Sequential Stories work best when readers can leave and come back without having to remember where they stopped.

GazetteBuilder can keep track of a reader’s position in a Story without requiring a user account, login, profile, or campaign membership system. Progress is stored locally in the reader’s browser and is used only to support Story navigation.

Ordinary Gazette browsing remains separate. Reading a Location, Character, Organization, Event, or other non-Story Entry does not require GazetteBuilder to track progress.

Progress Begins With the Story

Reader Progress is only relevant when someone enters sequential Story content.

When a reader starts a Story, GazetteBuilder can remember which sequence position has been reached so the Story landing page can offer the appropriate next action later.

For a reader who has not yet begun, the Story landing page can show:

Start

After progress has been recorded, it can instead offer:

Continue

and, when appropriate:

Restart

This turns the Story landing Entry into a reliable home for that sequence.

No Account Required

GazetteBuilder does not require readers to register just to remember their place.

Progress is stored in the browser rather than as a reader account or server-side reading history.

That keeps the feature lightweight and appropriate for public worldbuilding sites where most visitors are simply reading.

A reader can leave the site, return later using the same browser, visit the Story landing page, and continue from the position GazetteBuilder has remembered.

Progress Is Story-Specific

Each Story maintains its own progress.

A reader might be halfway through one serialized expedition while having completed another and not yet started a third.

For example:

EXP-01 → Position 6
THE-BRASS-COMPASS → Position 3
MARS-CHRONICLES → Not started

Restarting one Story does not reset the others.

This allows a Gazette to contain multiple independent reading sequences without requiring separate accounts or tracking systems.

Progress Is Not the Same as Page Views

Simply opening an Entry does not necessarily mean the reader has completed that step.

GazetteBuilder treats progression as an explicit Story action rather than assuming that every page load represents meaningful reading progress.

When the reader uses the Story’s Continue or Next control, GazetteBuilder can advance the stored Story position.

That distinction prevents ordinary refreshes, revisits, bookmarks, or accidental page loads from constantly changing progression.

Continue

When a Story is already in progress, its landing Entry can provide a Continue action.

Continue returns the reader to the appropriate point in the sequence rather than forcing them to find their place manually.

For example, if the reader has completed positions 1 through 4, Continue can take them to position 5, provided that Entry is currently available.

Reader Progress therefore works together with Story sequence order and Release Dates rather than bypassing them.

Restart

Readers may also want to begin a Story again.

GazetteBuilder can provide a Restart option after a Story has begun.

Because restarting changes remembered progress, the reader should confirm the action before the Story is reset.

Restart affects only that Story and returns its progress to the beginning. Other Stories remain untouched.

For a completed finite Story, Restart provides a straightforward way to read the sequence again from the start.

Release-Aware Progression

Reader Progress never makes an unreleased Story Entry accessible.

Suppose a reader has reached the latest currently available installment:

1 — Available
2 — Available
3 — Available
4 — Future Release

GazetteBuilder remembers the reader’s progress through position 3, but Continue cannot advance them into position 4 until that Entry becomes release-eligible.

A continuing Story can instead display:

To be continued…

When position 4 is eventually released, the same reader can return and continue normally.

Progress remembers where the reader is. Release controls determine what the reader is allowed to reach.

Story Order, Not World Chronology

Reader Progress follows the authored Story sequence.

It does not use Campaign Date or Timeline Sort to decide what comes next.

That means a Story can move backward and forward in fictional time:

1 — January 1889
2 — January 1889
3 — Flashback to 1872
4 — January 1889

The reader still progresses through positions 1, 2, 3, and 4 in that order.

Story sequence controls reading order; timeline information describes chronology.

Returning From Reference Material

Stories often lead readers into the wider Gazette.

A Story Entry might contain a semantic reference to a Character, Location, Organization, or historical Event. Following that link should not cause the reader to lose the context of the Story they were reading.

GazetteBuilder can preserve a route back to the Story, such as:

Return to The Brass Compass

or a link back to the Story landing Entry.

This allows readers to explore the world around the narrative without turning every side trip into a navigation dead end.

Reader Privacy

Reader Progress is deliberately small in scope.

GazetteBuilder does not need to create a server-side profile recording every Entry a visitor has viewed. It only needs enough local information to support sequential Story navigation.

Readers should be informed before Story progress is stored that:

• progress is stored in their browser;
• no GazetteBuilder account is required;
• the information is used for Story navigation;
• clearing the browser data will reset remembered progress.

This keeps the feature useful without turning a worldbuilding Gazette into a reader-tracking system.

What Happens if Browser Data Is Cleared?

Because progress is stored locally, removing that browser data removes the remembered Story positions.

GazetteBuilder then treats the reader as someone who has not previously begun those Stories.

Nothing about the Stories themselves is changed. Only that browser’s local memory of progress is lost.

This is an intentional tradeoff for providing convenient Story progression without requiring accounts or maintaining individual reading histories on the server.

Guided Reading Without Account Management

Reader Progress is designed to solve one specific problem:

help readers remember where they are in a sequential Story.

It does not attempt to turn GazetteBuilder into a membership system, player-management platform, or general analytics service.

That keeps the feature simple: readers can explore the Gazette freely, while Stories can still provide the familiar Start, Continue, and Restart experience of a guided reading sequence.