Arranging your game screen: panels you can move, hide and bring back

Most of a session happens in the narration, but the panels beside it are where you check your health, scan established facts or nudge the story's pacing. If the default arrangement does not suit how you play, you can change it. This guide covers what is on the screen, how to move things, and how to undo your changes.

What lives in the side panels

The game screen has the narration in the middle and two columns of panels beside it. Which panels you see depends on the campaign and on what is switched on. These can appear:

• Vitals: your character's health. Only in campaigns that use a ruleset, with rules turned on.
• NPCs: characters present in the scene.
• Inventory: your items, only while inventory enforcement is on.
• Settings: campaign options, including the inventory enforcement switch.
• Canon & Facts: facts the world treats as established.
• Memories: what the campaign has recorded.
• Story Summary: the running summary.
• Steering: controls for nudging pacing and mix.
• Turn Context: what the narrator was given for a turn.
• Scene Image: a picture of your location, once the game knows where you are.
• Combat: the fight tracker, only during a fight with tactical combat on.

If you cannot find Inventory, check Settings before assuming something is broken. Combat arrives on its own: when a fight starts, the panel is placed at the top of the left column, and it leaves when the fight ends.

The default arrangement

A fresh campaign starts with a sensible split. The left column holds the things you tend to need every turn: Vitals, NPCs and Inventory, all expanded. The right column holds the reference material: Canon & Facts, Memories, Story Summary, Steering, Turn Context and the Scene Image, all collapsed so they take up little room until you open them. Settings sits at the bottom of the right column, also collapsed.

Moving a panel

Each panel has a small drag handle at the top left of its header. Press and hold it, then drag the panel to where you want it. A few details are worth knowing:

• You can reorder within a column or drop a panel into the other column.
• While you drag, the panel moves live to the spot where it would land if you let go, so you can see the result before committing.
• Dropping a panel simply pushes the ones below it down by one place. Nothing swaps, and a column can hold as many panels as you like.
• If you change your mind mid-drag, press Escape, or release the panel outside both columns, and the layout stays as it was.
• The handle is the only way to reposition a panel, so clicking the header never moves one by accident.

The drag handle appears on devices with a mouse or trackpad. On a touch screen it is not shown, so repositioning is a desktop activity. Your arrangement is saved for that campaign under your account, so it is waiting for you the next time you come back.

Hiding a panel by collapsing it

Every panel header doubles as a collapse control. Click the header (or its chevron) and the panel folds down to a title bar; click again and it opens. Collapsed panels keep their place, and the state is saved with the arrangement.

This is the way to hide an individual panel. Collapse one you rarely use and drag it to the bottom of its column.

Hiding all the side panels at once

On a wide screen there is a button in the header with the tooltip "Hide side panels". It puts every side panel into a dimmed, background state, so the narration is the thing you look at. The panels are not removed: each one fades back to full strength as soon as you hover over it or move keyboard focus into it, and goes quiet again when you leave.

It does not change any panel's collapsed or expanded state, so switching it off returns you to exactly the layout you had. The button, now labelled "Show side panels", turns the effect off.

Putting everything back

Next to that button is a small circular-arrow icon labelled "Reset panel layout". Clicking it asks for confirmation, and the prompt explains that any panels you have moved will return to their original positions. Confirm, and the default arrangement is restored. Cancel, and nothing happens.

Both header buttons appear on wide screens only. On a narrow screen the columns become tabs: Narration, Character, Canon & Memory and Settings.

If the saved layout is slow to load, you will briefly see the default arrangement with a short notice saying so. And if a change fails to save, a notice tells you the arrangement is still applied on your screen even though it did not persist.

A small layout to try

Say you rarely touch Turn Context. Drag Canon & Facts to the top of the right column and open it, so established facts stay in view while you write your next move, then collapse Turn Context and drop it to the bottom. If you prefer the original, one reset puts it back.

Open your current campaign, rearrange it until it fits how you play, and carry on from where the story left off.