The guide

Getting started · guide 3 of 4

The guide is your helper while you learn Critsmith. It shows short tips right on the page, pointing at the thing they're about.

It's switched on when you first sign up, so you'll meet it straight away.

Its first tip points at the signpost, near the bottom of the icons on the left. The signpost turns the guide on and off. While the guide is on, the signpost has a blue ring.

The page tips

The first time you open each main page, the guide shows you a few tips about it. The rest of the page goes dark, so you can see exactly what each tip means.

Press Next to move on, or the small arrow beside it to go back a tip. On the last tip, press Done.

Already know the page? Press Skip this page, and its tips are put away.

If a tip is in your way, press somewhere else on the page. It folds down to a single line. Press the line to open it again.

Once a page's tips are done or skipped, they don't come back on that page, so the guide never nags you.

The walk

If you're a brand-new Game Master with no campaign yet, the guide goes further, and walks you through building your first one, in fifteen steps.

You make a campaign, see your Build page, and how players join. Then you build a small adventure: a story, a village, a mysterious stranger, a tavern and its barkeeper, a basement full of rats, the rat fight, an encounter, and two scenes to run them in.

Some tips ask you to press a button, or fill in a box and press Next. Do what the tip asks, and the walk moves on.

The top of each tip shows which step you're on, with a bar for every step. Press an earlier bar to read that step's tips again. Press Next to the end, and you're back where you were.

When the next part is on another page, the tip points at Home, the house icon, and the guide picks up again from your Build page.

While the walk is running, the New buttons are greyed out, so you don't make anything extra by mistake.

And if you try to move on before a step is finished, a Not yet message tells you what's still missing. Press OK, add it, and carry on.

You can stop halfway. When you come back, the walk picks up where you left off.

To stop the walk, press Skip the walk. From then on, you'll get the page tips instead.

When the walk is done, its last tip points you to Home, to add more to your campaign, or Run campaign, to see how to run what you've just built.

Turning the guide on and off

Press the signpost to turn the guide off. The blue ring goes, and no more tips appear, the walk included.

Press it again to turn the guide back on. Every page's tips show again from the start, which is handy for a refresher. If you were partway through the walk, it carries on where you left off.

You'll also find a Guide switch on your Account page. It does the same thing.

That's the guide. Leave it on while you learn, skip what you already know, and switch it back on whenever you want a refresher.