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.

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 you turn on Multipoint labels in Configure map; 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 and pick or upload an image; Use type's goes back to the type's icon.

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 the map settings, Hide absent (the default) removes what does not exist at that date, Fade absent dims it, and Show all ignores dates. 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, the layers button at the end of the map toolbar; 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. Under Show choose which kind (the choice appears once there is more than one); Spread 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, and its marker is ringed in each colour. 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. Colour the markers also tints each related location and fades the rest. 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, in small, medium or large squares, to show the corners nobody has described yet.
Travel range 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). 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.

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

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

In Filter locations, choose By point type (points, region labels, areas and habitats) or By location type (a group for each type the map uses) to start, or Add group to make one yourself. A group takes the location types, point types and tags you pick, and a location belongs to it if it has any one of them. Name it, give it a colour, and under Show when choose Zoomed in or Zoomed out to show it only at that distance: small towns that appear as you zoom in, kingdom names that make way for them.

The groups 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 group; right-click it, or press and hold on a touch screen, for Show only this. Other holds the locations in no group, and a location in two groups stays on the map while either is shown. Groups work on top of the filters, and what they hide moves to Not visible in the Locations list. Your groups are your own: everyone on the project sets up theirs.

Why are some labels hidden? #

Because they would overlap. With Hide overlapping labels on in Configure map, 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 Filter locations searches by name, every match keeps its label.

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.

When a map gets crowded, Filter locations hides kinds of location (Show Points, Show Labels, Show Polygonals, Show Multipoints) or the ones that match a tag or a name.

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 tries another.

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.

Tips #

Give the map a scale in Configure map. 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 groups By point type and set Region labels to Zoomed out: the names of realms give way to towns as you zoom in.
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.