The Holodeck for your rulebooks — rules enforced, worlds remembered.
Start with the project wiki —
it routes players, Game Masters, and builders by task.
Holonovel — a narrative simulation engine for tabletop RPG play. The MCP server is the reference adapter: rooms, parser commands, narrative state, and ruleset-free mechanics. Run it with npx holonovel; load ruleset packages alongside it without modifying
2026-11-15
Bintang
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Tool
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Uptime
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A holonovel is a Star Trek holodeck program — an interactive story where you
step inside as a character and the rules govern. Holonovel builds the server (the
Holodeck). Your campaign is the program (the Novel). Your rulebooks become the
engine — D&D 5e, Starfinder, or the game on your shelf. Your books. Your server.
Your Holodeck.
A fresh install is playable without a rulebook. On first start the server creates
Torre Nosferatu, a tutorial Novel, and opens it; set TTRPG_STARTER_NOVEL=off
to start with an empty world instead.
The base server runs the Holodeck. Rooms, objects, exits, and containment form a
real state graph, while scenes, NPCs, lore, and a story journal layer on top, so
narration is grounded in stored facts rather than prior chat turns. Requires
Node.js 22+.
From a source checkout, run cd holonovel && npm install && npm run start, then
point the client at npx tsx src/index.ts in that directory.
Campaign data defaults to the operating system's user-data directory:
~/.local/share/holonovel on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/holonovel
on macOS, or %LOCALAPPDATA%\holonovel on Windows. Set TTRPG_DATA_DIR to
override it. An existing .holonovel-state/ beside the server is preserved.
A ruleset package is a declarative bundle produced by the Build workflow. Copy it
into the server's ruleset install directory and the server registers it. That
directory is inside the state directory — by default the per-user data location
described above.
Packages load lazily: a ruleset's tools and index are read only when you open a
campaign bound to it, so unused packages cost nothing at startup. Install,
remove, and list packages from the server's own tools, or move files and restart.
Campaign data and installed packages stay in the state directory, outside the
server tree, so updating Holonovel leaves both intact. The Building a Server
guide covers
packaging a rulebook.
How it works
Holonovel is one pipeline — Convert, Build, Holodeck, Novel, Synthesis — that
turns a rulebook into a running table.
Convert
Convert takes PDFs, HTML, and web scrapes and turns them into clean Markdown.
Multi-column pages are read in the right order, and tables split across page
breaks are reassembled. Scanned pages fall back to OCR. The output is
structurally sound — headings resolve and references trace.
"Convert the files in ruleset/dnd5e/ to Markdown for the D&D 5e ruleset."
"Convert the HTML export in ruleset/starfinder/ for the Starfinder ruleset."
Clean, indexed Markdown ready for the build.
Build
Build reads that Markdown and extracts the mechanics. Dice procedures, combat
systems, spell catalogues, equipment tables, condition tracks — modeled elements
become tools, resources, or prompts in a declarative ruleset package, while
anything that can't be modeled stays searchable. Guidance prose becomes narrative
material. The discovery engine reads the source in chunks, measures extraction
confidence, and works until the mechanical sections are accounted for. Nothing is
fabricated to fill a gap.
"Build the Markdown in ruleset/dnd5e/ into a holonovel."
"Package ruleset/starfinder/ as a second ruleset alongside D&D 5e."
One spec reads any rulebook, and the build produces zero hand-written code.
Holodeck
The Holodeck is the narrative world model — the core engine that drives the
simulation. It turns a saved Novel into a running game. Every part of a campaign
is structured state: rooms, objects, exits, and containment in the spatial
model; scenes, NPCs, lore, factions, secrets, vows, countdowns, relationships,
decisions, and the story journal in the narrative model; mechanics and ruleset
voice alongside them. None is decoration. Each has a defined effect on the
others.
That effect is what makes it an engine. A scene sets the place and cast and
activates lore whose triggers match its text. An NPC carries identity,
disposition, relationships, and a location, so moving them changes who is
present and who can speak. A secret stays hidden until knowledge and trigger
conditions allow it to surface. A vow creates a decision the Game Master
must honor. A countdown advances on schedule and fires its result into the world.
A mechanical outcome — damage, a destroyed object, a doused light — mutates the
state it touches. The story journal records the consequence, and later scenes can
recall it.
The server evaluates these couplings. The AI narrates the result. Nothing is left
to a "remember this" instruction, and nothing drifts between turns.
Parser commands act on the spatial model with real containment logic. Go north.
Take the lantern. The room, the object, and the inventory are stored records, not
claims in narration. Exits connect in both directions, containers hold what they
hold, and doors stay locked until something unlocks them. The spatial conventions
are drawn from Inform, the interactive-fiction language behind decades of
text-adventure classics.
"Go north into the flooded ossuary."
"Set the scene here — the ossuary reeks of stale incense and old water."
"Have Sister Mora follow me into the ossuary."
"Ask Sister Mora what she knows about the buried order."
"Advance the reliquary countdown by one day."
The Holodeck is the live simulation; the Novel is its save file.
Novel
A Novel is the save file for a Holodeck game, and it stores the configuration
that shapes that game. Server settings supply defaults; each Novel overrides them
where the setting is campaign-scoped, and every change is saved with the
campaign.
Who plays is configurable. A badge sets your seat at the table and what that seat
can see: Player is in the story as a character, Game Master sees and controls the
world, Observer watches while the AI runs both roles, and Editor steps outside
the story to manage the save. The server enforces the boundary, so GM-only
secrets do not leak to the Player badge. Each Novel carries its own active badge,
and four autonomy sliders decide how much the AI handles alongside it: level
(auto-play, prompt on mechanical actions, or manual), confirmation (execute,
confirm, or prompt), safety (safe, moderate, or hardcore), and creativity
(predictable, standard, or chaotic). The sliders compose with any badge, so a
human can hand off one character, all NPCs, or the whole table without changing
seats. The Game Mastering
guide covers
running the world from the opposite side.
How the story behaves is configurable. Player signals set pace, difficulty, tone,
focus, and boundaries. A narrative directive tunes pacing, autonomy, world
reactivity, and synthesis in plain language; matching keywords take effect
mechanically, and anything else becomes guidance for the narrator. Behavioral
settings cover whether the world reacts, whether NPCs and factions pursue goals
on their own, when synthesis refreshes, how much memory each tier retains, and
whether moments record automatically. Point of view can lock to the active
character or stay omniscient, and social scenes can use a manual, natural, list,
or pooled speaker order.
What content appears is configurable. A Novel binds to one ruleset at creation
and can add supplementary rulesets without changing that binding. The categories
used to organize available actions can be reassigned per Novel, and briefing
order, enabled action patterns, and journal detail decide which guidance
surfaces during play.
Export as JSON or Markdown. Import with merge, replace, or dry-run. Clone,
checkpoint, and roll back. A clone carries the full configuration.
"Let the AI run all NPCs and player characters, but pause for mechanical decisions."
"Make the game faster and darker, with harder fights."
"Let the world react and NPCs act independently; use the rulebook's voice patterns."
"Run synthesis whenever the scene changes."
"Clone this Novel with its settings."
Every Novel-scoped setting is saved with the Novel, so a clone or checkpoint
preserves the exact game you configured.
Synthesis
Synthesis deepens the Holodeck beyond mechanics. Ruleset Wisdom comes from the
rulebook and any vendor package during Build — voice examples from example-of-play dialogue, lore
templates from setting descriptions, action patterns from resolution sequences,
and narrative voice profiles from inspirational media citations. It is build
output, active by default, and survives every rebuild and synthesis reversion.
The Synthesis run adds two layers on demand. External research collects
web-sourced GM advice, actual-play breakdowns, and designer notes, tagged with
source URLs, confidence scores, and freshness timestamps. Internal synthesis
reads the Novel itself for patterns the table has already produced. Both are
inert by default: the Game Master activates what fits and deactivates what does
not, and that activation state is saved with the Novel. Re-running synthesis
replaces inactive items and preserves active ones. Reverting removes the
synthesis layers; Ruleset Wisdom and player-authored items persist.
Synthesis can run on demand, at the start of a session, or after a scene change.
"Research horror one-shot pacing and actual-play examples, tagged with sources."
"Enable the horror pacing guidance that fits this campaign."
"Run synthesis after every scene change."
Ruleset Wisdom, synthesis layers, and player-authored items coexist in the Novel
without replacing one another.
How it compares
Category
What you're used to
How Holonovel differs
AI storytelling apps
Narrative-first apps with no rule engine — conditions drift, dice are improvised, the world is whatever the model remembers
The server holds the rules, dice, and world state; the AI narrates outcomes it cannot invent.
Generic LLM chat
General-purpose chat with no durable state — forgets conditions mid-combat, invents spells, drifts toward safe outcomes
Mechanics resolve deterministically, state survives restarts, and the game keeps its consequences.
Rules MCP servers
Server-side mechanics and durable saves, but a fixed ruleset or a single SRD seed.
Any rulebook, a containment-based world, and badge-enforced roles in one server.
Rules engines serve one system. Storytellers improvise mechanics. Holonovel does
neither: any rulebook becomes enforced mechanics, a spatial world, and a saved
campaign. Across the TTRPG MCP servers reviewed in October 2026, no other
reviewed server combined rulebook ingestion, spatial containment, and server-side
role enforcement — for D&D 5e, Starfinder, or your own book. Questions about a
specific table's setup? See the FAQ.
Holonovel — a narrative simulation engine for tabletop RPG play. The MCP server is the reference adapter: rooms, parser commands, narrative state, and ruleset-free mechanics. Run it with npx holonovel
Holonovel — a narrative simulation engine for tabletop RPG play. The MCP server is the reference adapter: rooms, parser commands, narrative state, and ruleset-free mechanics. Run it with npx holonovel; load ruleset packages alongside it without modifying
Tool
Tool
Belum ada daftar tool. Server remote mendapatkannya setelah pemeriksaan kesehatan pertama.
FAQ
Pertanyaan
Bagaimana cara menginstal Holonovel?
Salin konfigurasi stdio untuk Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, atau VS Code di halaman ini. Konfigurasi ini memakai instalasi dari penerbit, bukan proxy PlugMCP.
Tidak ada variabel lingkungan wajib yang tercantum di catatan ini.
Transport apa yang digunakan Holonovel?
Holonovel berjalan secara lokal melalui stdio.
Kapan Holonovel terakhir diperiksa?
Terakhir diperiksa 2026-11-15. Holonovel — a narrative simulation engine for tabletop RPG play. The MCP server is the reference adapter: rooms, parser commands, narrative state, and ruleset-free mechanics. Run it with npx holonovel; load ruleset packages alongside it without modifying