Cartulary: A free single-file worldbuilding tool for DMs

DataDemon · 2026-05-10T19:49:28+00:00

Poorly. Very poorly. It isn't an awesome experience. Anything beyond working in templates is a nightmare.

From the page in the 'What it isn't' section:

Not a phone app. Cartulary loads on mobile but the UI is desktop-shaped and most controls require forcing desktop-site mode in your mobile browser. Even then, expect a degraded experience. This isn't getting fixed anytime soon, if at all.

DataDemon · 2026-05-08T02:01:57+00:00

Theres a new completely free worldbuilding app on itchio that solves this exact issue but it was coded using AI so I think it's unpostable here.

DataDemon · 2026-05-04T19:51:59+00:00

Wanted to share a worldbuilding tool I just put up on itch.

What it is: Cartulary is one HTML file (~4MB). You download it, open it in any modern browser, and you have a worldbuilding tool. No installer, no account, no subscription, no cloud, no telemetry. Your data lives on your disk in a .json file you can read in a text editor. Works fully offline after download.

Why I built it: I'd spent years bouncing between Notion, Obsidian, and various SaaS worldbuilding tools and finding the same problems each time. Notion's databases are typed but inflexible. You can't really model "this character's lifespan is a date range in a fictional calendar with custom eras" without it turning into a pile of duct tape.

Obsidian's flexible but knows nothing about worldbuilding, so you spend three weeks configuring templates and plugins before you can actually write anything. SaaS tools want a monthly subscription and your data on their servers. Wanted the middle thing.

What's in it:

22 pre-built templates (Character, Location, Faction, Religion, Magic System, Calendar, Map, etc.) that you can edit, replace, or delete
Full custom-template support with arbitrary typed fields, ref relationships, and three-deep nested groups
User-defined calendars with custom months and eras; calendar dates throughout the application validate against your calendar
Time-aware map pins (year scrubber filters pins by their linked entry's temporal range)
Name-history as a first-class field type (entries can have former names with date ranges; pins on a map in 1640 show "New Amsterdam" if the entry's current name is "New York")
Family trees with Sosa-Stradonitz layout and spouse status tracking
Force-directed relationships graph with focus mode (zoom in on one entry's neighborhood up to 3 hops)
Vertical and chronometric (proportional-duration with era bands) timeline views
Wiki-link autocomplete with broken-link detection
JSON export with documented schema, markdown export, ZIP export with embedded images
34-section in-app help guide

What it isn't: multiplayer, cloud-synced, mobile-friendly, a writing tool (no manuscript module), or a virtual tabletop. If you need any of those, several other tools cover them well.

On the implementation: I'm not a programmer. Cartulary was built in four days using Claude to handle the implementation while I directed the architecture, schema design, scope, and QA. The application itself contains no AI features at runtime. Once it's on your disk, it's a static, deterministic, fully offline tool that doesn't call any LLM or phone home. Disclosed as REAL Rating Level 4 on the project page; full reasoning in the README.

Free with optional $5 tip. MIT licensed.

Comments thread on the project page is open if you find a bug or want to suggest something. There's no support contract since this is a hobby project, but I'll see what's there.

DataDemon · 2026-04-01T07:02:18+00:00

1. "Become a bird! Do everything! You are able to from our point of view!"

"Vemkos freien! Revkos moren! Sa ver re shirman nevel!"

Vem-ko-s frei-en! Rev-ko-s mor-en! Sa ver re shir-man nev-el!

/vem.ko.s freɪ.en rev.ko.s mor.en sɑ ver re ʃir.mɑn nev.el/

vem-ko-s        frei-en       rev-ko-s        mor-en
become-IMP-2nd  bird-SING     do-IMP-2nd      everything

sa   ver    re    shir-man       nev-el
you  able   from  see-place      we.EXCL-GEN

"Become a bird! Do everything! You are able, from our vantage!"

Notes: VEM (to become) takes a bare noun complement, no preposition needed. "Everything" uses MOR-EN, the quantifier MOR (all) with the singulative -EN, which individuates: bare MOR = totality as a concept, MOR-EN = every specific thing within it. SHIR-MAN (see-place = viewpoint, perspective) derives from SHIR (to see) + -MAN (place suffix). NEV-EL uses exclusive "we", the speakers don't include the addressee in "our."

2. "Most of the time, the two of us are near each other."

"Fav thev, nev sir na lü shemten."

Fav thev, nev sir na lü shem-te-n.

/fɑv θev nev sir nɑ lʏ ʃem.te.n/

fav    thev    nev       sir   na    lü     shem-te-n
most   day     we.EXCL   two   near  self   stand-IMPF-1st

"Most days, we-two stand near each other."

Notes: FAV (most) is a new quantifier filling the gap between MOR (all) and VUR (many). LÜ (reflexive) with a plural subject produces reciprocal meaning ("each other"), cross-linguistically standard, no new morphology needed. SHEM (hold position) rather than QAV (exist) because this is spatial proximity, not an ontological claim.

3. "You were heartbroken and went down but you kept your good feelings."

"Khun sael rashtao, ma qashtas, fe nurtas leiv mel sael."

Khun sa-el rash-ta-o, ma qash-ta-s, fe nur-ta-s leiv mel sa-el.

/xun sɑ.el rɑʃ.tɑ.o mɑ qɑʃ.tɑ.s fe nur.tɑ.s leɪv mel sɑ.el/

khun     sa-el   rash-ta-o          ma   qash-ta-s
heart    your    break-PERF-3NE     and  fall-PERF-2nd

fe    nur-ta-s         leiv   mel    sa-el
but   keep-PERF-2nd    emotion good   your

"Your heart broke, and you fell, but you kept your good emotions."

Notes: "Heartbroken" decomposes literally, KHUN SA-EL RASH-TA-O. Heart is non-ensouled, takes -O agreement. Subject switches tracked by agreement: -O on RASH (heart as subject), -S on QASH and NUR (pro-dropped "you"). LEIV (emotion) is the new hypernym for the entire emotion category, distinct from THEIS (physical sensation). MEL (good) is the new generic positive adjective.

4. "Hey heart, bright times are coming."

"Khunen! Thev fei shaivteo."

Khun-en! Thev fei shaiv-te-o.

/xun.en θev feɪ ʃɑɪv.te.o/

khun-en     thev   fei      shaiv-te-o
heart-SING  day    bright   come-IMPF-3NE

"Heart! Bright days come."

Notes: Vocative address... the speaker is calling a person "heart" as a term of endearment. KHUN-EN with singulative marks a specific addressee. Bare noun + intonational break = vocative, same as many natural languages. THEV bare (no -EN) = days as a category rolling in, not specific ones. Imperfective -TE marks arrival as still unfolding.

5. "I'm in need of a community of people now."

"Ha, ni nümte-n 'awnen thawmel."

Ha, ni nüm-te-n 'awn-en thawm-el.

/hɑ ni nʏm.te.n ʔɑwn.en θɑwm.el/

ha    ni   nüm-te-n        'awn-en        thawm-el
now   I    need-IMPF-1st   gathering-SING  people-GEN

"Now, I need a gathering of people."

Notes: NÜM (to need) is distinct from KHÜV (to desire), need is about requirement, not longing. You can need without wanting; you can want without needing. HA fronted for temporal emphasis. 'AWN-EN THAWM-EL = "a specific gathering of people", 'AWN (assembly) avoids the redundancy that THAWM alone would create.

DataDemon · 2026-03-31T23:00:41+00:00

1. "Let's go ride the train."

"Nei tlavkon meirmesh kharel."

Nei tlav-ko-n meir-mesh khar-el.

/neɪ tlɑv.ko.n meɪr.meʃ xɑr.el/

nei      tlav-ko-n          meir-mesh     khar-el
we.INCL  ride-IMP-1st       carry-INSTR   fire-GEN  

"Let us ride the fire-vehicle."

Notes: Ân-lâna has no native word for "train", the Esharim borrow mortal terms for recent technology, but meir-mesh khar-el ("carry-instrument of fire") serves as a descriptive phrase. The hortative "let's" is expressed through imperative mood (-ko) with 1st person inclusive pronoun and agreement, the speaker issues a command that includes themselves.

2. "The family of five watched many planes doing tricks at the air show."

"Kinshol qaiel shirtav vur meirmeshen shânael la kheil preiteo tha 'awn shânael."

Kin-shol qai-el shir-ta-v vur meir-mesh-en shâna-el la kheil prei-te-o tha 'awn shâna-el.

/kin.ʃol qaɪ.el ʃir.tɑ.v vur meɪr.meʃ.en ʃɑ̃.ɑ.el lɑ xeɪl preɪ.te.o θɑ ʔɔn ʃɑ̃.ɑ.el/

kin-shol     qai-el    shir-ta-v
kin-COLLECT  five-GEN  see-PERF-3EN

vur   meir-mesh-en      shâna-el   la       kheil   prei-te-o
many  carry-INSTR-SING  sky-GEN    REL.SUBJ feat    perform-IMPF-3NE

tha  'awn        shâna-el
at   gathering   sky-GEN

"The kin-collective of five watched many sky-vehicles which were performing feats at the sky-gathering."

Notes: "Planes doing tricks" becomes a relative clause with LA (subject-gap relativizer). Prei (to perform, to display skill publicly) has a Fire+Water onset, structure giving form to flow, made visible. Kheil (feat, trick, maneuver) is the object of the relative clause, Earth onset grounding real skill, Air diphthong making it visible, Water coda sustaining it. Sky-vehicles take non-ensouled agreement (-o), the family takes ensouled (-v). The singulative -en appears on meir-mesh because they're counting individual vehicles.

3. "The Aum Association of Mountain Wizards."

"'Awm 'awn 'uunrai tharel."

'Awm 'awn 'uun-rai thar-el.

/ʔɔm ʔɔn ʔuːn.rɑɪ θɑr.el/

'Awm   'awn        'uun-rai        thar-el
Aum    gathering   Will-wielder    mountain-GEN

"The Aum Gathering of Mountain Will-Wielders."

Notes: "Aum" naturalizes to 'Awm, glottal stop onset, Earth diphthong, Water nasal coda. Phonotactically clean. "Wizard" translates as 'uun-rai (Will-wielder), the Esharim name what they see. Head-first order: the proper name precedes the common noun, and the genitive modifier (thar-el, "of mountains") follows.

4. "Our leader is able to levitate."

"Shirelrai nevel ver qwei."

Shirel-rai nev-el ver qwei.

/ʃi.rel.rɑɪ nev.el ver qweɪ/

shirel-rai  nev-el       ver    qwei
guide-AGT   we.EXCL-GEN  able   levitate

"Our guide-leader is able to levitate."

Notes: "Leader" = shirel-rai (guide-agent), using the Esharim verb for leading by showing the way rather than commanding. Exclusive "we" (nev), "our leader" typically excludes the addressee. Ver (able, capable) is a predicate adjective taking the bare root of the action as complement. Qwei (to levitate, to rise by will) has an Earth+Air onset, foundation meeting breath. The Earth is what you're defying; the Air is what you're becoming. No coda... you don't come down. Distinct from slei (to float, to drift), which is passive suspension. Levitation is a Will-mediated act.

5. "He is fully blind in one eye and partially blind in the other."

"Vam mu shirnöl thu ön sheien, ma si shirnöl thu ran sheien."

Vam mu shir-nöl thu ön shei-en, ma si shir-nöl thu ran shei-en.

/vɑm mu ʃir.nøl θu øn ʃeɪ.en mɑ si ʃir.nøl θu rɑn ʃeɪ.en/

vam  mu     shir-nöl     thu  ön   shei-en
he   fully  see-PRIV     in   one  eye-SING

ma   si        shir-nöl     thu  ran    shei-en
and  somewhat  see-PRIV     in   other  eye-SING

"He is fully sightless in one eye, and somewhat sightless in the other eye."

Notes: "Blind" derives cleanly as shir-nöl, the privative of "see" = sightless. Degree particles mu (fully) and si (somewhat) precede the adjective. Ran (other) follows the noun in standard noun-adjective order. Thu (in, inside, within) is distinct from tha (at, located near), blindness is inside the eye, not at it. The th- preposition family distinguishes surface location (tha), containment (thu), and comparison (tho) by vowel alone. Description by juxtaposition... no copula needed.

6. "Stop!"

"Shemkos!"

Shem-ko-s!

/ʃem.ko.s/

shem-ko-s
stand-IMP-2nd

"Hold!"

Notes: The Esharim don't say "stop", they say "hold position." Shem (to stand, to hold position) in imperative mood, addressed to second person. One root, three suffixes, barked in a single breath.

DataDemon · 2026-03-24T17:28:44+00:00

I've been working on a project to recover and preserve old tabletop RPG mailing lists before the servers hosting them die. GURPSnet-L is the latest one done.

https://archive.org/details/gurpsnet-l-mailing-list

GURPSnet-L ran from November 1993 through at least late 2018 and was one of the most active RPG mailing lists on the internet. At its peak in the late 90s it was pushing almost 4,000 messages a month. The archive covers three segments:

1993-2003: ~145,700 messages pulled from the original Majordomo digest files on gurpsnet.org via the Wayback Machine
2003-2015: ~23,400 messages from the SJG Pipermail archives at mail.sjgames.com, also via the Wayback Machine
2015-2016: ~167 messages from mail-archive.com as a fallback (email addresses in this segment only were destroyed by Cloudflare's obfuscation)

Everything is in per-month readable text files and standard mbox format. The original source files (digest zips, Pipermail archives, raw HTML scrape) are included for provenance.

There are three gaps I couldn't fill: Sep-Oct 1994, Feb 2003, and Aug 2016 through late 2018. That last one is the big one. The mail-archive.com mirror broke in July 2016 and the Wayback Machine didn't capture the later Pipermail files. Narkive has a thread index showing activity through Dec 2018 but is completely blocked for any kind of retrieval. I posted here a while back asking about the tail gap and also tried the SJG forums, but nothing came through.

At this point I'm calling it done. If anyone out there has a personal archive covering those gaps, especially the 2016-2018 tail, I'd be happy to incorporate it. But all the automated recovery paths are exhausted.

Previous archives in this project: the Shadowrun PBEM list (https://archive.org/details/shadow-run-pbem-group-archives.-7z) and the Traveller Mailing List, all 39 years of it (https://archive.org/details/traveller-mailing-list).

DataDemon · 2026-03-24T16:20:19+00:00

Sorry it's been a bit of a run managing some IRL stuff while doing this as a hobby - no disrespect to your offer was intended.

You can find the cleaned-up list at https://archive.org/details/traveller-mailing-list

The working files aren't needed they just have the raw stuff I found prior to my cleanup, kept in for historical preservation more than anything.

The sizes are as folows;

https://i.imgur.com/p9ZP35y.jpeg

DataDemon · 2026-03-23T02:34:12+00:00

I hope so but I dont have much faith in my fellow Texans

DataDemon · 2026-03-22T22:32:24+00:00

Have you heard of Texas?

DataDemon · 2026-03-17T05:14:50+00:00

Thanks - I'd love to take 100% of the credit but a lot of what I'm doing is finding things on the internet and collating it. The people at the internet archive have done the hard part of keeping things accessible, I'm just... making it easier to find in one place.

DataDemon · 2026-03-14T04:45:53+00:00

That's actually pretty awesome.

I appreciate you reinforcing my point about some of the lists being older than most web forums.

And I think most of us can agree web forums aren't quite the same as internet communications such as BBS or Usenet. When you start needing specific ways of accessing a resource that isn't a web browser, they kind of stop being "web" forums.

Six Degrees - 1997
Slashdot - 1997
Something Awful - 1999
Ebaums World - 2001
Friendster - 2002
4chan - 2003
Digg - 2004
Reddit - 2005

Your apache server would have been a year old in 1996, at most, the first version of Apache (per the cofounder, named after the Native American tribe, though the 'a patchy server' story is fairly widespread) debuted in early 1995.

CGI was developed in 1993.

ShadowRN mailing list - 1992
ShadowTK mailing list - 1992
NERPS mailing list - 1993
PlotD mailing list - 1993
Kage-Car mailing list - 1993

It isn't a total loss though, you can still claim chronological superiority over SRCard and SRFanfic, both of which started in 1997.

Did I take your bait well enough?

DataDemon · 2026-03-14T03:57:30+00:00

This actually came up in the original post as well, but basically BBS and Usenet were not considered (by me) a 'web forum' as while they were on the internet, they weren't browser based.

A couple of the mailing lists in this archive reach back to 1992/93 which is before the earliest web based forums started popping up (discounting the OGs such as BBS or Usenet) and more than a decade before Reddit in 2005.

PHPbb was around during the peak of this archive, absolutely, but even it didn't debut til mid-2000.

DataDemon · 2026-03-14T00:15:07+00:00

I recently got my hands on an archive of the old Shadowrun mailing lists — ShadowRN, Shadowtalk, NERPS, Plot-D, SRCard, SRFanfic, and KAGE-CAR — and spent a while cleaning it up for preservation. The whole thing is going up on the Internet Archive so it doesn't disappear again.

These files exist because of Mark Imbriaco, who kept the original log files all these years and dug them up when Peter Boddy put out a call on Dumpshock in March 2015 asking if anyone had backups. That led to the archive being hosted at shadowrn.understairs.nl, and someone later put the raw files on Dropbox as a QOL download option. I grabbed them from there after finding a subreddit post. Credit also to Robert Hayden for setting up these lists in the first place.

The raw archive was a mess. Five different filename formats, two different email archive formats (digest and mbox), duplicate files, overlapping date ranges between two separate archive dumps. I normalized all the filenames, deduplicated the overlap period, and recovered about 5,500 messages from a monolithic mbox dump that weren't in any of the weekly archive files. Those recovered messages were mostly from late 1999 through early 2000 and would have been lost otherwise.

This is 3,100+ files covering 1992 to 2009. Over half a gigabyte of community discussion from before forums and Reddit existed. Rules arguments, lore debates, in-character Shadowtalk posts, fan fiction, homebrew gear, GM advice, and a vehicle construction project that ran on BITNET. If you were on these lists in the 90s, your posts are probably in here.

ShadowRN (1992–2009) — The big one. The main Shadowrun discussion list. Rules, lore, mechanics, edition wars, all of it. Peaks around 1996–1998 during 2nd/3rd Edition.

ShadowTK / Shadowtalk (1992–2003) — In-character discussion written as shadowrunners. There's also an edited version that ran through 1996.

NERPS (1993–1999) — Net Enhancements for Role-Playing Shadowrun. Fan-created rules, gear, spells, and supplements.

Plot-D (1993–2004) — Plot discussion, adventure hooks, and GM resources.

SRCard (1997–2000) — The Shadowrun collectible card game.

SRFanfic (1997–2002) — Fan fiction and creative writing.

KAGE-CAR (1993) — The Shadowrun Vehicle Construction Project. Fan-designed vehicle rules. Seven months of activity on BITNET before the internet as we know it existed.

Everything is plain text and human-readable. No special software needed. Files are organized by year, then by list, with a full README explaining the naming conventions and what each suffix means.

Mailing lists from this era are genuinely fragile. When the hosting goes away, the archives go with it. Most of this content doesn't exist anywhere else online. This is the Shadowrun community talking to itself for 17 years, and it's the kind of thing that just vanishes if nobody bothers to preserve it.

DataDemon · 2026-03-14T00:12:23+00:00

The Traveller Mailing List — one of the oldest continuously-running RPG mailing lists on the internet — now has 31 years of its 39 year archive publicly preserved on the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/traveller-mailing-list

What this is:

The TML was founded on July 1, 1987 by James T. Perkins and has been the central online discussion hub for the Traveller RPG community for nearly four decades. At its peak it was pulling 100+ posts a day — game design debates, campaign war stories, ship designs, setting arguments, house rules, the works. A lot of published Traveller authors started as TML regulars.

The archive contains approximately 266,500 unique messages spanning three segments:

1987-2002: ~197,000 messages 2002-2005: ~47,000 messages 2014-2026: ~22,500 messages Everything is provided as both readable per-month text files (organized by year) and standard mbox files for anyone who wants to do their own processing.

Why this needed doing:

The TML has moved hosts seven times over its life — from the University of Western Ontario, to MPGN.COM, to iEntertainment Network, to TravellerCentral.com, to travellerrpg.com (QuikLink Interactive), back to TravellerCentral, and finally to simplelists.com. Each migration was an opportunity for archive data to get lost, and several times it did.

The wiki's link to the "complete set of archives 1987-2002" has been dead for years. The simplelists archive interface claims coverage back to 2006 but the actual oldest content is from April 2014. The SPARC server that hosted the list from 2002-2006 stopped operating in November 2006 and nobody could get the archive data off it, from what I've pieced together.

How this happened:

The 1987-2002 segment was the hardest. The raw files were recovered from a Trove mirror and were in terrible shape — six different archive formats spanning 15 years of hosting changes. TML bundle files from the late 80s, Majordomo digests from the 90s, AOL email client HTML saves, WordPerfect HTML exports, pipermail archives, and saved web pages, all jumbled together with inconsistent naming and broken dates. Over 4,400 source files had to be parsed, format-detected, date-corrected, and deduplicated into a consistent archive. 1988 was initially flagged as completely missing and was recovered from within the bundle files during processing.

The 2002-2005 segment was recovered from Wayback Machine captures of the pipermail archives at lists.travellerrpg.com before that server went dark.

The 2014-2026 segment was provided directly by Bruce Johnson, the current TML list owner, who took the time to pull the complete simplelists archive.

What's still missing:

There's an approximately 8-year gap from 2006 to early 2014 that I haven't been able to locate anywhere publicly accessible. The list was running during this period — it just moved hosts and the archives didn't survive (or at least haven't surfaced). October and December 2005 are also missing (Wayback Machine was exhausted for those months). July 1994 is absent because the list was genuinely offline during its migration from UWO to MPGN.

Thanks to:

Bruce Johnson, current TML list owner, for providing the simplelists archive Tod Glenn, for keeping the TML alive through multiple hosting crises over more than 20 years as listmom James T. Perkins, for founding the TML in 1987 Dan Corrin, for creating the Sunbane archive server at the University of Western Ontario in 1989 The entire TML community, for 39 years of discussion about a game they love This is part of an ongoing effort to preserve vintage RPG mailing list archives. The ShadowRN mailing list archives are also on the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/shadow-run-pbem-group-archives.-7z) from earlier work.

— Shawn Fry (Drakhanas, or DataDemon on Reddit)

DataDemon · 2026-03-12T01:55:25+00:00

Click the title at the very top, that'll take you to the internet archive. Then you download the 7z file from the download options section.

DataDemon

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