The Locations section

The Locations section holds the places in your world and the routes between them. It is where you say what rooms, streets and roads a story can happen in, and how a player gets from one to the next.

What it is for

A place is somewhere a person or a thing can be. A route is a way to walk from one place to another. A place that no route reaches is a place nobody can walk to. A world needs at least one place to begin in.

What is in it

The section has two views, Map and List, and it opens on the Map. The List is where places are added, renamed, described and given attributes. The Map is where the world is seen as a world, where people and things are put, and where places are connected.

The Map view with four places, the three routes that join them to The village green, and the Map tab outlined

Press List to add a place. The Places panel lists every place by name and id. Add a place makes a new one named A new place and opens its form beside the list.

The Places list with its four places and the Add a place button outlined

A place's form has these fields:

Name: What the place is called on screen.
Id: A short name that rules use to point at the place. Renaming it moves the routes and the people standing here. A rule that names it is reported, not rewritten.
Description: What the place is like, in a sentence or two.
Rest: Tick A good place to sleep and sleeping here is recorded as a good night, anywhere else as a rough one.
Also called: Other words a player may use for this place, such as tavern for a place called The Gull and Anchor. A player who writes walk into the tavern is moved there.
Attributes: Free-form notes that rules can read. Most places have none.
Routes: The routes that touch this place. You read them here and make them on the Map. The button Connect this place on the Map takes you there.

The form of the new place with its Name, Id, Description and Rest fields, the Name field outlined

A route is made on the Map, by dragging. Each place has a dot on its left and a dot on its right. Drag from a dot on one place to a dot on another, as the Map's own hint says: "Drag a handle to join two places." A new route is added at once, and the number of places and routes under the map goes up.

Click a route to open its settings:

Travel time (minutes): How long the walk takes. It starts at 1.
Direction: Both ways or One way.

To remove a route, click it and press Remove this route. To remove a place or a route with the keyboard, select it on the Map and press Delete. Auto-arrange puts the places in a tidy order if your map has become crowded.

In Saltmere

The Fantasy template comes with four places: The village green, The smithy, The hedge road and The hall. The village green is where the player starts, and a route joins it to each of the other three.

Saltmere adds a fifth place, The Saltmere light. On the List it presses Add a place and types the name The Saltmere light and this description: A lighthouse on the cliff above the harbour. Its lamp turns all night, and every boat in Saltmere steers by it. The Id stays place, the one the editor gave it.

Then, on the Map, it drags from the dot on The Saltmere light to the dot on The village green. The number under the map changes from 4 places, 3 routes to 5 places, 4 routes. The new route goes both ways and takes one minute, the same as the template's routes, and Saltmere leaves it like that.

The Map with five places, The Saltmere light joined to The village green by the new route

When to change it

Add a place whenever your story needs a new somewhere to be. Give every place at least one route, because a place no route reaches is a place nobody can walk to. Use Rest for the inns and bedrooms where your world's people sleep, and Also called for the words your players are likely to type. A first world can keep the template's four places and add one or two of its own.