Game Master's Guide

Running a game on Myth-Weavers covers a lot of surface: creation, settings, forums, members, recruitment, visibility, calendars, integrations, archiving, the rest. This guide walks the full GM lifecycle. Use the table of contents to jump; not every section will matter on day one.

Creating a game

Create Game in the Games section (or the navigation menu) opens the creation form:

• Game Name — your campaign's name.
• Game System — pick from the taxonomy (D&D 5e, Pathfinder, GURPS, World of Darkness, Fate, anything in there). If your system isn't listed, you can request it — community moderators approve new systems.
• Genre — a genre tag for browsability (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, modern, etc.).
• Description — your pitch. Premise, tone, what you're hoping to build with the players.
• Visibility — who can see and access the game (covered below).
• Max Players — optional cap (1–50). Useful to set even if you're not certain — you can change it later.
• Posting Frequency — set expectations honestly: Multiple per day, 1–2 per day, Every few days, Weekly, or Casual/No schedule. This is what applicants see and self-filter on. Lying makes everyone miserable later.
• Create Default Forums — checks to auto-create starter forums (Announcements, OOC, In Character, Characters). Uncheck if you want to build the forum structure from scratch.

Submit, and you land on your new game's home page.

Game settings

Game settings are editable anytime from the game's settings panel — every creation field plus:

• Game Status — Active, Archived, or Completed. Active is the default; Completed marks the game as finished (still readable, no new posts expected); Archived hides from active listings.

Game visibility

The visibility setting controls who can see and access the game:

Most campaigns run as Closed — listed in the directory so prospective players find you, but joining is gated by application or invite. Private is the right choice for a campaign where even the existence shouldn't be public knowledge (one-shots with close friends, sensitive content, etc.).

Forum management

Creating forums

New Forum inside a game adds a forum. Name, description, default visibility. Make as many as you need — common patterns include one per location, one per faction, one per character's solo storyline, plus the always-useful Announcements / OOC / Characters baseline.

Reordering forums

Reorder opens a drag-and-drop interface. The display order is what players see on the game's Forums tab.

Forum access controls

Each forum has its own visibility settings, independent of the game's overall visibility. Common patterns:

• All members — the default for most forums.
• GM-only — planning forums, NPC notes, behind-the-screen prep.
• Specific roles — say, a forum visible only to assistant GMs.
• Specific players — a private forum for one character's solo arc.

The Visibility Dashboard (below) is a good place to audit forum visibility settings periodically — especially after restructuring.

Topic management

Standard GM levers on individual topics:

Pinning

Pin important topics to the top of their forum — rules references, character rosters, table-wide announcements. Pinned topics always render above unpinned ones.

Locking

Lock prevents new posts. Locked topics stay readable. Useful for completed story arcs, finalized character sheets, or the inevitable "this is now the wrong topic, please move the conversation to X" moment.

Default post types

Set a forum's default post type (IC, OOC, or Normal) so players don't have to toggle it on every post. The IC forum stays IC, the OOC forum stays OOC, less friction.

Topic visibility

Override the forum default at the topic level — a GM-only topic in a player-visible forum, a player-pair-only topic for a side conversation, etc. The topic's visibility takes precedence over the forum's.

Posting deadlines

Posting Deadlines on a topic show a countdown widget to everyone in the topic and surface overdue players in the GM's status panel. Useful for keeping pace, signaling absences, structuring pre-game ramp-up. See Forums and Posting for the full deadline guide, including the player-side view.

Bulk topic actions

Selection Mode lets you apply the same action across multiple topics at once:

1. Open the forum's manage menu (dropdown next to the forum title).
2. Choose Select Topics. Checkboxes appear on every topic; a selection toolbar appears at the top.
3. Tick the topics you want. All / None quick-selects in the toolbar.
4. Click the bulk action: Lock / Unlock, Pin / Unpin, Move (to a different forum — see below for cross-game), or Delete (soft-delete; recoverable from the Recycle Bin).

The Move destination can be a forum in the same game or in a different game you also GM (cross-game move).

5. Cancel exits Selection Mode without applying anything.

A similar selection mode exists at the post level within a topic — useful for merging several short replies into one consolidated post. Select Posts from the topic's manage menu.

Converting a topic to a Page

A topic that's really reference material — house rules, a lore dump, an NPC roster — can become a Page resource via Convert to Page in the topic's Manage menu. The page inherits the topic's title and content, is scoped to your game (it shows up on the Resources tab), and the original topic is moved to the Recycle Bin (recoverable). Any attached files come along.

• Single-post topic converts directly — the post's body becomes the page.
• Multi-post topic: the posts are concatenated, with a horizontal rule between each by default. This is only allowed when every post is yours and the posts share one editor format. If the formats differ, you'll be offered a "merge as HTML" fallback (the resulting page is HTML-format).
• You pick the page's view and edit access in the dialog; refine it later from the page itself.

A topic with whispered/GM-only posts, or with inline private blocks, can't be converted — that hidden content would be exposed on the page, so clear it first.

Recycle Bin

Every game has a Recycle Bin holding soft-deleted forums, topics, and posts. From the game's manage menu, the Recycle Bin shows what was deleted, who deleted it, when, and offers Restore for anything you want back. Hard-deletion (permanent removal) is a separate action available only to community moderators.

Member management

Inviting players

Invite on the game page opens a user search. Pick by username; they receive a notification with the invitation and can accept or decline.

Member roles

Each member has a role that determines permissions:

• GM (Game Master) — full control: game settings, all forums, all topics, all members. The owner.
• Assistant GM — nearly the same as GM: forum and topic management, member moves, all the moderation tools. Can't delete the game or transfer ownership.
• Player — posts in forums they can access, rolls dice, links characters, fully plays.
• Reader — can view forums they can access but can't post. Useful for spectators, players on temporary leave, or "I want to follow this campaign but I'm not playing" friends.

Role changes happen on the Members tab — dropdown next to each member's name.

Removing members

Remove a member from the game when needed. For closed/private games this revokes their access; their existing posts remain (they're part of the game's history). For public/open games the member leaves but can theoretically rejoin unless you also adjust visibility.

Announcements

The Announcements tab on a game page is where GMs publish important notices visible to all members — game-on-hiatus notes, schedule changes, "we're recruiting again," anything you want to surface above the regular flow of posts.

Creating an announcement

Announcements → New Announcement opens the editor:

• Title — short headline
• Body — the announcement content (full editor available)
• Icon — an optional Bootstrap icon for visual recognition
• Color variant — info, warning, success, danger; sets the banner color
• Dismissible — toggle whether members can dismiss it after reading
• Start / End times — optional. Schedule a future-dated announcement, or set an auto-expire date

Active announcements render as banners on the game home for all members. Members with the announcement dismissed (if dismissible) don't see it again unless you edit and republish.

Statuses

Announcements appear in the management list as:

• Active — currently shown to members
• Scheduled — start time hasn't arrived yet; will go live automatically
• Expired — end time has passed; no longer shown

Edit any announcement to adjust content, scheduling, or color variant. Delete to remove permanently.

Visibility Dashboard

The Visibility Dashboard is the audit-and-edit surface for visibility settings across your game. Two tabs:

• Forums — every forum in the game, with its read-access and write-access badges. Edit any forum's visibility from this tab without navigating into the forum first.
• Topics with custom access — every topic that has visibility settings overriding its forum's default. Lets you spot one-off restrictions that might be stale or unintended.

For each row, an Edit button opens a per-item modal where you can change visibility (public / open / members / role-restricted / specific users). An Add Access Rule action attaches an additional role or user grant to a forum or topic (useful for "this topic is GM-only plus the assistant GM").

Worth a look periodically — after a restructure, before sensitive content goes up, or when adding a new player to a game with many fine-grained restrictions.

Recruitment

The full recruitment system has its own guide: Recruitment & Application Process covers ad creation, the lifecycle (draft → scheduled → active → grace → closed), the Applications tab, and the player-side flow.

A quick orientation here:

• Recruitment tab on a game page is where GMs create and manage advertisements.
• Applications tab is where you review submitted applications (private threads between you and each applicant).
• For each application: Approve (assign a role — Player, Reader, or Assistant GM), Reject (optionally with a message), or leave Pending while the conversation continues.

Characters in your game

GMs and players both link characters from the Characters tab. Linking adds the character to the game's roster and makes it postable. See Characters, Resources, and Maps for sheet linking and posting-as-character mechanics.

Resources

The Resources tab connects Pages (wiki content), Blogs (journals), Maps (interactive canvases), Downloads (file resources), and Campaign Calendars to your game.

Link Resource from the Resources tab adds an existing resource to your game. The underlying content stays independent (a Page can be linked to multiple games); linking just surfaces it on this game's Resources tab.

GMs add and remove resource links anytime. Removing a link doesn't delete the resource itself.

Game calendar & events

The Calendar tab is your game's event scheduler — sessions, in-game deadlines, milestone dates. Game events are visible to all members and surface in their personal calendar view as well.

See Calendar, Events, and Notifications for the full feature: recurring events, ICS feed export, notification tuning.

Game cloning

Clone copies a game's settings and forum structure into a fresh game — without posts or members. Useful for:

• Running the same system or scenario for a different group.
• Starting a sequel campaign with similar visibility / forum layout.
• Backing up a working configuration before experimenting with major changes.

Clone from the game actions menu.

Game lifecycle

A game's Status is one of four values, set from the game actions menu (Archive, Unarchive, or Change Status):

Paused and Completed are cosmetic — they're visual badges, not enforcement states. Archive is the only status that locks posting; everything else stays writable.

Status changes notify all game members so the table knows the state shifted. Unarchive (or any other status flip from Archived) re-opens posting and brings the game back into active listings.

Ownership transfer

If you need to hand off GM duties, Transfer Ownership from the game actions menu searches for a target user, confirms, and reassigns. The new owner becomes the primary GM; you're reassigned to a Player role (or whichever role you prefer; you can adjust afterward).

Use cases: someone IRL is taking over, you're stepping back from GMing but want to stay as a player, the campaign is being handed off to a co-GM.

Integrations

Myth-Weavers supports external integrations to bridge your game with other platforms. Integrations are a supporter-tier feature; see Account Settings for tier details.

Discord

Connect a Discord webhook so new posts, applications, and other game events ping a Discord channel. Useful for keeping a Discord server up to date on a game running here, or for nudging players who live in Discord notifications.

Bluesky

Connect to Bluesky to share game updates and announcements with your Bluesky followers. Recruiting? A Bluesky announcement broadens the audience past the site's directory.

Setting up an integration

1. Game Settings → Integrations (or the Integrations link on the game page).
2. Add Integration and pick the platform.
3. Provide the credentials (Discord webhook URL, Bluesky handle, etc.).
4. Configure which events trigger notifications.
5. Check the integration log to verify everything's flowing.

Next steps

• Recruitment & Application Process — the deep dive on advertisements and application management.
• Forums, Topics, and Posting — the player-side orientation, useful for understanding what your players experience.
• Account Settings — for the personal account side (security, notifications, supporter status).