GM Profiles

The AI Game Master narrates your journey but never changes the mechanics. All three profiles play the same game — only the storytelling voice differs.

Profiles

Chronicler

Tone: Grounded, practical, spare.

The Chronicler reports what happened. Minimal folklore, no embellishment. Events are described plainly. Consequences are stated as facts. If you want the game to feel like a logbook, this is your narrator.

Best for: Players who want facts. Repeat players who already know the world.

Fireside

Tone: Serious campfire narrator. Subtle uncanny moments.

Fireside is the default profile. It tells the story like someone recounting their journey around a fire — mostly grounded, with occasional moments that feel slightly off. Not horror, not fantasy. Just the uneasy feeling that the valley has a memory.

Best for: First playthrough. Players who want atmosphere without spectacle.

Lantern-Bearer

Tone: Uncanny and liminal, but grounded in consequences.

The Lantern-Bearer narrates the same events but frames them through a stranger lens. The valley feels alive. Coincidences feel deliberate. The weird folklore percentage is higher (~15% vs Fireside’s ~5%). Still grounded — no magic, no supernatural mechanics — but the tone is distinctly eerie.

Best for: Experienced players who want a different feel. Players who enjoy atmospheric tension.

Switching profiles

Set the GM profile at launch:

# Use the default (Fireside)
trail tui --seed 42

# Switch to Chronicler
trail tui --seed 42 --gm-profile chronicler

# Switch to Lantern-Bearer
trail tui --seed 42 --gm-profile lantern

Weirdness level

The --weirdness flag (0-3) controls how much folklore and uncanny content the GM injects. Higher values unlock more strange details. The default is 2. Each run starts with 2 uncanny tokens that the GM can spend on strong uncanny moments.

# Maximum folklore (Lantern-Bearer recommended)
trail new --seed 42 --gm-profile lantern --weirdness 3

# Minimal folklore
trail new --seed 42 --weirdness 0

Choosing a model

The --model flag selects which Ollama model generates narration. The default is llama3.2. Larger models produce richer text but are slower:

trail tui --seed 42 --model mistral

Voice narration

Enable spoken narration with --voice. Each GM profile maps to a different voice and pacing style. Control playback speed with --voice-pace:

trail tui --seed 42 --voice --voice-pace slow

Voice pacing options: fast, normal (default), slow. Requires the voice-soundboard package. Audio plays in the background and can be interrupted with any key press.

Disabling the GM

Run without AI narration entirely:

trail tui --seed 42 --gm-off

The game plays identically — you just see fallback text instead of GM narration. Useful for speed runs or systems without Ollama.

Requirements

The GM requires Ollama running locally. No API keys, no cloud calls, no cost. The game auto-detects whether Ollama is available and falls back gracefully if it isn’t. The default 30-second timeout allows for first-load model warm-up on slower hardware.