Entity Types
An entity type is the template every entity in your world is built from. Characters share the Character template. Cities share the Location template. When you make a new character, you’re not starting from scratch — you’re filling in a Character-shaped form that already knows what fields a character usually has.
You’ll work with two kinds of entity type:
- System types — ready-made templates that ship with MythTapestry: Character, Location, Event, Item, and the genre-specific ones the onboarding wizard switched on for your world.
- Custom types — templates you create yourself, when nothing built-in fits what you want to track.
You don’t need to make custom types to start writing. Most users go a long way on the built-ins.
When to make a custom entity type
Section titled “When to make a custom entity type”Make a new entity type when you have a thing your world has lots of that doesn’t fit any existing template. A few signs you’ve reached that point:
- You keep cramming the same kind of information into a Character’s notes field. (Maybe Spells should be their own type.)
- You want to filter for a category in the entities list and there’s nowhere good to put the filter. (Currencies, Vehicles, Diseases, Treaties.)
- You want to link many entities to this concept as if it were a thing in its own right. (A specific Magic School that lots of characters belong to.)
If you’d only have one or two of something, it’s usually easier to keep it as a section in someone’s description. Custom types are most useful when you’ll create many entities from the same template.
Anatomy of an entity type
Section titled “Anatomy of an entity type”Every entity type has four parts. You don’t have to fill in all of them — most types are useful with just the first.
Creating an entity type
Section titled “Creating an entity type”- In your world’s sidebar, go to Management → Entity Types.
- Click Create Entity Type.
- Pick a clear, singular name — Spell, not “Spells”. This is what users will see in the entity-creation dropdown.
- Add the fields you want to capture. Start with the obvious ones; you can always add more later.
- Save. The new type appears in the entity creation dropdown immediately, grouped under Custom.
You can come back and edit the type any time. Existing entities will pick up new fields automatically (with empty values until someone fills them in).
A worked example: a “Spell” type
Section titled “A worked example: a “Spell” type”Say you’re running a fantasy world and you want to track spells. A spell isn’t a Character or a Location — it’s a thing on its own. Here’s how you’d think about it:
| Decision | Choice |
|---|---|
| Name | Spell |
| Fields | name (built-in), school (single-select: evocation, illusion, etc.), level (number 1–9), components (multi-select: verbal, somatic, material), casting time (text), description (rich text) |
| Subtypes | none — spells don’t really sub-categorise further |
| Layout | one tab is fine for now |
| Behaviours | hide “material components” when “components” doesn’t include “material” |
Once saved, you can create spells the same way you create characters: Entities → Create Entity → Spell. Filtering, search, and the graph all treat them as first-class members of your world.
What happens to existing entities when you change a type
Section titled “What happens to existing entities when you change a type”Edits to an entity type apply to every entity of that type immediately:
- Adding a field — existing entities show the new field empty.
- Renaming a field — values move with the rename.
- Removing a field — values for that field are deleted permanently. You’ll be asked to confirm.
- Changing a field’s type — usually safe between similar types (text ↔ rich text), risky between different ones (text → number). The editor warns you.
If a type is no longer useful, you can deprecate it instead of deleting it — that locks existing entities for editing without throwing them away.