Trackers

How LedgerBot tracks story state: assets, liabilities, scales, and the tools around them.

Trackers are not a game. Don't use them to min/max character builds or keep metagame stats. Use them to create story.

The ledger

Why use trackers?

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Play moves fast. People forget whether the larder was empty last week, or whether Heat was already bad before the raid. A tracker is a shared note with a number: this is how things stand, right now.

Use them for story pressure the whole table should agree on before the next scene. Food, Coin, Heat, Unrest, Labor. If it only matters to one person and isn't part of the shared world, that's a personal tracker, or it doesn't need a tracker at all.

When a value moves, the label changes, links can fire, and stress can shift. The point is to make the next beat obvious: you're short on food, the city is hot, the crew is willing. Then play that.

What a tracker is

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A tracker is a named number with a label. Food at Scarce, Heat at Elevated, Labor at Stable. The number is the current value. The label is what most people see.

Food
Scarce 5/10
Heat Liability
Elevated 4/6
Labor
Stable 4/6

Guild trackers are shared. Everyone in the server sees the same Food supply, the same Heat level. Personal trackers belong to one member and stay off the shared board.

Assets and liabilities

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Every tracker has a polarity. This drives colors, stress, decay direction, and how the progress bar fills.

Asset High is good

Things you want more of: Food, Coin, Supplies. A full bar is healthy. An empty bar is trouble.

Food
Abundant 6/6
Liability High is bad

Things you want low: Heat, Debt, Suspicion. The bar fills the other way. A full bar is the crisis.

Heat Liability
Severe 5/6

Pick polarity from what the story cares about. "Morale" as an asset goes up when people are willing. "Exhaustion" as a liability goes up when they're worn out.

Scales

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A scale sets the max value, the named tiers (thresholds), and how nudges work. Without one, trackers use a default 1-6 range.

Find Scale Profiles in the tracker form or from the main menu once you're in a guild.

Template Range Tiers
Simple 1-3 Low / Medium / High
Standard 1-6 One label per number
Detailed 1-10 Five bands of two
Granular 1-20 Five bands of four
Percentage 1-100 Five bands of twenty

Simple (1-3)

Coin
Medium 2/3

Detailed (1-10), same story, more room

Coin
Scarce 5/10

Thresholds

Thresholds are the named bands. They must start at 1, end at the scale max, and sit flush against each other (no gaps, no overlaps). Each band gets a color. Dual-polarity scales can have separate labels for assets and liabilities.

Nudge mode

Controls how /nudge and the +/- buttons move the value.

  • Step-based (default): move by a fixed amount, usually 1. On a 1-100 scale you might set the step to 5.
  • Tier-based: jump to the next or previous band boundary.

Personal vs guild library scales

New scales go to your personal library unless you check "Add to guild library" (requires create permission). Personal scales only show on your own trackers. Guild library scales are available to everyone.

Creating trackers

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Create permission (or admin) is required. From the Trackers page, click Add Tracker. Names must be unique per guild, max 50 characters.

Field Purpose
Name The handle used in Discord commands and on the ledger.
Description Optional flavor text. Max 500 characters.
Category Optional grouping for the dashboard and /ledger output.
Scale profile The ruler. Blank means the default 1-6 scale.
Reset value Starting value, and where it returns on Reset All Trackers.
Hide numeric value Non-admins see only the bar and label, not the actual number.
Stress weight How much this tracker affects the guild stress score. See Stress score.

What most people see

Relics
Strained

What admins see

Relics
Strained 3/6

Drag the grip on tracker rows to reorder. Categories are under Manage Categories (admin only). Default limit is 20 trackers; admins can raise it to 100 in Guild Settings.

In play

Changing values

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Adjust permission is enough to change values. You don't need create permission.

On the site

  • Click + or - to open a dialog listing every value in that direction.
  • Shift-click to skip the dialog and nudge by one step/tier.
Food
Stable 4/6
How the row looks on the Trackers page.

In Discord

  • /nudge tracker up or down moves one step or tier.
  • /adjust tracker value sets an exact number or a threshold label like "Scarce".
  • Both accept an optional reason that gets logged.

Values stay between 1 and the scale max. A nudge past either end does nothing.

Rebound

In the tracker form, you can set a rebound mode:

  • From max: hitting the maximum flips the tracker to 1.
  • From min: hitting 1 flips the tracker to the maximum.

Rebound fires on any value change that lands on that extreme — a player nudge, an adjust, a linked reaction, or a decay/develop tick. So a liability that develops up to max with “from max” rebound will snap to 1 on the tick that hits the ceiling; an asset that decays to 1 with “from min” rebound will snap back to max.

If you set a decay floor above 1, or a develop ceiling below max, the tick never reaches the rebound extreme and won’t trigger it. Links on the tracker still fire for both the original hit and the rebound.

Hits max

Scandal Liability Rebound
Critical 6/6

Then snaps to 1

Scandal Liability Rebound
Clear 1/6

Manual lock

In the tracker form, turn on Manually lock this tracker to block some or all nudges. The tracker stays visible. You have to give a reason; it shows when someone tries a blocked change. Same rules on the site and in Discord.

  • Hard lock: no change either way. Badge says Locked.
  • Lock up: can still decrease, cannot increase. Badge says Locked up.
  • Lock down: can still increase, cannot decrease. Badge says Locked down.

Locks stack. A lock-up and a lock-down at the same time (manual plus a link, or two links) is a full lock. Decay and develop still tick; locks only block player nudges and adjusts.

Trade Locked
Stable 4/6
Hard lock. Both buttons dead.
Trade Locked up
Stable 4/6
Lock up. Plus is dead, minus still works.
Trade Locked down
Stable 4/6
Lock down. Minus is dead, plus still works.

Morale

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Morale is an optional tag on a tracker (High, Medium, Low). The typical use is Labor or similar "people" trackers where the count can be fine while the mood isn't.

Medium is the default and doesn't affect stress. Low adds a bit of stress. High reduces it slightly.

Labor
Stable 4/6
Morale Low
Count is fine. Mood is not.

In Discord, use /morale tracker high or low or none to set the morale for a tracker. Links can also step morale up or down when another tracker crosses a value — see morale links.

Decay and develop

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Leave amount and interval blank and nothing happens automatically. Fill both in and the tracker ticks on a schedule.

  • Assets decay: the value drops each interval, down to the floor (default 1). Food spoils, coin gets spent.
  • Liabilities develop: the value rises each interval, up to the ceiling (default: max). Heat builds, debt accrues.
Food -1 / 24h
Strained 3/6
Decays toward the floor.
Heat Liability +1 / 24h
Moderate 3/6
Develops toward the ceiling.

Amount is 1-10. Interval is 1-720 hours (24 = daily, 168 = weekly). Missed ticks get applied in a batch when the server catches up.

If the tracker also has rebound, a tick that lands on the rebound extreme (floor 1 or the scale max) will snap to the opposite end the same way a nudge would.

Stress score

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Stress is a single number showing how bad the shared ledger looks. It appears on the dashboard and in unfiltered Discord panels.

Each tracker contributes based on:

  • How far off it is (assets low, liabilities high).
  • Which tier it's in, if the scale has tiers.
  • Its morale tag, if enabled.
  • Its stress weight.
Food
Depleted 1/6
Asset, empty. Pulls hard.
Heat Liability
Severe 5/6
Liability, high. Pulls hard.
Coin
Surplus 5/6
Asset, healthy. Barely counts.
Weight Effect
None Ignored. Flavor trackers that shouldn't affect stress.
Low Half weight.
Medium Default. Full weight.
High 1.5x weight.

The displayed number is rounded. Below it, intensity shows the total as a fraction of what this set of trackers could produce.

Level Intensity
Peaceful Under 5%
Manageable Under 30%
Strained Under 60%
Crisis 60% and up

Personal trackers don't contribute to guild stress.

The guild

Personal trackers

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Personal trackers belong to one member, on this Discord server. They do not follow you to another guild. Same person, two servers, two separate sheets.

Discord replies are ephemeral, so only you see the result. The shared ledger never shows them.

Off by default. Admins enable them in Guild Settings and set a per-user cap (default 10, max 50).

  • /inventory lists yours.
  • /my_tracker name shows one.
  • /my_nudge tracker up/down changes one.

Create your own from My Trackers. Personal categories are separate from guild categories.

Admin visibility setting controls whether admins can see or modify members' personal trackers (Hidden, View only, or Full access).

Distributed trackers

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Admin only. A distributed tracker is a template that gets copied to qualifying members as personal trackers.

"Qualifying" means either all members or members with specific Discord roles. Click Provision to create copies. Members who already have one are skipped.

Pool mode controls how copies relate to a guild tracker:

  • None: independent copies. No connection to the guild ledger.
  • Decrement: zero-sum. When a member raises their copy, the linked guild tracker drops by the same amount. If the guild tracker can't absorb the change, the personal change is refused. Good for a shared supply that individuals draw from.
  • Independent: view-only. Members see the tracker but can't change it.

Permissions

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Map Discord roles to permission levels under Role Permissions. Server owners and Discord administrators are always LedgerBot admins.

Level Can do
View See the ledger. History only if public.
Adjust View plus /adjust, /nudge, /morale, /generate.
Create Adjust plus create, edit, delete guild trackers.
Admin Everything. Settings, templates, distributed trackers.

Discord commands

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Same data as the web app. Different interface.

  • /ledger shows a snapshot of all trackers.
  • /panel pins a live board that auto-updates. Admin only. One per channel.
  • /tracker name shows one tracker.
  • /history name shows recent value changes and the reasons people typed. See History.

Autocomplete works on most arguments. Start typing.

Full command list has everything, including commands not related to trackers.

History

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The ledger is the current picture. History is how you got there.

Every nudge, adjust, morale change, decay tick, and link reaction writes a row: old value, new value, who did it, when, and the reason they typed. Edits to the tracker itself (name, polarity, category) land here too. If Food went from Stable to Scarce, this is where you find out it was the feast, not a silent decay tick.

Open the clock on a tracker row for that tracker's log, or View All on the dashboard for the whole guild. In Discord, /history shows recent value changes with reasons.

Admins always see it. Everyone else does not, unless you turn on Make change history public in Guild Settings. Turn it on if the table should be able to read why Food dropped. Leave it off if the audit trail is GM-only.

Guild settings

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Templates (Fantasy Barony, Merchant Guild, and so on) fill in categories, scales, and trackers so you are not starting from a blank guild. Names that already exist are skipped, so applying a preset will not overwrite or duplicate what you already built.

Reset All Trackers puts every current value back to that tracker's reset value. It does not delete trackers, links, or history. Use it for a new chapter. If you meant to undo one nudge, read history and nudge it back.