Maps

A map is an image with your world placed on it. Upload a drawing or generate one, then place your locations on it, to make a fantasy map for a book that stays linked to everything else you write.

How do I make a fantasy map for my book? #

Choose Create Map, give it a Map Title, and pick a Map source:

Upload image — a drawn map, a sketch, a photograph of a napkin. The map is the image plus everything you place on it, so the quality of the drawing matters less than you would think.
Generated map — a map made for you from a seed. See "Generating a map" below.

The map editor needs a wider screen than a phone.

Placing locations #

Every location lives on a map. Pick a tool from the toolbar and click the map:

Create Location — a single marker.
Create polygonal shape — a region you draw point by point; Reshape polygonal shape changes it later.
Create text label — a name written on the map.
Create multipoint location — one location marked in many places.

Click a location on the map and its panel opens; from the location's page, View on full map takes you back to it. Use Move item to drag a location to a new spot.

The rail of buttons on the right of the map opens one panel at a time: Locations list, Filters, Display rules, Field locations, Overlays, Travel range, Layers and Global. Click a button again, or press Escape, to close its panel; the map remembers which one you left open. The search box at the top of the Locations list narrows the list only, not the map.

Can one location appear in several places on the map? #

Yes: make it a multipoint location. That is the shape for a creature's range or a string of battlefields: one record, many places.

Create it with Create multipoint location.
In its panel, choose Add items. Every click on the map adds another marker, until you press Done or Escape.
In Move item mode, each marker drags on its own.

The panel lists the markers, and any can be removed, as long as one remains. A location holds up to 500 markers. A multipoint location has no single position, so plotline routes, the story map and the distances between chapters leave it out, and it cannot hold a city map.

A multipoint location's name is not written on the map unless a ruleset in Display rules sets Labels to Show for it; pointing at a marker still names it. Under Multipoint locations, Area draws one shaded region around the markers instead of the markers, with the name inside it, and Both draws the region and the markers. Select the location and its markers show, so you can still move them.

How do I give many locations the same type? #

A location's type, a town, a ruin, a creature's habitat, is chosen in the Type field when you create the location, in its panel on the map and on its page. Type a name that does not exist yet and choose Create “…”: the type is registered for the whole project, so every other location can use it, and it appears in Filter locations, in the filters of the Locations list and in Settings → Map, where it gets its icon. A name that differs only in capitals reuses the type you already have.

To type many locations at once, open the map's Locations list and choose Select locations. Tick locations one by one, or tick the box at the top to select every location the current filter shows, then pick a type under Set type…, or create one there. Clear type removes the type from the selected locations. With Filter locations this takes three steps: filter by name, select all shown, set the type.

Location icons #

A location takes its marker's icon from its type. To give one location an icon of its own, choose Set icon in its panel. Under Symbols, pick a ready-made symbol: settlements, terrain, nature and weather, dungeons, faith, military, travel, trade and craft, magic, people and signs (search finds one by name); under Image, pick or upload a picture. An uploaded icon is cropped to a small square. A symbol is drawn in the location's colour at the marker's size, so a ruin and a royal castle can share one symbol and still differ. Remove icon and use the type's goes back to the type's icon.

A location type gets its symbol or image the same way, in Settings → Map. When several are set, the location's own image wins, then its own symbol, then the type's image, then the type's symbol. Icons and symbols show while Custom icons is on in the location's ruleset (see Display rules).

Locations through time #

A location can exist only for a stretch of history, a city founded in the second age or a fortress that fell. On its page, the Details card has Existed since and Existed until. When any location has such dates, Toggle timeline control shows a slider, and its date decides what the map shows. Under Time view in a ruleset of Display rules, Hide (the default) removes what does not exist at that date and Fade dims it. Date picker in Global hides the control when you do not need it. The eras of your timeline appear as shortcuts under the slider.

In the map's Locations list, whatever does not exist at the date on the slider moves to a Not visible group at the end of the list. Overlays (below) read the same date: a location that does not exist yet adds nothing to a territory or to the heat.

What can the map's overlays show me? #

Overlays draw what your notes say about the map on top of it. Open them with Overlays in the map's rail; the number on it is how many are on. Each overlay has its own switch and a legend, and several can be on at once. Settings you change less often, such as how far a territory spreads or how strong the heat is, sit behind Display options, the sliders button beside the switch. Your overlays are your own, like the rest of the map's view.

Territories draws a region for each language, organization, creature or record of a collection around the locations related to it, so the places that share a tongue, a guild or a habitat become one area. A record's own place on the map, picked in a location custom field such as a guild's headquarters, counts the same way. Under Show choose which kind (the choice appears once there is more than one); the Spread slider decides how far a region reaches past its locations; where two meet, the one with more locations nearby takes the ground between them. A location related to several of them, such as a port town where two languages are spoken, always lies inside each of their regions, so those regions overlap around it. Territories never change how the markers look, and their names are drawn above the markers. Untick a name in the list to leave it out; each collection is its own choice under Show, its records drawn in shades of the collection's colour. For languages the role chips (native, official, trade, ceremonial) choose which kinds of use count. With heat or coverage on as well, territories draw only their outlines.
Heat warms the places where the most happens. Story counts the chapters set at a location or one of its places (in one book, if you choose one), History the events related to it, up to the timeline's current date if you like, and Cast the characters related to it. Radius and Opacity set how it spreads; the legend gives the quietest and busiest counts.
Coverage shades every part of the map that has no location, to show the corners nobody has described yet; Cell size sets how large the squares are, and the legend says how much of the map is still empty. It counts only what the map shows: locations your filters or the date hide leave their square empty, and with Field locations on, records' places count too.
Travel range, which has its own button in the rail, draws rings around a starting point at one day, two days and so on, until they pass the edge of the map. Start from a location in the list, the selected location, or a point you click on the map, and give the distance covered in a day, in the unit of the map's scale (with a scale in kilometres the field reads km per day). The list offers what the map shows, field locations included. While travel is off, the tab says so and offers Turn on travel. When the project has a speed in its world rules, Speed from can take it from a rule instead; it is converted to the scale's unit, and a warning says so when the two cannot be converted. It needs a map scale; while it is on, the Measure distance tool also says how many days the measured distance takes. Open Nearest to … to list the ten closest locations with the distance and time to each. Under Journey, add up to 20 stops from the list, from the selected location or by clicking the map, move or remove them, and read each leg's distance and time and the total; the route is drawn on the map as a dashed line, and each map keeps its own journey. Every distance is a straight line: roads, rivers and terrain are not counted.

How do I show only some locations on a crowded map? #

Save filters. A filter is a set of locations you show and hide together, like cities, states or seas, and each switches on its own, so cities with states, or states with everything else, is one click.

In Filters, choose By point type (points, region labels, areas and habitats) or By location type (a filter for each type the map uses) to start, or Add filter to make one yourself. When you can edit the map, the generated filters are shared with the project, so display rules can style them; running it again adds only the ones the project lacks. The filter's setup takes the place of the list in the same panel, beside the map rather than over it, with Back, Cancel and Save. Under Match, fill in what its locations have in common: Name contains, Point types, Record types (locations, or the records behind field locations, below), Location types and Tags. A location belongs to the filter when it fits every field you fill in; within one field, any of the picked values is enough. Under Where it applies, Show when shows the filter only Zoomed in or Zoomed out: small towns that appear as you zoom in, kingdom names that make way for them. Preview counts what matches on this map as you type and lists the first few, and the map fades everything the filter does not match until you save or cancel.

The filters appear as chips at the top of the map, each with the number of locations in it. Click a chip to show or hide its filter; right-click it, or press and hold on a touch screen, for Show only this. Other holds the locations in no filter, and a location in two filters stays on the map while either is shown. What the filters hide moves to Not visible in the Locations list. Filter chips in Global hides the chips.

How do I change how locations look? #

In Display rules. A ruleset has a name, the shared filters it Applies to, and how their locations look: Size, Opacity, Custom icons, Filter colour (markers tinted in their filter's colour), Labels and Tooltips, Multipoint locations and Time view. What a ruleset leaves on Default comes from the Default ruleset, which sits at the bottom of the list and applies to everything else. A location takes the first ruleset that lists one of its filters that is on, so order them with Move up and Move down. Size is in map points on one scale for every ruleset, so a ruleset at 8 draws its markers twice as large as a default of 4. A ruleset edits in the panel, and the map shows each change at once: Save keeps it, Cancel or closing the panel puts the old look back. A ruleset applies to shared filters only; your own filters are listed under it with Share with the project, which shares one and adds it. Rulesets are shared with the project: everyone who can view the map sees them, and members who can edit it change them.

Can everyone on the project use the same filters? #

Yes: Share with the project in a filter's menu moves it from Yours to Shared with the project, and a new filter is shared from the start when you can edit the map. Everyone who can view the map sees shared filters; members who can edit the map change, reorder and delete them, and Only on this map keeps one to the map you are on. Which filters are on stays your own choice, so switching one off hides nothing for anybody else. Filters you made before sharing existed stay under Yours until you share them, one at a time or with Share all with the project beside Yours.

Below the saved filters, the folded Quick filter narrows the map for the moment by name, type, tag or date, on top of the saved filters. A dot beside it says it is on.

Where do my records' locations appear on the map? #

In Field locations. A character's birthplace or a relic's resting place picked in a location custom field appears on the map once you turn on Show on the map, drawn with the record's picture when it has one, else the field's icon or a shape for its kind. They behave like locations: they join the Locations list under their record type, the filters and the quick filter apply to them, and clicking one opens its record. Add a filter beside a record type makes a filter for that kind, ready to be styled.

Why are some labels hidden? #

Because they would overlap. With Hide overlapping labels on in Global, as it is unless you change it, the map places region labels first, then areas, then location types with larger icons, then longer names, and hides a label that would cover one already placed; the marker stays. Point at a marker or select it and its label shows, and labels too small to read appear as you zoom in. While the Quick filter searches by name, every match keeps its label, and a ruleset with Labels set to Show keeps its labels too.

Layers #

A map has layers you draw on and show or hide independently: political borders over geography, the same city in two centuries, the routes three different characters took. Add one with Add new layer.

The Layers tab lists the top layer first; drag a layer by its handle to move it up or down, and the topmost layer that is shown is marked On top. The eye button shows or hides a layer, and the Opacity slider fades it, saved when you let go.

Generating a map #

For a world without a drawn map, the generator makes one from a seed: coastlines, terrain, rivers and biomes, in the Style and Heightmap you choose. The same seed always makes the same map, so it is stable enough to build on. Regenerate seed, the button beside Seed, tries another; to go back to a map you noted down, type its number in Seed and press Enter. Recent seeds lists the last ten you used on the layer, and clicking one brings its map back.

Save as layer keeps the current seed and style as a layer named after the seed. It is saved hidden, so you can keep trying other seeds and switch back to it from the layers list.

The generator is a starting point rather than a substitute for a cartographer. It is most useful early, when you need somewhere for things to be.

Can I make a map of a city? #

Yes. On a location's page, choose Create city map to generate a town plan with streets, districts and walls. Choose its Size, from a hamlet to a metropolis, and its Terrain, Walls, Roads and Water; New seed gives a different plan. Like the world generator, the same seed always makes the same town. The location's places can then be positioned on it.

On the map, the panel of a location with a city map shows a small preview of the town; Open city map takes you to it on the location's page.

Tips #

Give the map a scale in Global. The Measure distance tool then shows real distances, and Lens can check whether a journey is too fast.
With a scale set, a speed in world rules, such as "Elves travel 40 km a day", lets a character's Consistency check catch a journey that pace could not make.
Set each location type's icon in Settings → Map, and use Set icon only for the exceptions.
Put borders, routes and eras on separate layers so each can be shown on its own.
Turn on Territories for languages to see where each is spoken, then Heat from Story to see where the book actually goes: the gap between the two is often where the next chapter is.
On a crowded map, start filters By point type and set Region labels to Zoomed out: the names of realms give way to towns as you zoom in.
Share a "Villages" filter and give it a ruleset that shrinks and fades them: the whole team reads the same map.
Save a generated map you like with Save as layer before trying more seeds.
Give plotline beats a location and the plotline draws its route on the map; give chapters one and Lens follows your characters across it.

Locations, places and more — what a location and a place are for.
Plotlines — see one thread's route across the map.
Lens — follow each character's journey on the story map.
Timeline — the dates that move a location through time.
Images — manage the images your maps and icons use.