you back to the live edge.

The mode toggle

When you’ve enabled more than one mode, a compact toggle sits just under the top bar — You / You + Storyteller / Storyteller — and switches who drives at any time. In Storyteller (Auto) mode a small review dial appears beside it: pause each turn or each scene.

The journal

The scene’s running record — and the heart of the screen. Each entry type has its own look:

  • Your actions — your input, set apart from the narrative.
  • Storyteller replies — narration, with small badges when tools were used (oracle rolls, bookkeeping).
  • Oracle rolls & move cards — centered, bordered cards showing the question, table, and dice (in Vowbound, the full dice math and outcome — see below).
  • Story prose — the journaled narrative, in your chosen style.
  • System notes — small captions (scene markers, entropy shifts).

While the Storyteller responds, its text streams live into the journal. If a beat has an illustration it appears inline, and illustratable moments show an Illustrate this moment button (see Reading & Export and the per-campaign image settings). When spoken narration is on, a styled audio mini-player rides along with the prose: ▶ / ❚❚, a seek bar, and elapsed time.

The action tray

The bottom edge is a single action tray that follows your turn. It directs the eye like stage lighting:

  • While the Storyteller is working, the tray dims to a quiet status line — “Soliloquest is narrating…” or “The story unfolds…”.
  • When it’s your turn, the tray lights up with a cue you can’t miss — a glowing marker and ”— tap to act”:
    • YOUR MOVE when you’re driving (You, or hands-on Vowbound).
    • YOUR CALL when the Storyteller has posed a decision and waits on you.
    • THE STORY UNFOLDS in Storyteller mode, inviting you to watch.
  • Tap it and the tray expands into the full action panel; submit and it recedes so the journal shows the outcome.

The expanded panel’s frame is the same in every mode; only its contents change with who’s driving:

  • You tell the story — the oracle bar (🎲 Omen · 🔤 Meaning · ⚡ Event), the composer (“What do you do?” — Enter sends, Shift+Enter for a new line), the scene-wrap control, and any proposal cards (below).
  • You and the Storyteller tell the story — the posed decision with choice buttons for its suggestions, “…or describe your own” with a free-text answer, 🎲 let the oracle decide, and 🃏 browse when the step involves picking an asset or denizen.
  • Hands-on Vowbound — the composer, plus a move-staging chip: when your words name a move, a chip offers to stage it (opens the Moves surface with your fiction pre-filled, ready to pick a stat and roll).

Proposal cards

The Storyteller never edits your world directly — it proposes. Cards appear in the action area: New thread:, New character:, or Close thread:, each with ✓ (accept) and ✕ (dismiss). You are always the editor of record.

The Omen picker

Tapping 🎲 Omen opens the picker:

  • Title: “What do you want to know?”
  • An optional question to ask the world (“Are they hostile?”).
  • Odds — Almost certain · Likely · 50 / 50 · Unlikely · Small chance.

The omen comes back yes or no, and your question rides along into the journal. See Omens & Entropy.

Reference surfaces

The in-play reference surfaces — the world around the loop — sit in the right rail on desktop and behind a row of tabs at the bottom on a phone:

  • Mythweave: Threads N (open story goals) · Cast N (characters) · World (setting, world truths, and denizens you can edit) — plus Read ↗. The Mythweave rail also shows an ◴ Entropy meter.
  • Vowbound / Starsworn: ⚔ Moves · 🎲 Oracle · ◎ Vows · ✦ World — plus Read ↗. On a phone these open as bottom sheets over the story; drag a sheet between a half-height peek and full height, and tap the scrim or ✕ to close.

Out of credits

If your balance runs out, a ⚠ notice appears above the action tray: your story is safe, but new turns are paused until you top up. See Credits. (Oracle rolls and Vowbound moves are free — only Storyteller turns spend credits.)

The Mythweave screen

The freeform style. No character sheet — you narrate, the oracles surprise you, and Soliloquest scribes.

Play guidance

On desktop the left rail shows a one-line compass of where you are in the scene loop — ✦ Setup → ◇ Frame → ◆ Play → ↻ Transition — with the current phase lit and tappable to jump, plus “Now you might” suggestions when guidance offers them. On a phone the same compass appears as a chip below the top bar. (You set how much coaching to show — Unguided / Soft / Guided — and the authorship voice — Player-led / Collaborative — when you create the campaign.)

Wrapping a scene

From the action area, wrap & start a new scene asks the assistant to close out: it scribes a closing beat and proposes any thread/cast updates it noticed. Confirm the updates, then begin the next scene. See Scenes & the Journal.

Entropy

Tapping the entropy control opens a hint strip — In control? Lower it. Overwhelmed? Raise it. — with −, the current value ◴ N, and +. See Omens & Entropy.

The Vowbound / Starsworn screen

The rules-driven style. A live status strip sits under the top bar; the rules surfaces live in the right rail (desktop) or the bottom tabs (phone). Starsworn is the same screen with space-opera labels (and a few extra surfaces noted below).

Vitals

A status strip under the top bar, always visible while you have a character:

  • ❤ Health / ✦ Spirit / ◆ Supply — each out of 5, tinted when low.
  • ⚡ Momentum — your most important resource; green when positive, red when negative.
  • Initiative badge (during a fight) — in control / in a bad spot in Vowbound; initiative / foe has initiative in Starsworn.
  • Debilities — any conditions (e.g. WOUNDED, SHAKEN), in caps.
  • Your name ▾ opens the character sheet. On desktop the left rail mirrors these meters and offers Full character sheet ›.

Fight & site bars

  • ⚔ Fight bar — when a fight is open: the foe, a progress visual, and its rank. Tap to manage it under ◎ Vows.
  • ⛏ Site bar (Delve) — an open perilous site with its theme, domain, and progress. Tap to open it.

The reference sheets

  • ⚔ Moves. Search or browse moves by category. Tap a move to open its staging card: the full move text (with tappable rule references), a “What do you do?” fiction box, and the inputs the move needs — a stat and adds, or a track to roll progress against. Special moves add fields (Enter the Fray: foe name + rank; Forge a Bond: the bond; Discover a Site: domain/theme). Roll resolves it deterministically — no credits spent. Your fiction is journaled as your line immediately before the result, so the journal reads action → dice → outcome.
  • 🎲 Oracle. Ask the Oracle a yes/no question at flat Ironsworn odds, or pull an inspiration word pair. (No entropy here — odds are flat in this style.)
  • ◎ Vows. Your progress tracks: vows, journeys, fights, scene challenges, sites, and (Starsworn) connections. Each shows a 10-box bar, rank, and status; a scene challenge also shows its countdown with a Roll the outcome button. You can open a track manually here, too.
  • ✦ World. Your campaign canon — the setting, world truths, and the denizen roster (browse, add your own, or edit). Your cast (NPCs) lives here as well. Grow it anytime; every scene honors it.

The character sheet

Opened from the vitals strip (or the desktop left rail). It holds:

  • A portrait (generate one if images are enabled) and an editable appearance note used to ground portraits.
  • Stats (edge / heart / iron / shadow / wits) and the condition meters.
  • Momentum with its max and reset values.
  • Assets — your chosen abilities; spend XP to upgrade an ability (2 XP) or Advance into a new asset from the deck (3 XP).
  • Bonds you’ve forged.
  • The authorship dial — I narrate vs the Storyteller narrates outcomes — swappable any time.

Move cards & post-roll choices

Every roll lands as a move card in the journal: the dice math (d6 + stat + adds = score vs the two challenge dice), a color-coded STRONG HIT / WEAK HIT / MISS banner, and the outcome text. When the rules hand a choice to you, the card grows buttons — and only you can press them:

  • ⚡ Burn momentum — when burning would improve the result (decided after you see the dice). The card re-tiers in place and momentum resets.
  • 🎲 Pay the Price — roll for what goes wrong; you narrate how.
  • ⚔ Inflict harm — apply a hit to the open foe, scaled by its rank.
  • ✓ Resolve — when a progress roll settles a track (vow fulfilled, fight over, or ↻ recommit).
  • ⚠ Reveal a Danger (Delve) and cost choices (e.g. −1 spirit or −2 momentum) appear when the fiction calls for them.

Tapping a [rule reference] anywhere — in a card, a move, or prose — opens a dismissible rules card you can drill into.

Starsworn extras

Starsworn (the Starforged ruleset) adds, alongside everything above:

  • Connections — relationship tracks (rather than Vowbound’s flat bonds), opened and developed through their own moves.
  • Vehicles — tracked for damage, repair, and impacts.
  • Legacy tracks — Quests / Bonds / Discoveries, the source of XP (XP is earned by filling these, not awarded inline).

Vowbound, Delve, and Starsworn are based on Ironsworn by Shawn Tomkin, used under the CC BY 4.0 license. See full attribution.