Tutorial 08 Places and labels

Part of the tutorial: page 8 of 12

▶ Watch this page: part 8 of the tutorial video (about 2 min), with narration and subtitles.

Tutorial 8: Places and labels

Keep a generated place, add a place of your own, change a pin style, name a sea, and place a name that had no room.

Start from: 07-roads-and-sea-lanes.json, the map as it is at the end of Tutorial 07 Roads and sea lanes. Download it, then open Maps on the rail and click Import JSON; the map is listed under its name, and Load opens it. Or carry on with your own map from Tutorial 07 Roads and sea lanes.

Places are pins: a point on the map with an icon, a name and a description. The run on page 5 placed nearly two thousand, from capitals to villages, each on a pin style (Capital, City, Town, Castle and so on) that sets its look and the detail levels at which it and its name are shown.

Every name on the map is a label: the labels of pins, routes and regions follow their owner's name, and standalone labels name anything else, such as a sea or a mountain range. Names are placed so they don't cover each other; a name with no room is left out until you place it yourself.

Steps

1. Click Routes and pins on the rail. Pin is chosen at the start of the bar. Type Mostadra in the Pins list's search field, click the row that is left, and click its Focus view button: the map zooms to the city on the King's Road, and it opens in the inspector. Open the inspector's Generated section to read what the run recorded about it: its place in the world, its population, its people and its history.

   

   Mostadra in the inspector, with what the run recorded about it.

2. Type a Description: A walled city where the hill roads meet the King's Road. Then tick Lock in the Generated section. Generating again replaces a generated place you have not changed; a place you have changed (as the description does) or locked is kept.

   In Foundry, a pin's name and description become a page of the scene's journal when the map is exported to a scene (see Export).

3. Choose Place on the bar and set Pin style to Castle. Zoom in on the Red Hills and click the hills west of the King's Road, north-west of the words The Red Hills. The new pin is called Castle and opens in the inspector: change Name to Redwatch and press Enter. Its icon is on the map, but not its name: the Castle style shows castles' names only from the Regional detail level, and the map is at Province.

   With No style, Select icon on the bar chooses the icon of a plain pin, whose name always shows. A pin's colour and size are set in its inspector; changing them by hand sets its Style to Custom.

4. Open Styles and icons (in More at the foot of the rail) and click Castle in the Pin styles list. In the inspector's Label group, set Name detail level to Province. Every pin on the Castle style follows the change at once: Redwatch's name shows, and so do the names of the run's castles.

   

   Redwatch, west of the King's Road, with the names of the run's castles now shown.

   A style changes every pin that follows it, so making every town larger, or every ruin red, is one edit. Save as… in a pin's inspector makes a new style from a pin you have tuned.

5. Click Labels on the rail. Choose Place on the bar and set Style to Water. Zoom in on the sea east of the continent and click the open water between the continent and the island of Thetfield. The new label opens in the inspector: change Text to The Morning Sea and press Enter, then set Rotation to -30 degrees so the name runs up the channel.

   

   The Morning Sea, in the Water label style.

   While you hold a label in Place mode, scroll to turn it and Shift+Scroll to resize it. To make every sea name look alike, give them all the Water style and change the style.

6. Set the Labels list's Kind of label filter to With no room: it lists the names the map has no room for, here a few duchies and the names of your two routes (route names are placed last). While you are placing labels, each shows faintly where it would go. Zoom in on the Red Hills: the duchy name Southamney lies faintly across the town names east of Mostadra.

   

   The names with no room, listed, and shown faintly on the map while you place labels.

7. Drag the faint Southamney a little south, below the town names, and let go. A name you have dragged keeps its place, and is always drawn; the smaller names around it make room.

   

   Southamney, dragged into a place of its own.

8. Your sea lane's name had no room either. Zoom in on the sea again: The Islemark Crossing shows faintly above the middle of its line, near the coast. Drag it out into the open water south of The Morning Sea.

   

   The Islemark Crossing, placed in the open sea.

9. Choose Select on the bar to stop placing, close the inspector, and save the map.

What you should see

Mostadra, locked, with its description. A castle of your own, Redwatch, in the Red Hills, its name shown with every castle's. The Morning Sea named in the water east of the continent, and the names of the duchy Southamney and The Islemark Crossing placed by hand.

To compare your map with the tutorial's, or to start the next page from exactly this map, download 08-places-and-labels.json and import it in Maps with Import JSON.

In Foundry

Everything on this page is the same in Foundry. When the map is exported to a scene, Mostadra's name and description become a page of the scene's journal; give Redwatch a description and it gets one too.

On your own map

Lock the generated places your story needs before you generate again, and describe them as you go: the description travels with the pin to Foundry's journal. Mark places the run doesn't make (a ruin, a shrine, a lair) with a style of your own, made with Save as… or in Styles and icons, so you can change them all at once. Name the seas, forests and mountain ranges with standalone labels; a label style for each kind keeps them alike. If the map is crowded, check the With no room filter before you export, and place the names that matter. See Routes and pins, Labels and Styles and icons.

Next: Tutorial 09 Exploring the world

Related: Routes and pins, Labels, Styles and icons, Map Canvas