Cabinet Story Tools — write a story that forks

The workflow

How to make a story

Start a story

More tools → Story tools → Branching Story. You get a story card and an opening scene, already linked.
Write the scene

Double-press to edit the story’s name, a scene’s title or its text.
Add the choices

Select a scene. The strip under it adds, moves and removes choices.
Point it somewhere

Drag from the choice’s handle onto the scene it leads to, or pick one from a list.
Let the dice decide

Optional. Give a choice a dice check and point each result at a scene.
Play it

Press Play on the story card. There’s Back and Restart, and the board lights up as you go.

A Cabinet board holding a story card and several scene cards, with drawn links running from each choice to the scene it leads to — A story card, its scenes, and the links between them.

Story tools

What a story is made of

Each one is an ordinary card. Move it, colour it, group it, lock it.

On the board

Story card

The story’s name, its opening scene, how many scenes it has, and what’s still unfinished. Press Play from here.

Scene card

One beat of the story: a title, some text, and the choices leading out. It can name a speaker and take a colour.

Choice

A line of text, and where it leads. Drag from its handle onto a scene to link it.

Dice check

A pool of dice and a set of number bands. Each band leads to a scene.

Fate roll

A scene with nothing to choose. Arriving throws the dice, and the result carries the story on.

Ending

A choice or a dice result can end the story. The ending gets a name of its own, like “Escaped the castle”.

Loops are fine

Two choices can lead to the same scene, and a scene can lead back to one you’ve already read.

Several stories can live on one board. A draft scene that nothing links to yet is fine.

Writing it

Dice, pictures and warnings

Dice checks

Give a choice a dice check. Taking it throws the dice, and the total decides where the story goes.

Build the pool by tapping dice: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 or d100.
Each band covers a range of totals. It can show the reader a line, and leads to a scene or an ending.
In the reader, the dice roll the way they do in the Dice Roller.
Links decided by dice are drawn in amber.

d4 d6 d8 d10 d12 d20 d100

Tap a die twice to roll two of it.

A choice on a scene card carrying a dice check: a pool of dice and number bands, each band naming the scene it leads to, with an amber link leaving the card — A dice check on a choice. Its links are amber.

Scene pictures

A scene can have a wide picture across the top, and up to four square ones beside the text.

Drag pictures in from the board, and back out again.
Removing a slot puts its picture back on the board.
Pasting an image fills the slot you’re pointing at.

A story scene card with a wide banner image across the top and square picture slots beside the scene text — A scene with a banner and two pictures.

Warnings on the story card

The story card lists what’s still unfinished.

Scenes the opening scene can’t reach.
Choices that lead nowhere, and links to scenes that are gone.
A scene with both a roll and choices. The roll is what plays.
Each warning is a button that takes you to the problem.

A choice pointing at a deleted scene says “Missing scene” and keeps the link, so you can fix it.

A story card showing the story name, its opening scene, a scene count and a short list of warnings, each one a button — The story card, listing what’s unfinished.

Reading it

Playing and publishing

The reader

Press Play on the story card and read it through. There’s Back, and Restart.

Centre it as a page, or dock it to the side and keep working.
The scene you’re on lights up, and the path you took is drawn on the board.
Closing the reader clears the path.
If you edit while someone is reading, they get the edit.

The story reader showing a scene and its choices, with the board behind it lighting the current scene and the path taken to reach it — The reader, with the current scene lit on the board.

Publishing

Publish a story and you get a link. It opens on a page with no board and no sign-in.

Only the story is published, never the rest of the board it lives on.
Copy the link, replace it with a new one, or stop publishing at any time.
Replacing or stopping breaks the old link. Cabinet warns you first.
Available on shared boards, to the board’s owner.

A published story on its own page: the scene text and its choices, with no board and no sign-in around it — A published story page.

Good to know

What it does and doesn’t do

On a private board, a story stays on your device and in your own Drive backup.
Nothing is written for you. There’s no generator.
A playthrough is never saved.
Broken links are shown, not cleared. They stay visible until you fix them.
A story card can’t be deleted while it still has scenes.
Publishing is explicit and reversible. A story has no link until you press Publish.

Write a story that forks.