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Making a Realm
A Realm is a Scene of its own: a hex map with its terrain, river, Holdings, Myths, Landmarks and Barriers, and the Company Token that travels it. The Referee makes one with New Realm, by rolling it from the book's tables, drawing it by hand, or bringing in a map already drawn on paper or painted.
New Realm sits at the top of the Scenes tab, for Referees only. The Welcome's Make Your First Realm button and the Create a Realm chat card a new world posts both open it too.
It first asks how the Realm is made:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| Roll it | Rolls the whole Realm the way the book's Creating a Realm describes (p14), on a 12 by 12 map. |
| Draw it myself | Makes a blank map and hands you the Realm tools. Nothing is rolled. |
| Import a map I drew | Lays a picture of your own map under the hexes, rolls nothing, and you mark what each hex holds. |
The New Realm window that follows has a rail of pages down its left side. Click a page's name to go to it. Everything on every page is sent when you press the button at the foot, so you can fill them in any order.
| Page | Shown for | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| The Realm | All | The Realm's Name and its Seed. The same seed, set up the same way, rolls the same Realm. |
| Import map | Import | The picture of your map, and which drawing matches its hexes. |
| Custom Realm | Roll | What is rolled, and how much of it. See below. |
| Map size | Draw, Import | How many hexes across and down. |
| The Company | Roll | Whether to place the Company, its Start (Wanderer, Courtier or Ruler) and the Token's picture. |
A Realm you draw or import has no Company page: you choose and place the Company from the last page of the Creating a Realm window, once there are hexes to stand in.
The Custom Realm page gives every piece of the map its own tick box: Map, Terrain, River, Holdings, Myths, Landmarks and Barriers.
- Untick a part to leave it off the map and draw it yourself with the Realm tools. The rest is rolled to keep clear of it.
- Ignore the rules for setup unlocks the numbers beside each part: the map's columns and rows (3 to 30 a side), the size of terrain clusters, how many lakes, Holdings and Myths (six at most), Landmarks of each type (or a count for each type), and Barriers. Leave it unticked and every number is the book's.
With More Landmarks (Blog) turned on in the world settings, a rolled Realm also gets the blog's six Landmarks, fewer on a smaller map. The book's own Landmarks are rolled just as before, so a seed still gives the same Realm. See More Landmarks from the blog.
A Realm set up your own way remembers it. Reroll the Realm later rolls it the same way and keeps what you draw by hand.
A rolled Realm is only an offer. A small Keep this Realm? window opens at the foot of the map, counting the Holdings, Myths, Landmarks, Barriers and rivers that came up.
- Roll again lays a fresh Realm on the same Scene. Press it as often as you like. Myths you picked by hand are kept.
- Choose the Myths opens the Realm's Myths window, to reroll a Myth or pick one of the book's 72 for it. See Myths and Omens.
- Keep this Realm settles it.
Nothing else happens until you keep one. Then the Scene's thumbnail is drawn, the Company is placed (or handed to you to carry), and the Realm Key is whispered to the Referees.
The Realm Key is a chat card only Referees see. It names the seed, each Myth with its page, each Holding (marking the Seat of Power), and the Seer at each Sanctum, with a hex chip beside each one. Point at a chip to ring that hex on the map; click it to go there. A Realm you draw or import posts its Key when you finish it, and Reroll the Realm posts a new one. In solo play no Key is posted.
Draw it myself makes a blank Realm. The Map size page is 12 by 12 unless you tick Ignore the rules for setup. Press Make the blank Realm and the Scene opens with the paint brush already in hand.
While a Realm is being drawn:
- The Creating a Realm window opens beside the map instead of the Travel panels. Players see no rules beside the map until you finish.
- A double-click on the map doesn't open Places, so it can't get in the way of painting.
A rail of pages down its left side follows the book's steps. Each page shows the rules for that step, a tally of how far you have got, and the part of the palette that paints it. The tallies scale with the map's size, so a small Realm asks for fewer of each. A page gets a tick once everything on it is done.
| Page | What you do there |
|---|---|
| Pictures | Imported maps only: line the picture up again, change it, and set how strongly the hex lines show. |
| Wilderness | Paint terrain, lay Barriers and draw rivers. |
| Holdings | Place the Holdings, then choose which one is your Seat of Power, the Realm's chief Holding. |
| Myth Hexes | Myths are placed with Inspect hexes: click a hex, and Edit this hex opens beside Places. A Myth placed by hand rolls one the Realm doesn't hold yet, and a Sanctum rolls a free Seer. |
| Landmarks | Place the book's six kinds of Landmark, and Other for one of your own (and the blog's six, while More Landmarks (Blog) is on). What each one is folds out a line on each kind. |
| Book sections | Once your PDF is imported, the book's other sections of p14 stand between these, in its own words. |
| The Company | Choose the Company's Start and picture, and carry it to a hex. Reads Move the Company once it stands somewhere. What the Start sets going comes when the Realm is finished. |
- Undo and Redo sit at the foot of the rail.
- A die written in the rules, such as the d12 in a cluster's size, is a button: click it to roll that die and see the result beside the word. Nothing is posted or written.
- The window can be dragged anywhere and resized. Close it and it comes back when you click the paint brush in the Realm tools.
Every brush, click and modifier is on Painting and Editing the Realm.
A Finish the Realm button stands under the map while you draw. Press it when you are done. If the Realm has less than a typical one (fewer Holdings, no Seat, and so on), it lists what is short and asks whether to finish anyway: the numbers are a guide, not a law. It also warns of any hexes Barriers wall off from the rest of the map, which nobody can reach without crossing one. Finishing brings Travel and Exploration back beside the map for everyone, switches you to Inspect hexes, and whispers the Realm Key.
Clicking the paint brush on a finished hand-drawn Realm puts it back into drawing. A rolled Realm never goes into drawing.
Import a map I drew takes a photograph or scan of a Realm drawn on paper, or a painted map with no hexes on it, and lays it under the hexes in place of the system's own drawings.
The picture is only for show. The system can't see what is drawn on it, so you paint each hex's terrain with the brush afterwards. That painted terrain is what Travel, the Wilderness Roll and the Lay of the Land go by.
Everybody at the table sees the picture, so upload a copy with no Myths, Landmarks or Barriers drawn on it. Place those afterwards with the Realm tools, where they stay hidden until you reveal them.
- The players' map: choose the picture From my computer or one Already on the server. Click the thumbnail to see it larger.
- Which of these looks like your map? Five drawings of a map's top-left corner: the book's Realm Sheet (flat tops), flat tops with the corner low, pointed tops with the corner out, pointed tops with the corner in, and No hexes on it. Hover a drawing for a description. Pick the one that matches yours.
If your map is much wider or taller than the book's sheet, a note says it starts at a size that fits its shape.
The Realm's hexes are drawn over your picture here, so you can count yours against them.
- A map with hexes on it: set how many go across and down. Until you set both, the other side follows your map's shape.
- A map with no hexes: choose how many go across, and the rows follow the shape so the hexes cover it edge to edge (or set the rows, and the columns follow). It starts near a typical Realm's 144 hexes. A side can run to 60 hexes, up to 900 in all.
- Fewer hexes and More hexes under the preview change both sides at once, keeping the shape.
- Click the preview, or the expand button at the end of that row, to open a larger Map size window with the same controls. It stays in step with the page both ways.
Anything shaded in the preview falls outside the Realm and isn't shown. There is no need to crop your picture.
Press Use this map. The Scene opens with the picture lying roughly in place, and a bar at the foot of the screen walks you through two steps. The Travel panels and Creating a Realm wait until you are done.
Step 1 of 2: Mark two hexes. (Skipped for a map with no hexes.)
- Click the centre of the first hex of your map, at its top left. A blue mark drops there.
- Click the centre of the last hex, at its bottom right. An orange mark drops there.
- Both marks are drawn the size of your picture's hexes. Drag a mark to move it, or use the arrow keys to nudge the one you moved last (Shift for more).
- Press Fit the map to them (or Enter). The picture is sized evenly and moved so the marks land on the Realm's first and last hex.
Step 2 of 2: Slide it into place.
- Drag anywhere on the map to slide the picture under the hex lines.
- Arrow keys nudge it by a pixel, Shift with an arrow by ten.
- Ctrl and the mouse wheel size it evenly about the pointer, half a percent a notch, or five with Shift. Without Ctrl the wheel zooms the map as usual.
- Mark them again goes back to step 1.
- Keep it here (or Enter) keeps the picture where it is, for everyone.
- Escape puts the picture back where it was.
Foundry's own Tile handles can't resize the picture afterwards. Line it up again instead, from Line it up again on the Pictures page of Creating a Realm.
Then paint every hex. The first page of Creating a Realm opens with a Paint every hex note that turns green with a tick once every hex has terrain. While the brush is in hand, each painted hex is tinted in its terrain's colour and named in the middle, so you can see what is done. Paint open sea as Lake; nothing stops the Company walking onto a Lake, so rule on that at the table.
Import map in the Realm tools opens the same picture fields for the Realm on screen. Choosing a different layout lays the Realm's hexes out anew to match, keeping what each hex holds and moving the Company with its hex. A Realm keeps its number of hexes once made: for a different count, make a New Realm from the map.
If your map already draws its Holdings and Landmarks, as a Hex Kit map does, fade the system's own icons and hex lines over it in Realm Appearance. See Icons and Hex Lines.
- Painting and Editing the Realm: the Realm tools and every brush.
- Realm Appearance and Skins: how the Realm is drawn.
- Your First Session: placing the Company Token.