Entity Templates

When you add a character, faction, location, or any other entry to a world, the form you fill in is driven by an entity template. A template names the fields the entry should carry (Role, Allegiance, Birth year, Notes, whatever the genre needs), and the World Bible groups entries by template into sections so the bible reads like a reference book.

Every entry has a template. We ship built-in templates for the common types (Character, Location, Faction, Event, Artifact, Concept, Note) and you can add your own when you want fields the built-in template doesn’t have.

Named surfaces: add a Species, a Culture, a Religion

The generic ”+ Add entry” is always there, but most worlds think in named things, not “concepts”. So the World Hub has an Add a named surface row: one click each for a Species, a Culture, a Religion, a Language, or a Map, each opening straight into the right place with the right fields.

• Species is its own first-class entry type (alongside character, location, faction, and the rest), with a built-in template for classification, habitat, lifespan, diet, size, intelligence, abilities, weaknesses, and links to related species and the cultures that belong to it.
• Culture rides the concept type with a built-in template for values, customs, social structure, aesthetics, taboos, and links to a language, a religion, and related cultures.
• Religion opens your world’s Systems, where pantheons, tenets, and clergy already live.

Treat any built-in template as a starting point: duplicate it and tune it for your world (see Editing a template below). The cross-surface link fields tie these surfaces together, a species to its cultures, a culture to its language and religion, so your world’s pieces interlink and show up in each other’s Linked from lists. Importing from another worldbuilding tool routes its Species, Ethnicity, and similar articles onto the matching surface automatically.

Picking a template when you add an entry

The ”+ Add entry” button in the World Bible Builder, the Quick Create dialog in the editor panel, and the entry edit form all ask you to pick an entity template first. The template determines which fields the next screen shows you.

If you don’t pick one, the entry uses the built-in template that matches the type you chose. That’s fine for short campaigns; you can switch to a custom template later by editing the entry.

Add a field on the fly

The rich Create Entry modal has a ”+ Add custom field” affordance. Each custom field you add is one of:

• Short text: a single-line answer (eye color, hometown).
• Single choice: a dropdown with the options you set.
• Linked entry: points at another entry in the same world (a faction, a parent character, a home location).

By default a custom field is saved on the entry only. If you toggle “Also add to entity template” before saving, the field is appended to the template’s field list, and every entry of that type will see it from then on. Use the toggle when you’ve discovered a field your whole bible needs; leave it off for one-off entry details.

Editing a template

From a world’s World Bible Builder, click “Entity templates” to manage them. You can rename fields, reorder them, mark fields required, and add or remove fields without losing data on existing entries.

Built-in templates can be duplicated but not edited directly. Duplicating gives you a custom template you can tune for your world’s particular genre. The same screen has a Relationship types tab, where you manage the relationship labels the Relationship Web offers.

Managing templates from the editor

You do not have to leave your draft to shape a template. From the in-editor World Bible workspace, Entity templates opens the template manager as a subview, and the Relationship Web workspace has Manage entity templates and Manage relationship types in its left panel. Both open inline, over the manuscript, so you can add a field or a new relationship type and step right back to writing. Nothing opens in a new tab.

Why templates instead of free-form notes

Templates make a bible searchable, sortable, and consistent. A character template with a Role field lets every other tool reason about “all characters whose Role is Captain”. The Consistency Sentinel watches templated fields for attribute conflicts. The Relationship Web understands “Linked entry” fields as graph edges. The same data, named the same way, in every entry.

See also: World Bible, Relationship Web, Consistency Sentinel.