Build mode

Reference. Part of the GM reference. For the steps of a task, read the GM guide.

Build mode is where you author the world. The World tree rail is on the left, the map is in the center, and the Build rail is on the right.

A map with no tiles shows a card over the canvas. Paint tiles opens the Paint tab and puts focus on the palette. Generate map opens the Generate dialog. The card goes away after the first tile is painted.

In Play mode, a map with no tiles draws no grid and no coordinate labels. A plain card names the empty map. For the GM, its Open Build mode button switches to Build mode. A Player tab shows only the name.

Node kinds

The world is a tree of nodes. The top node is the world map. Regions and interiors sit beneath it.

Node settings

Add a child and Edit settings in the World tree open the same fields.

A width or height outside that range keeps the dialog open, and a message above the buttons names the field. A map imported with an edge over 64 tiles keeps its size when you edit its other settings.

The environment tag is a description only. It has no effect on painting, generation, or rules.

A smaller width or height that removes tiles asks first. Cancel on that confirm opens the settings again with the values you typed. The party, a split character, or a placed creature that stood outside the new size moves to the nearest walkable tile inside it. In the same way, Cancel on the confirm that replaces every tile after Generate map opens the Generate dialog again with the same choices and seed.

A locked node stops every move of the party or a character into it: a click on a tile that links to it, a walk across a border into it, and a teleport from the World panel. The GM view still zooms into a locked node where nobody moves. In a GM tab, a dialog names the key item and the character who carries it, for example “Locked. Requires the warding key; Aldric carries it.” The match is on the item name, without regard to case, across all characters. Click Unlock to open the lock and go on, or Unlock anyway when nobody carries the key. Unlocking sets the lock to Unlocked and writes a travelogue line. Click Stay out to keep the lock shut. On a walk of the whole party to a linked tile, the party then stops on the last tile before the link and spends the time of that walk. On a border crossing or a teleport, the party stays where it was. A Player tab shows the toast “The way into the Barrow is locked.” and nobody moves.

If the key item matches no library item and no item that a character carries, a message after Save says that no item opens the lock yet. The lock still saves, so you can name an item before you make it.

In Build mode, the World tree row of a locked node shows a lock icon, and its tooltip names the key. The region name on the parent map starts with a lock. The Tile inspector shows “Locked (needs Silver Key)” under Zooms into for a tile that links to the node. An unlocked node shows no mark.

World tree

The World tree in the Build rail and the World panel in Play mode show the same node tree. Each tree scrolls in its own box. On a window wider than about 1090 px, Build mode fits the window and the page does not scroll. The World tree, each Build rail tab, and the palette swatches scroll in their own box, and only when their content is taller than the window. A wider window gives the Build rail more width, so the palette shows more swatches in a row.

A branch is closed when the tree first shows it. The exceptions are the top node and the rows above the current map. When the map in view changes, the tree opens the rows above it and scrolls to its row.

The tree takes one Tab stop. Inside it, Up and Down move between rows, and Home and End go to the first and last row. Right opens a closed row or moves into an open one, and Left closes an open row or moves to its parent row. Enter opens the map of the row. In Build mode, Shift+F10 or the Menu key opens the actions menu of the row.

Palette tools

The Palette card has four tool buttons and five sections of swatches. A click on a swatch picks it as the brush, and a drag paints it on every cell that the pointer crosses. The name of the picked swatch shows above the swatch sections, for example Brush: Grass (random variant). While Inspect, Region, Erase path, or Erase tile is the tool, the swatches fade. A click on a swatch still picks it as the brush.

A brush paints only while the Paint tab is open. On the Tile and Encounters tabs, a click on the map selects the cell, the same as Inspect. A chip at the right end of the map toolbar names the tool that a click uses, such as Painting: Grass, Painting: Briarwick region, or Inspect.

The Art size row (1x, 2x, 3x) sets how large the next painted tile draws. At 2x or 3x, one click stamps one tile whose image stretches across a 2x2 or 3x3 block. A scaled stamp places one block per click, and roads always paint at 1x.

The block is visual only. The covered cells keep their own terrain, roads across the block stay tile-sized, and fog reveals the block cell by cell.

A terrain type with several variants, such as grass or mountain, has one swatch in the Terrain section. That swatch mixes the variants, so a large area does not repeat one image. The position of a cell on the map sets its variant, so the same cell always gets the same variant from this swatch.

To paint one exact image, select Show variants. The swatches then show one swatch for each variant. If the active brush is a terrain swatch, the brush stays on the same terrain when you change the checkbox. The browser keeps the choice.

Roads overlay the terrain under them. If you repaint the terrain under a road, the road stays on top.

Tools card

If a map is too large for 64 pixels per tile, Export PNG uses a smaller size and names the size it used. If no size fits, the app refuses the export.

Stroke undo and redo

In Build mode, the header shows Undo stroke and Redo stroke to the left of Undo and Redo.

The tooltip of each button names the edit and its map, such as “Undo the paint stroke on Briarwick Vale”. A button is disabled when it has no edit to change.

Undo stroke reverts only the cells and fields that the edit changed. Fog that the party revealed and notes written after the edit stay. A tile link to a node that was deleted after the edit comes back as no link. A tile outside the current width and height of the map does not come back, so a stroke undone after a shrink leaves the map at its new size.

An undo or redo asks first when it removes maps, such as the sub-maps of a generation, or when the edit is on a map other than the one in view. On a removed map, a character rejoins the party, a creature becomes unplaced, a handout becomes campaign-wide, and a quest link goes, as for a deleted map. The party moves back to where it stood before the edit only while it still stands where the edit left it, or stands in a map that the undo removes. When the place it stood before is gone, the party comes out beside the removed map, as it does for a deleted map. If no map is left to land in, the undo refuses.

Deleting a map in the World tree drops every stroke edit on that map from the lists. The stroke lists are separate from the header Undo and Redo, and they end when the page reloads.

Tile inspector fields

The inspector heading shows the art of the selected tile and its name, for example “Forest”, or “Grass, Road (h)” for a tile with an overlay. Under the name, it names the cell, for example “Column 11, row 11”. Columns and rows count from 1, the same as the numbers along the map edges.

Tile menu

In a GM tab in Build mode, a right-click on a map cell selects the cell and opens the tile menu, if the pointer did not drag. Shift+F10 or the Menu key opens the same menu at the keyboard cursor.

Map generation

The Generate card fills the current node with a generated layout. The dialog shows a preview of the exact layout before it changes anything. The preview numbers the columns and rows when the tiles are large enough, and it outlines each block that Generate links to a sub-map, such as each region of the World archetype.

Links to the parent map

Every generated layout can reach its parent map.

If nothing on the parent map links to the node, generation places an entrance tile near the center of the parent and reports where. If a parent tile already links to the node, the tile stays where it is. Its marker changes to the marker of the new archetype, for example from a dungeon entrance to a cave entrance.

The art of a particular place, such as an inn, stays if the new archetype has the same point-of-interest type. A wilderness takes no marker, so its old marker becomes grass.

Names after regeneration

A region block on a world map has no marker, and the name of the region is its label on the world map. If a generated name follows the pattern of an archetype, the node takes the pattern of the new archetype with the same word.

For example, “The Ashford Hills” regenerated as a desert becomes “The Ashford Sands”. “The Crypt of Dunholt” regenerated as a cave becomes “Dunholt Caves”.

These names do not change: a name that you typed, a name of one word, the name of a building, and the name of a level in a stack. Undo restores the old name.

Parent tiles after regeneration

The parent tiles that link to a regenerated wilderness, highlands, frontier, desert, or wetlands take the ground of that climate. For example, a region block regenerated as highlands becomes mostly hills and mountains.

These parent tiles keep their art: water, coast tiles, points of interest, and tiles that link to another map. A river keeps its course, and a block that already reads as the new climate keeps its art. Each tile keeps its fog state and its notes.

A region regenerated as a town, an island, or a world keeps its ground and gets no marker, because the world generator places no settlements. Undo restores the old tiles.

Outdoor archetypes

The six outdoor archetypes differ in climate.

In each outdoor archetype, the north edge is colder than the south edge. Rivers run down from the hills to water or to the map edge. Landmarks such as ruins, mines, and camps stand on open ground.

An oasis stands only in the desert. A lighthouse stands only on a shoreline that faces open water, over the coast piece of its cell. A watchtower usually stands beside a road. The climate can also give jungle, savanna, taiga, glacier, badlands, snowy hills and peaks, volcanic peaks, and deep sea, each with its own tiles.

An outdoor map also gets settlements, with farmland around them.

Roads join the settlements and the keep. The roads leave the map at one edge, or at two edges on a huge or vast map. A road crosses a river on a bridge near a settlement and on a ford farther out.

Towns

A town has a core of streets and buildings around a central crossroads. The inn, the tavern, the blacksmith, the general store, and the temple stand nearest the crossroads, around a cobbled plaza. A well or a fountain stands near them, and a large town adds a market and a town hall.

A larger town then adds other shops and trades, houses near the center, and cottages near the edge. Farms and fields lie outside the core, with a windmill among the fields. Some towns have a graveyard.

Some towns have a river. The streets cross it on bridges, and a watermill stands on its bank.

About one large town in two gets a stone wall, with a gate on each street and a water gate where the river passes. A gate is open ground. The party never lands on the town wall when it enters the town, and a new link never goes on the wall.

Ports

The town map of a port has the sea along its north, east, or west edge, with a sandy shore. The party still enters by the street from the south edge. No street leaves into the sea, so a large port has three ways out.

A river in a port flows into the sea, and a small port has no river. A large port gets a wall as often as an inland town. The wall of a port is open on the sea side, and its two ends stop at the shore.

A port has one pier, or two on a large, huge, or vast map. Each pier starts at a timber quay on a straight part of the shore and runs straight out to a pier head. A street links each quay to the other streets, and the party can walk out to the pier head.

Interior archetypes

The four interior archetypes differ in layout.

A dungeon or a cave has rubble. The bottom level keeps a chest on the floor cell farthest from the way in.

The room behind the door of a house has a hearth and a table. The other rooms of a castle or a house are bedrooms, dining rooms, libraries, storerooms, or empty rooms, and a castle can also have chapels.

A town building takes its furnishings from what it is.

Obstacles, doors, and stairs

A pillar, a table, a bed, a bookshelf, a shelf, and a counter are obstacles. The party never lands on an obstacle or a wall when it enters a map, and a new link never goes on one. The party also does not land on deep water when it enters or leaves a region, unless the map has no other floor or land.

The party enters an interior on the outer door nearest the side that it comes from. In an interior with no outer door, the party lands on the nearest floor.

A generated map never puts an obstacle beside a door or a staircase, or where it cuts off part of the floor. A generated staircase or trapdoor never sits directly inside a door. The party never has to cross a staircase or a trapdoor to reach the rest of the floor.

A trapdoor leads down like stairs down. A generated building links its trapdoor to its cellar. On a map that you paint, link the trapdoor to the level below, and that level returns through its stairs up.

Level stacks

Each level of a multi-level dungeon or cave becomes a child node.

• The first level has no stairs up, because its door is the way in.
• The stairs down of one level lead to the stairs up of the level below.
• The stairs down stand as far from the stairs up as the level allows.
• The bottom level has no stairs down.

If you generate a node that its parent reaches by a staircase, the node keeps the staircase back. A level below its parent gets stairs up where the first level has its door. A floor above its parent offers the upper floor alone.

The new levels below a regenerated level take the name of the top of the stack, for example “Ashford Barrow (level 3)”.

Worlds

A world is a continent in a sea, split into up to nine regions. Each region is a block of land tiles that all link to one region map. A small island is in no region.

A region map is a larger, more detailed copy of its block. Its coasts, ranges, forests, and rivers sit where the world map shows them, and small hills, lakes, and streams fill in between. The map takes the outline of its block where it meets a neighbor region, and the land of that neighbor stays blank. A coast keeps its sea out to the edge of the map. A larger block gets a larger map, from small (8 x 8) for a block of one tile to vast (48 x 48) for a block 25 tiles across. An edge exit arrow shows when the party is near the edge of the painted land, not only near the border of the grid.

A map that you generate again from the Generate dialog follows its block in the same way. This applies to each open-terrain archetype (wilderness, highlands, frontier, desert, wetlands, and island) under any parent map. A wilderness that links from a few tiles of a hand-painted map then draws the land of those tiles. A climate archetype first repaints the block (see Parent tiles after regeneration), and the new map follows the repainted block. A region regenerated as a desert then draws desert inside the coasts of its block. An island follows the block too, so an island on a block of inland tiles has no sea around it. A town and a world do not follow the block. The Size field starts on the size that fits the block, and the preview shows the map that follows it.

The terrain of a block sets the archetype of its region map.

A world has rivers but no roads or settlements, because each region gets those on its own map.

Sub-maps

The Sub-maps field shows for every region archetype. It sets which places on the new map get maps of their own.

The places are the regions of a world, the buildings of a town, and these sites of an outdoor map: settlements, the keep, the dungeon, cave entrances, mines, and ruins. A well, a fountain, a market, and a graveyard have no inside. All four cells of a town building link to its inside.

Each sub-map gets a generated name and its own seed. The seed comes from the seed of the map above it, so the preview is the same for every Sub-maps value. A dungeon or a cave sub-map gets one to three levels.

One generation creates at most 300 sub-maps. A place past that limit keeps its marker with no link, and the message after the generation counts those places. One undo removes the new map and every new sub-map.

Generation always makes these maps, whatever the Sub-maps value:

• the levels of a dungeon or a cave
• the upper floor and the dungeon of a castle
• the guest floor of an inn
• the cellar under a trapdoor

So a generated staircase or trapdoor always leads to a real map.

A world generated on the top map moves the party start next to the first town, inside the region that contains that town. The party then starts on land, on a tile with no marker and no link. A character split off on the world map rejoins the party there, and a character on any other map keeps its place. Undo puts the party and those characters back where they stood. If the new world has no town with open land beside it, the party does not move.

Generate a world on the Welcome card goes to the top map first, so it always replaces the world, even when a sub-region is in view. After it, a second card offers Create a character and Check the party start. Both switch to Play mode, and the first also opens the New character form. The card says whether the party moved to a start beside a town.

Link warnings

Build mode shows a warning below the tool tabs when the node in view has no way in or no way out. The World tree marks each node with a problem with a warning triangle. A closed branch shows a triangle and the number of nodes inside it that have a warning.

Neither problem strands a party. A node without an authored way out offers a plain “Return to (parent)” button.

Encounters tab

The Encounters tab of the Build rail stages creatures on the map in view. The Foes subtab lists foes, and the NPCs subtab lists friendly and neutral people. The NPCs subtab has New NPC and From bestiary, and its bestiary dialog lists the neutral and friendly templates first.

The Template list groups every campaign template and every library template by disposition and then by source, for example “Hostile, this campaign” and “Friendly, library”, each sorted by name. From the Foes subtab the hostile groups come first, and from an NPCs list the neutral groups come first. Each copy keeps the disposition of its template, so an Innkeeper arrives as a friendly NPC. The count adds up to 20 copies. Two or more copies get numbers after the name (“Gray Wolf 1” to “Gray Wolf 4”), and a later spawn continues from the highest number in use. With Spread over nearby tiles ticked, the first copy goes on the chosen tile and the others go on the nearest open tiles around it, never on a wall, deep water, or an empty cell. When the open area runs out, the rest share the chosen tile. The location defaults to the selected cell of the map in view, or to the middle of the map when no cell is selected.

A defeated foe stays in the campaign until you remove it. Clear defeated counts the hostile creatures at 0 HP that stand on the map in view. It removes all of them, except a foe in the order of a running fight.

Clear defeated leaves foes on other maps and unplaced foes. It also takes the removed foes off any quest links, and one travelogue note counts them, for example “Cleared 4 defeated foes: Goblin x3, Wolf.” Undo brings them back.