RPG Mirror

Point it at the folder you already have

Not a new library, not an upload — the folder where your art already lives. The browser reads it directly, and RPG Mirror writes its list back into that same folder as rpgmirror.json, so the notes travel with the pictures. Copy the folder to another machine and it arrives already set up.

Let it guess, then correct it

Scan folder makes one entry per image and takes a first guess at the keywords from the filename. bent_nail_tavern.jpg becomes Bent Nail Tavern, listening for bent, nail and tavern. Twenty images are a couple of minutes of tidying rather than an evening of data entry.

Choose words you will actually say

This is the whole craft of it, and it is not what most people write first. The temptation is to describe the picture; the trick is to write what will come out of your mouth in the moment.

Invented names are the best keywords in the system, not the worst. A made-up word sounds like nothing else at your table, so it almost never fires by accident — and the recogniser is told your list in advance, so it is listening for “Vermithrax” rather than trying to spell it.

Rehearse it before anyone arrives

The DM window has a listening panel that shows what it heard, what nearly matched, and which picture would have gone up. Read your opening aloud once. Everything you find there is something you did not find in front of six people.

Two windows, one of them dumb

The DM window stays with you: the list, the microphone, the controls. It opens a second, empty window that you drag onto the television and put fullscreen. That window holds nothing and decides nothing — it shows the picture it is handed. It cannot fall out of step with you, because it has no opinion to disagree with.

Press start, then forget it

Once it is listening it stays listening. Pictures fade in when their words come up and stay put for at least a few seconds, so a passing mention does not flicker the room. A new picture only takes over when it is clearly the subject, not merely mentioned.

Take the wheel whenever you want

Every row in the list carries a switch and a Show button, both live — no editing, no saving, no dialog.

• The switch hides an entry from the evening. Hide the boss until the boss arrives; hide the map of the place they have not found yet. Hiding whatever is currently on screen also clears the screen.
• Show puts a picture up this second — for the reveal you want to time yourself, or the one it did not catch. If it was hidden, showing it unhides it. It also drops the entry's word into the room's memory, so the session carries on naturally from there instead of snapping back to whatever you said a moment ago.

It will tell you why

The DM window checks your list for the faults that are invisible by eye:

• A keyword that is a filler word — the, go, right — which is thrown away before matching and can therefore never fire.
• An entry pointing at an image the folder no longer holds.
• Two entries sharing a keyword, which will fight.
• Two entries that sound alike. This is the one nobody catches on their own: say one and the other stirs.

How the listening actually works

No mystery, because knowing it makes you better at writing keywords.

• Every word you say is remembered for about half a minute, and its weight halves every four seconds. Recent talk beats old talk.
• A picture's score is the sum of its keywords heard. Whatever is highest goes up, provided it clears a small threshold — silence leaves the last picture alone.
• A two-word phrase counts double. “Bent Nail” is a far stronger signal than “nail”, which is why phrases are worth writing.
• A near-miss on the sound of a word still counts, at a discount. That is how “Garnak” finds Garnok.

If it hears nothing at all

Check the microphone is allowed in the address bar, and that the voice model finished arriving — the chip at the top of the DM window says so plainly, and will tell you if something went wrong with it.