Tutorial 11 A regional map

Part of the tutorial: page 11 of 12

▶ Watch this page: part 11 of the tutorial video (about 1 min), with narration and subtitles.

Tutorial 11: A regional map

Cut a regional map of the Red Hills from the world map, fill it in with villages and market towns, and read it closely.

Start from: 10-finishing-and-sharing.json, the map as it is at the end of Tutorial 10 Finishing and sharing. 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 10 Finishing and sharing.

A world map shows a realm in a few hundred pixels. A regional map is a new map cut from part of another, at a higher resolution: the coastlines, terrain and biome borders gain finer detail, and everything on the parent comes with it (the realms, places, routes and names, your own and the run's). It keeps a copy of the parent's run over its area, so it can be filled in with the villages and market towns that lie between the parent's towns, joined to its roads by lanes.

Once made, a regional map is a map of its own: changing it doesn't change the world map, or the other way round.

Steps

1. Click New map on the rail, open the panel's Regional map section and set New resolution to 1600 pixels wide. Choose Crop on the bar and drag on the map from north-west of Stansto to south-east of Kansmarda, round the Red Hills and the King's Road. When you let go, the crop is fitted to the map's grid at a whole zoom, here ×4: the new map shows the land four times as closely, and its height and latitudes follow from the crop. Tick Fill in villages and market towns.

   

   The crop round the Red Hills, and the Regional map section.

   Drag inside the crop to move it, and drag a corner to resize it. Fill in villages and market towns can be ticked once the map has a run and the crop is small enough for the new map to show the world closely.

2. Click Generate map. Name the new map The Red Hills and click Confirm. The regional map is made and saved; the world map stays open.

   A regional map is made from the map as it is saved, so if the open map has changes you haven't saved, you are asked to save it first.

3. Click Maps on the rail. The Red Hills is listed under Tutorial world, the map it was cut from. Click its Load button. The first time it opens, the studio fills it in, which takes a moment. The terrain, rivers and coast are drawn at four times the world map's detail, with the realms, the King's Road, Redwatch and the rest in place.

   

   The Red Hills, a regional map at four times the world map's detail.

4. Open the Detail menu in the map controls and choose Local. The market towns the fill-in added are shown, and its villages of 1,000 people or more, joined to the roads by lanes; the smaller villages show at Everything. Zoom in round Mostadra and the King's Road to see them.

   

   Villages, market towns and lanes round Mostadra at the Local detail level.

   Each map keeps its own Detail level, so the world map is still at Province.

5. Click Generate on the rail. On a regional map its Fill in section counts the market towns, villages and lanes the last fill-in added. Fill in again replaces them, keeping any you have edited or locked; what the map inherited from the world map is never touched. The new places share out the people the world map's run put here, so filling in never adds people.

   

   The Fill in section, with what the fill-in added.

6. Save the regional map.

What you should see

A regional map, The Red Hills, listed under Tutorial world in Maps, at the Local detail level, with villages, market towns and lanes between the towns of the world map.

To compare your map with the tutorial's, or to start the next page from exactly this map, download 11-a-regional-map.json and import it in Maps with Import JSON.

In Foundry

Everything on this page is the same in Foundry. A regional map exports to a scene as any map does, with its grid lined up with the world map's: each world map cell becomes four by four cells of the regional map, each measuring a quarter of the distance.

On your own map

Cut a regional map wherever your players are about to go: a realm, a valley, an island. Draw the crop close for a map of villages and lanes, or wider for a province. Make your changes to the world map first (a regional map is a copy, and doesn't follow later changes to its parent), and save it. A regional map can be cut again from a regional map, for a town's surroundings. The Travel tool on a regional map uses finer cells, so 1-day bands show a day's march from a town. See New map (regional maps) and Generate (fill in).

Next: Tutorial 12 Further tips

Related: New map, Generate, Maps, Travel