Import your world

StoryVue reads what other tools export. Every import below runs in your browser: the file is parsed on your device, nothing is uploaded until you press Import, and nothing is fetched from the tool you are leaving. Importing is free on every plan. A manuscript you import on the Free plan opens read-only: you can read and compile it, and editing the prose is part of the Writer plan. Everything else an import creates (entities, connections, the Master Timeline, maps) is yours to edit on any plan. What arrives is a StoryVue story like any other: canvases, connections, a Master Timeline, and the manuscript where the source had prose.

Every story exports from the Dashboard as one JSON file, and that file imports back exactly as it was, manuscript included. On the Dashboard choose Import… → A StoryVue backup and pick the file. If you already have that story, StoryVue shows what's in the file and asks whether to import it as a copy or replace yours (a version of yours is saved first). The story opens when the import finishes. The file does not carry version history (§26 of How to use): an imported story starts its history fresh.

A backup with images (.zip) also carries the story's images, custom fonts and custom export themes. Whichever you import, the images are copied into the imported story's own storage, so deleting the original never affects it. A file from Export all stories imports every story in it, each as its own story with its images; if the export came in parts, import each part.

Bring in a draft from Word (.docx), Markdown (.md) or plain text (.txt). Google Docs, Scrivener (Compile), Ulysses and most writing apps can save or export one of these. On the Dashboard choose Import… → A manuscript, or use More → Import a draft… in a story's binder to add chapters to it.

1. Pick the file. StoryVue reads it in your browser.
2. Check the split. Headings, page breaks and scene-break lines (***, #, ---) become chapters and scenes; change where chapters and scenes start, and untick chapters you don't want, before anything is saved.
3. Choose people and places. StoryVue counts capitalised names that come up often and offers them as entities; names that are everyday words, like Will or Hope, you add yourself.
4. Review the names to link. Every mention of an entity's name or alias becomes a link the writer tools can count; untick any that aren't that person or place.
5. Import. Optionally, each scene also gets a scene node on the Master Timeline.

Formatting that comes across: headings, bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, lists, quotes and centred text. Left out, and listed before you import: images, footnotes, comments and tables (tables become plain paragraphs). Tracked changes are accepted.

World Anvil's free plan can export a whole world as one long page. StoryVue reads that saved page. No Guild membership is needed.

1. In World Anvil, open the world and choose Export world. The export opens as a page, not a download.
2. Save that page from your browser as Web Page, complete. This writes the page plus a folder of its images. Saving as "HTML only" also works, without images.
3. In StoryVue, on the Dashboard, choose Import… → A World Anvil world and pick the folder, or the single page file.
4. Review the table: one row per article, with the template StoryVue detected, the entity type it will become, a Skip option, and a note wherever the mapping is not the obvious one. Rename the story if you like, then press Import.

What arrives: every article as an entity of the matching type, with its body as formatted text; cross-links between articles as connections; plots as the plot hierarchy and the Master Timeline; timelines as history events; campaign heroes with their 5e stat blocks; prose articles as manuscript chapters; session reports as play sessions. Anything StoryVue could not place is kept as text in the article's body, never dropped, and listed for you before import.

Images and a settlement's map come along when the page was saved as "Web Page, complete" and your plan includes image galleries (Writer and up). Secrets, map pins, and calendars are not on World Anvil's export page, so they cannot be imported. The export page is the input; a printed PDF of the world is not.

Any character's Game stats section has Import character sheet. Use D&D Beyond's Export to PDF, then pick that PDF. StoryVue reads level, class and ancestry, hit points, armor class, speed, the six abilities, features, equipment, and spells, and fills the character's appearance, personality and backstory where they were empty. Spell rules text comes from the bundled 5e System Reference Document where its license allows. The PDF is parsed in your browser and never uploaded. D&D Beyond's PDF marks every listed spell the same way, so none arrive as prepared: tick the ones you have prepared.

Roll tables: paste a table you already use. StoryVue reads plain lines, numbered lists, and Markdown rows, and turns a printed range like 01-20 into the weight, so the odds come across with the entries. Monsters: when adding to an encounter, a stat block can be pasted as JSON, beside the 656 bundled SRD stat blocks. Both are part of the World Builder plan's Game Master suite; game stats on your own characters are free.

We surveyed how twenty-eight writing and worldbuilding tools export, and we are considering importers for the ones whose exports StoryVue can read cleanly: Plottr and Kanka, which export plain JSON, and a Scrivener project folder read directly. Tools that export the manuscript alone, Campfire among them, are covered today by the manuscript import above.

One thing no import can bring is the part that makes StoryVue what it is. No other tool records what changes in a scene, or a relationship as phases, so an import arrives with a full cast and timeline and empty scene boards. That is where you start.

If a particular import would win you over, tell us which one.