The group comes back to a town they left months ago. One player remembers a job, another remembers an unpaid bill, and the name of the client takes a bit more effort. That the friendly man at the harbor was not to be trusted, on the other hand, is agreed upon with surprising certainty.
For that situation, it barely matters which rulebook is on the table. You need a name, a connection and the memory of what happened back then, not an attack value yet. That is where Atlavium comes in: with the knowledge that should survive between your game nights, not with the question of which dice you use. That sounds obvious until the first character sheet shows up. Then the nice idea quickly turns into a fairly concrete decision about where the game values should actually live.
Whether you run games, play or simply build your world, the same thing is happening: you collect information, sort it and keep track of how it connects.
World knowledge and game values are two different things
When I describe Atlavium as system agnostic, I mainly mean that it is open to systems. You do not have to translate your world into the terms of one particular role-playing game to record it. A person stays a person, a harbor stays a place, and a connection between a merchant and a smuggling ring stays interesting whether you play DSA (The Dark Eye), D&D or your own house rules.
Of course that does not make the rulebook irrelevant. It decides what a character can do and how you resolve conflicts, and for a character sheet it makes a huge difference. That difference just does not decide how you keep the merchant's story. The world describes what exists and what has happened, the rulebook describes how you play with it. Both can sit side by side without one muddling the other.
The character is not their character sheet
Before I get to the examples, a short look at how the Compendium is organized. A World Entity is the entry for everything in your world that has a name, from a person to a place to a faction. The description and the connections belong here: who knows whom, who works for which group and who took part in an event.
A Profile adds structured details to that World Entity. For a character, that can be their character sheet. The values then hang directly on the person instead of living somewhere as a second, unconnected document. A Document stays the free form for everything that is told: the journal, the detailed background or a note about your house rules. A standalone Page makes sense when something needs the same shape again and again but does not belong to a single World Entity. A handout or a travel overview, for example.
I described how this division came about in the post about Pages and Profiles. For this article, the core is enough: the person gets an entry, their game values get a fitting shape, and their experiences may remain stories.
The following example shows what that looks like:
An example with DSA
Let us take a DSA group with the mage Jarla. She travels with the group through a harbor town, knows a helpful scribe and tries to find out who stole an old seal. The characters and the job do not come from an official adventure.
Naturally, you could start by moving the entire game world into the Compendium. I would not do it. I start with Jarla, the scribe, the missing seal and the places where the next Session actually takes place. The rest can follow later. A Compendium does not have to be complete on the first evening.
For the values, I refer to DSA 5 as the official rules wiki on character creation describes it. The wiki is in German. A Profile for Jarla would be split into manageable sections. The origin consists of species, culture and profession. Then come the eight attributes as number fields and the life points, plus Astral or Karma Points as trackers for the current and maximum value where the character needs them. Skills go into repeatable rows with a name, a skill value, the associated check and room for my own note. For advancement there are separate number fields for Adventure Points already spent and Adventure Points still available.
Advantages and disadvantages, special abilities, equipment and a spell list can become further sections. I would not add a section for liturgies to Jarla's template just because a supposedly complete universal sheet could have one. A clear sheet that fits my character matters more to me than covering every conceivable character type with one huge template.
What matters to me is also what the Compendium does not do. A number field takes a value and does not calculate further. Whether Jarla meets the requirements for a special ability or whether I spent her Adventure Points correctly is still checked by our rules and, if needed, by a dedicated character generator.
That Jarla trusts the scribe, by the way, I would not only write into her journal. The relationship belongs on both entries so that I see it immediately during preparation, and the journal tells how that trust came about. In the same way, I would record the basis of the group: which edition we play, which supplements are on the table, which house rules apply and where our Aventuria deliberately differs from the source material. A source note with book and page makes it possible to see later what a note is based on.
An example with D&D
The same works with a D&D group, just with different values. The group travels through the borderlands of Oakwatch, the ranger Neris is looking for her missing brother, and a local guild promises help but expects a favor in return.
The questions barely change: who Neris is, where her brother was last seen, what the guild knows and what the group actually promised them. I also do not have to rebuild my filing just because another rulebook is on the table. The DSA Profile becomes a D&D Profile, and that one looks different. For this example I use the 2024 D&D rules as a reference, as described in the official basic rules for creating a character. If your group uses the 2014 rules or your own mix, that belongs in the name of the template. "Character sheet" says little, "D&D 2024: Our group" says much more.
The Profile then holds species, background, class, subclass and level. The six ability scores come as number fields, plus additional modifiers that I maintain myself when I need them. Hit points get a tracker, armor class and initiative get their own number fields. Skills and abilities need repeatable rows with numbers, text and checkboxes, and for magic a spell overview, available spell slots per level and limited uses join in where they are relevant for the character.
The bundled D&D starter sheet can be a starting point. It is an example template, not a built-in rules engine and not a promise to already cover every class, supplement or house rule.
For Neris I would record her guild membership as a relationship, her abilities in the Profile and the incident after which she distrusts the guild as a World Event with a matching record. After a level up I update the values without rewriting the story. One very practical question stays open: where do the current values actually live? If your group already tracks hit points and spell slots in another tool, they do not have to sit in Atlavium after every action as well. A Profile may also hold only a dated snapshot or exactly the details I need for preparation. Two current character sheets in two tools are rarely double safety. Usually they are simply two different answers.
The rest of the round
Character sheets are only one part. Both examples can continue with Campaigns, Quests and Sessions. The Campaign holds the larger arc, the Quest a concrete job, and for a single game night I separate preparation and review. For Jarla that is the planned visit to the scribe, for Neris the negotiation with the guild. That both groups instead investigate the suspicious cellar first would at least not be a completely surprising development.
The Realm Calendar follows the same separation. The real date of the game night is not automatically the date in the story. I set up months, weekdays and eras for my world and record events on the matching in-world date. With the calendar structure I would try a few example dates first before locking it and working with it for longer. Atlavium does not need a built-in DSA or D&D rules logic for any of this.
Sometimes it does not stay with one rulebook. When you want to keep your characters and your story but try something different, names, relationships, places and past events stay usable. What you mainly have to reconsider is how the characters' abilities look in the new system. Atlavium does not take that work off your hands.
System agnostic does not mean automatically convertible. DSA Adventure Points do not turn into matching D&D levels at the push of a button, and sometimes a change of rules also changes the story itself, for example because magic can do something different in the new system. Such changes belong in the campaign notes on purpose. For the new shape of values I create a fitting Profile template. A later change to the template does not rebuild existing Profiles, so the new shape gets a new Profile, and old values are marked clearly so they are not accidentally read as current.
Two campaigns that share the same story and the same Canon I would rather organize in the same Realm. Two groups in which the same king meets different fates rather in separate Realms. In the end that is a decision about the stories, not about the name on the rulebook.
Even as a player you do not need a whole game master world
Maybe you do not run games at all, and you only want to know whom your character trusts and why she has been carrying a sealed letter around for three game nights. Then I would start smaller: a Realm of your own for your character's perspective, their entry, a journal and the people and places they actually know. Assumptions are explicitly allowed to stay assumptions, and you do not need the hidden plans of your game master to organize your experiences.
You can share selected content with your group through a Fellowship. A Fellowship connects accounts, not Realms. The others take the shared content into Realms of their own, and that does not create shared access to your entire filing. For Pages and Profiles the template decides which fields are shared, so check the preview of the specific content first. A folder called "Secret" or a matching tag, by the way, does not replace that check.
And if you build worlds?
Sometimes it is exactly the other way around: you build a whole world, and the group that will play in it may still be to come. Then a pattern emerges here that may look familiar: we collect information, sort it and record how it connects. A worldbuilding project is ultimately nothing else than bringing structured information together, just without the limit of what the next Session needs.
The city council of the town your group arrives in may be worked out down to the smallest detail. Who sits on it, since when, and under whose pressure was which decision made? You do not ask yourself those questions because someone will ask next week. You see the life of the whole world in front of you, and then you suddenly want to know how it works.
A town that players might visit one day does not live on air and love. There is a city council, a mayor and the question of who the current harbor master is and what a harbor master does all day. He collects customs, and he is generally responsible for trade in the town. That goes back to a decision by the city council 76 years ago, under pressure from the politically influential harbor master who wanted more power. Behind it lies a dark secret, because the money feeds the local thieves' guild's hoard. And so on and so on.
That is exactly the point: in worldbuilding we want to bring worlds to life. We want details, but also the big connections and an overview, and in the end all of it should be findable again. If someone ever breaks into the harbor master's library, they should be able to know what might be found in the official ledgers.
The World Graph shows on a small example how such entries connect:
None of this has anything to do with rulebooks. Your world can work under any rules system, because it follows only the rules of the world, not the rules of the game. Whether I roll a d20 for a skill check or play rock-paper-scissors with my game master, it does not change the fact that the harbor master was caught last week cutting someone's throat to keep his secrets. And that his victim was the current treasurer of the tailors' guild, who did not want to pay their dues, is not a question of dice either.
For me, system openness is therefore first of all the essential core of worlds. You create knowledge, thoughts and ideas, keep developing them, and the rules system makes all of it playable.
What the Keeper has to do with it
All of this knowledge does not have to live in anyone's head at all times, and the Keeper does not have to know every rulebook for this. His job is not to make binding rulings on rules questions. He helps me look things up in the content of my current Realm, summarize connections and prepare drafts, and he shows me the sources for that. "What did we promise the guild?" is therefore a good question for him. The answer should come from our records. If it is missing there, it does not become more reliable by sounding like a good story.
The same goes for suggested Profile content. A plausible number is not yet a rules-compliant character value. The Keeper stays optional, and the decision about what counts in your world stays with you.
System agnostic, but not complete
With all of that, Atlavium stays a tool for knowledge and preparation. It is not a virtual tabletop and does not calculate checks, combat or character advancement. Pages and Profiles are still experimental. They give your details a shape but do not replace a dedicated rules assistant. You do not have to wait for that: you can start with the part you really need, whichever rulebook is on your table.
My suggestion for getting started is small: one character, one important place and one open job. Record what connects them, then add the game values you actually want to look up. If a field or a useful structure is missing, tell me about it. Which sections belong on a character sheet for you, and which detail of your world do you look up again and again? Bring the concrete example to the Atlavium Discord. It is easier to build on a real entry or handout than on the idea of a perfect structure for every conceivable world.
Your rulebook decides how you play. It does not have to decide where your world lives.