Your files

A Canopy world is a folder of plain Markdown files. Nothing is locked in.

canopy.yaml              the world's name, templates, calendars and travel speeds
articles/Thornmere.md    one file per article
gm/Aldren Vey.md         GM notes and secrets, kept apart
campaigns/…              campaigns: board, sessions, shares
themes/Moonfall.md       themes you made for this world
images/Thornmere.webp    a picture…
images/Thornmere.md      …and its credits
maps/Thornmere Valley.md a map: its picture and its pins
images/Thornmere Valley.understory.json   a drawn map's own file

Articles start with a few lines of fields (frontmatter), then the text. Links are ordinary Markdown links or [[wikilinks]], so the folder opens in Obsidian and other Markdown editors. GM notes live in their own folder, so an article file is always safe to hand to a player.

Pictures

Pictures in the World menu shows every picture in the world, with who made it under each one. Maps, portraits, coats of arms, scanned handouts: they all live here.

  • Add a picture picks one from your phone's photos or your computer (PNG, JPEG or WebP). Canopy asks Who made it?: Made by me, Commissioned, Licensed or AI placeholder, with the name of who made it, and if you like where it came from, its licence and a short description (read aloud by screen readers). Nothing is saved until you press Save picture.
  • Tap a picture to see it full size: pinch or scroll to zoom, drag to move around. Below it are its credits and Where it's used (the articles, portraits and maps that use it). Change credits or name changes them; a new name renames the picture's files, and anything that uses it follows. Delete asks first, and says where the picture is used. In a world in your account, a deleted or replaced picture is kept out of sight for 30 days, so that if something goes badly wrong Canopy can put the world back as it was, pictures too. Nobody can open it in that time, and Delete this world removes it at once.
  • An AI placeholder gets a small badge, so it's never mistaken for real art.
  • The Credits page lists the pictures by who made them, next to who wrote the articles.

Each picture is two files in images/: the picture itself and a short note with its credits, named after it, which Obsidian shows as properties. Canopy keeps pictures up to 20 MB each and 1 GB for a whole world. If Canopy ever says Picture storage is full for now, new pictures wait for a while; your world and the pictures already in it are fine. A picture larger than 12,000 pixels on its longest side is shrunk when you add it, and Canopy says so. For phones and tablets Canopy also makes a smaller copy of large pictures (in a hidden .canopy folder); it isn't part of your world and isn't in the zip.

A drawn world map keeps one more file in images/, named after it and ending in .understory.json: everything you drew, land and sea, heights, plates and rivers. Its map note points at it next to its picture. It isn't a picture, so Pictures doesn't list it, but it counts towards the 1 GB (a world map takes about 1 MB) and comes along in the zip. Players never get it: they see the map's picture. Deleting the map deletes this file too.

Photos carry hidden details, such as where and when they were taken and with which phone. Canopy takes those out before it keeps a picture, so they can't give anything away. The picture itself is unchanged.

Groups

Pictures are sorted into groups, shown as tabs at the top with how many each has: Portraits, Crests and banners, Places, Maps, Handouts and Other (pictures without a group). A map's picture goes in Maps by itself, and a picture added from a Portrait field goes in Portraits. To move a picture, open it and tap another group under Group. Groups (the pencil at the end of the tabs) lets you rename a group, add your own (Ships, Handouts for session 3) or remove an empty one.

A picture's group is in its credits note (group: Portraits), and your list of groups is in canopy.yaml. A note without a group is in Other.

Players get a picture only when something you gave them uses it (see Players and spoilers).

Taking it with you

Download as zip in the World menu saves the whole world, pictures and their credits included, in a folder named after the world (Velmarch.zip holds Velmarch/). Files you haven't changed in Canopy come back exactly as they were.

Articles that came from your own folders go back in them, under articles/: a note from Research/Cultures is in articles/Research/Cultures/, and one from Characters in articles/Characters/. So an Obsidian vault you brought in comes back the shape you gave it, and Obsidian opens the folder as a vault, links and all. Each note also keeps its folder in a folder: line at the top, so nothing depends on where the file sits. A folder name that some computers can't have as a folder (one with a : or ?, say) stays in that line, and the note stays in articles/.

Importing the zip again gives the same world. If you moved a note to another folder in Obsidian in the meantime, Canopy takes the folder it's in now. Zips downloaded before, with every article straight in articles/, still open as they did. To work on the world in Canopy again, import the zip into your account (a zip on the start page).

Printing a world book

Print a world book in the World menu puts every article on one page, as a book: grouped by template, with contents, and links between articles that lead to their place in the book. Notes without a template that came from your own folders ("Research", "Research / Cultures") get a section per folder, as in the sidebar; the rest go under Other. Each entry has its fields, its dates (When), and for a character their Born, Died and age and their family (parents, partners, children), as on their page, even when the template has no field for them.

The cover has the world's name, its description and the owner's name ("by Ines"), as set in World settings.

  • Print or save as PDF prints it, or saves it as a PDF (choose Save as PDF in the print window); links still work in the PDF, and the pages are numbered. Where the browser can, the contents shows page numbers too.

  • Download for Word saves the same book as a Word file (.docx), for an editor who works in Word. Sections and articles are Word headings, so Word's navigation pane lists them, and links between articles still lead to their place in the file. The contents page fills in its page numbers when Word asks to update the fields as the file opens (or right-click it and choose Update field). The file opens in LibreOffice, Pages and Google Docs too.

  • Download as EPUB saves the same book as an e-book (.epub), for reading on a tablet or an e-reader: Apple Books, Google Play Books, a Kobo, or a Kindle through Send to Kindle. Each section is a chapter, the reader's own contents lists the sections and articles, and links between articles still lead to their place in the book. Pictures come along with their credit lines; pictures from the web are left out, so the book reads without going online.

  • Secrets: Leave them out (the default) prints only what's written in the articles, with no GM notes or secrets, no Only for you lines and no Later passages, and families as everyone believes them (a rumoured parent is simply the parent). Use it for an editor or a co-writer. Put them in, for your eyes only adds them, each marked, and the book says For the GM: contains secrets on its first page (in a world for writing: For your eyes only: contains hidden truths).

  • Sections: untick the templates or folders you don't want in the book. Links to articles left out become plain text.

The Word file and the EPUB hold exactly what the book on the page holds, with the same choices.

For your players, print a Player handbook instead (see Players and spoilers): it holds only what they've been given.

Bringing notes in

On the start page, once you're signed in, Import a folder or a zip makes a new world in your account from:

  • a Canopy world (a folder or zip with canopy.yaml);
  • any folder of Markdown notes, or an Obsidian vault.

Notes in subfolders come along. A folder named like a template (Characters, NPCs, Places…) gives its notes that template; other folder names are shown with the article. Every note remembers its folder, so Download as zip puts it back there. Pictures (PNG, JPEG and WebP) come along too and go to Pictures, keeping their names so links like ![[map.png]] still work; each gets a credits note with Who made it? left for you to fill in. Obsidian's settings and other files are skipped. Notes written on Windows read the same as any other: their Later and GM only passages stay hidden from players. You see a summary of what comes in and what's skipped before anything is written. For plain notes, the window also asks What's this world for?: Running games or Writing a book or a series (see For writers); you can skip it. Once you press Import, the same window shows how far it has got (for example Importing 230 of 806 files…) until the world opens. A big world (a thousand articles or more) then says how many of its articles it has read, for example Opening the world: 4,500 of 20,000 articles…, here and whenever you open it from the start page.

If a note's fields (the lines at the top) have a mistake Canopy can't read around, often a value that needs quotes, the summary names each such note before you import: Canopy couldn't read part of this file, with the line, for example The Ember Throne (campaign), line 19: text: {Beldun} asks for help. The note comes along as it is, and Canopy never saves over the part it couldn't read:

  • A campaign shows the same message on its page, with the file's text instead of its sessions and board, and your players get nothing from it until it's fixed. Fix the line there and press Save the file, or fix it in Obsidian.
  • An article opens as usual, with what Canopy could read of its fields. Its text can be edited and saved; its fields and title stay as they are in the file until you fix the line in Obsidian or another editor.
  • GM notes, maps and the rest keep that part as written too; a change Canopy would have to write into it says so instead of saving.

A value that starts with a [[link]] and goes on (text: [[Beldun]] asks for help.) is fine: Canopy reads it as the text it is.

If you already have a world with the same name (say you import the same zip twice), the window says so: You already have a world called Velmarch. The new one is named Velmarch (2) unless you choose Keep the name. Either way it's a new world, and your Velmarch isn't changed.

Import notes from a folder or from a zip in the World menu (or Import a folder and Import a zip in World settings) adds notes to the world you have open. The window says how many, for example Import 12 notes into Thornmere. If a name is already taken, choose to give the new one a number or to skip it. Nothing in the world is ever overwritten.

Moving between devices

Every world you make is in your account, so it opens on all your devices.

Older worlds you made in this browser or a folder stay there and keep working. To have one on your other devices, open it and choose Copy to your account (in the note at the top of its home page, or in the World menu); its pictures go along, one by one. Or choose Download as zip and import the zip into your account. You can keep three worlds in your account: with three already there, Copy to your account and Import on the start page are greyed out until you delete one with Delete this world in World settings.