Maps · Mythforge

A map puts your world's places where they belong: import a picture of your world, then pin the lorebook's places on it. Select a pin to open the place's entry, and a place's page links back to the map.

The Ashen Reach on its map, with pins, regions, routes and labels — A map of The Ashen Reach: pins for its places, three regions, two routes with their lengths, text labels and a scale bar.

Open the map

On a phone: on a world's Home tab, tap Maps.
On a wider window: it's Maps in the sidebar, after Stats.

Import a picture

Choose Add a map and pick a picture: a scan of a hand-drawn map, an export from a map-making tool, a photo of the one on your wall. JPEG, PNG and WebP all work.

The map is named after the file (rename it from the … menu). Very large pictures are stored at up to 8192 pixels a side, so they stay sharp when you zoom in without filling your phone.

Drag to pan, pinch or scroll to zoom. The buttons at the top right zoom too, and Fit to screen shows the whole map again.
Double-tap (or double-click) a spot to zoom in on it; hold Shift while double-clicking to zoom out.
With the map focused (tap or click it first), the arrow keys pan, + and - zoom, and 0 fits the map to the screen.
Replace picture… in the … menu swaps in a better version of the same map. Pins stay where they were, because they're kept as fractions of the picture, not pixels.

Paint a map (experiment)

No picture yet? You can paint one. It's an early experiment, so expect rough edges.

Open the … menu and choose Paint a new map (experiment) (or Paint this map (experiment) to paint over the one you have), or choose Paint one (experiment) on an empty map screen. The painter opens over your world:

Land and Sea are brushes: drag to raise land or carve out coasts, bays and lakes. Rough edges makes the coastline look drawn.
Terrain paints a biome (grassland, forest, hills, desert, swamp or snow) onto the land.
Stamps places mountains, trees, towns, castles and more: click or tap to place one, drag to scatter a forest or a range. As you drag, faint copies show where the stamps will land, and letting go places exactly those.
Coast reshapes the coastline under the brush: Roughen wears it into bays and spits, Smooth relaxes it into gentler curves, and the slider sets how far (hold Alt to do the other one).
Select picks a river: it lights up under the pointer, and a click picks it so you can give it a name, change its width or delete it (Delete key). The Rivers list at the bottom of the side panel shows every river; click one to pick it, or its bin to delete it.
River draws a river as you drag (Free draw), or, with Place points, as a smooth curve through the points you click: the ends snap onto a river already there, so you can add tributaries. Press Enter or double-click to finish, Backspace to step back, Escape to cancel. A river stops at the coast: whatever you draw out into the sea is cut off when you finish it, and a river drawn wholly at sea is refused. Rivers share the sea's colour and cut through the land, so they run into the sea without a seam. (For an older river that still runs on into the sea, pick it with Select and choose Trim to coast.) Erase removes things from the layer that's selected.
Layers can be hidden, reordered, added and deleted from the panel. Undo and Redo are at the top.
Move around pans once you've zoomed in (the whole map fits on screen at first, so there is nothing to move); with two fingers you can always move and zoom, whichever tool you're using. On a computer, scroll to zoom, hold Space and drag to pan, and hold Alt while painting to do the opposite (sea instead of land, erase instead of paint).
Trace the current picture shows your existing map underneath while you paint over it.

Style (at the bottom of the side panel) changes how the whole painted map looks, without touching what you painted: Parchment (the default, an old atlas), Vibrant (bold, saturated colours), Pastel (soft and light), Watercolour (wobbling edges and mottled washes), Political (flat, with every landmass in its own colour and only towns and castles marked) and Ink (black line work on white). The style is kept with the painting and used when you save the map's picture; Undo takes a change of style back.

Generate a map (in the side panel) makes a random map for you to paint on: choose Island, Continents, Archipelago or Supercontinent, how much of the map is Land, and whether to add terrain, mountains, trees and towns, and rivers. The Seed is what the map is made from: the same seed gives the same map, so write one down to get it back, or press Re-roll for a new one. It replaces what you have painted (it asks first, and Undo brings it back), and you can then paint over it like any other map.

Your painting is kept with the map as you go (hidden from the app, and synced and backed up with the rest), so you can close the painter and come back to it, even after saving, and change the land again later. Save as a new map (or Save to map) turns it into the map's picture, and everything else (places, regions, routes) works on it as usual. A map you uploaded has no painting yet: painting on it starts blank (with its picture to trace), and the first save replaces the uploaded picture, which it asks about first.

Pin a place

Choose Add place, then choose the spot on the map where the place is. Choosing a spot on or beside a route puts the place on the route: a ring follows the pointer along the line to show where it will go.
Pick a place from the list (only entries in the Place category are offered; search narrows them).
Or type a name that isn't in the lorebook yet and choose Add “…” as a new place: it's created in the Place category and pinned at once.

A place's card also lists, under Events here, the events related to it (an event whose Where names the place, or one set "located in" it under Relationships, or the place pointing to the event), oldest first, each a link to the event's page.

The list of places that can be pinned, with a search box — Only places are offered when you pin; the ones already on the map aren't listed again.

Each pin is a teardrop whose point sits exactly on the place, with the marker in its head and the place's name beneath it. Each entry can be on a map once. Drag a pin to move it. Drag it near a route and it snaps onto the line, with the same ring as when you add a place. Select a pin to see the place's card, with Open entry and Remove pin. Taking a pin off doesn't touch the entry.

A place's card with its events, marker and colours — A place's card: its events, its marker, a row of colours, and Open entry.

Markers

A pin shows its entry's category icon until you give it a marker of its own. On the pin's card, choose Change marker and pick from about eighty, grouped by theme: settlements (city, capital, town, village, hamlet, farm, inn, market, mill, outpost), strongholds (castle, fort, tower, watchtower, gate, wall, bridge, lighthouse), sacred and arcane places (temple, shrine, monastery, altar, standing stones, academy, library, mage tower, portal, graveyard), land (mountain, volcano, hills, forest, swamp, desert, cave, canyon, ice, island), water (sea, lake, river, waterfall, whirlpool, well, harbour, ship, wreck), danger (battlefield, ruins, lair, beast, fire, storm) and travel marks (crossroads, road, camp, compass, flag, banner, X marks the spot, mine, secret, trade, star, seat of power). Type in the search box to narrow them, or pick the first tile to go back to the category icon. Markers are saved with the pin and stay when it moves.

The marker picker, grouped by theme — The marker picker. The first tile goes back to the category icon.

The card also has a row of colours: pick one to colour the pin, or the first (Category colour) to go back to its category's colour. A red Hollowgate against the green places, a gold village: colour is a quick way to tell kinds of place or sides of a war apart. Like the marker, it is saved with the pin and stays when it moves.

Where pins crowd together, some names step aside until you zoom in; hover over a pin, or tab to it, to read its name anyway.

Find a place

Type in Find a place… at the top of the map to search the places pinned on it; places on the world's other maps follow, under On other maps, each named after its map. Choosing one selects its pin and brings it to the middle of the screen, zooming in if the map was too far out to read. Enter picks the first match, Esc clears the search.

From the writing to the map

On a lore entry's page, a glimpse of the map around its pin sits under its category, with the map's name. Select it (On the map) to open the map there.
In a scene's details (Scene details in the editor), On the map under Location opens the map at the scene's location, when that place is pinned. A location the scene takes from its chapter counts too.

The entry page for Emberfall with a glimpse of the map — On a place's page, a glimpse of the map around its pin.

A scene's details with Location and On the map — In a scene's details, On the map sits under the Location.

Regions and labels

A map can carry more than pins. Draw (next to Add place) offers two things:

Draw region outlines a kingdom, a forest or a sea. Choose a spot on the map for each corner; the outline so far is drawn dashed. After three or more corners, choose Done and say which place it is: pick one from the lorebook, or type a name to make a new place on the spot (the region takes its name and is linked to it; Cancel carries on drawing, and Escape gives up). The region is filled in its colour with its name at its centre.
Add label writes free-standing text ("The Sunken Coast", "Here be dragons"): choose the spot on the map where it goes, then type the text.

Select inside a region to see its card: a Colour row of swatches, Link to entry to say which lore entry it stands for (a faction's lands, a province's place entry; the card then shows the entry with Open entry and Unlink), Rename and Delete region. Deleting a region never touches the entry.

Select a label for its card: Size (small, medium or large), an Angle slider to set it on a slant, Edit text and Delete label. Drag a label to move it. Names and labels grow and shrink with the zoom, within readable bounds.

A region's card with its colours and Link to entry — Select a region to colour it, link it to a lore entry, rename or delete it.

Regions and labels are kept with the map's pins, as fractions of the picture, so they stay put when the picture is replaced, and sync with the rest of the world.

Follow the story on the map

Choose Story in the map's toolbar. A bar opens under the map with a menu of the world's manuscripts (the one you edited most recently is chosen) and a scrubber through its scenes in story order. Drag the scrubber, or use Previous scene and Next scene (the arrow keys work while it has focus): at each scene the point-of-view character moves to the pin of the place it's set in, leaving a dotted trail through the places they've been, with their latest leg drawn solid. The caption names the scene, its chapter, whose point of view it is and where it's set.

Nothing needs entering: the story reads each scene's Point of view and Location from its details (see Planning and the corkboard), or its chapter's when the scene leaves them to the chapter. A scene without a location, or whose location isn't pinned on this map, is "not on the map": its character stays where they were last seen, faded. The bar counts them ("12 of 20 scenes placed"); select the count for the rest, each a link to the scene so you can set its location or pin the place.

Select a character's token to open their entry. The legend under the scrubber names every point-of-view character in the manuscript in the colour of their trail; those yet to appear are hollow. The address keeps the manuscript and the scene (?story=…&step=…), so reloading or sharing the link shows the same moment. Close the bar with its ×.

The story bar and the point-of-view characters' trails — Story: the scrubber at the fourth scene, with each character's trail and the caption.

Declutter with layers

A busy map can be tidied without changing it. Choose Layers (the stacked-sheets button at the end of the toolbar) for a switch beside each thing the map draws: Places, Place names, Regions, Region names, Routes, Route lengths and Text labels, plus Story characters while a story is on. Each row also works as a legend: it shows how many the map holds (“Routes · 3”), the categories pinned with their colours, the colours of the regions, and how the routes travel. The names and lengths switches wait while the layer above them is off.

Turn a switch off and that layer disappears from the map and can no longer be selected; hiding Places also hides the pins routes snap to. A dot appears on the Layers button while anything is hidden, and Show all puts everything back. Choosing Add place, Draw region, Add label or Draw route switches the layer it needs back on and keeps it on until you finish or cancel, and opening a place from its entry (On the map) or from Find a place… shows the Places layer again.

The Layers popover, doubling as a legend — Layers: a switch for each thing the map draws, with a legend beside it.

Layers are a preference of the device you are on, remembered for each map. They are not saved with the map or synced, so another device (or another person's copy) shows everything until you hide things there too.

Several maps

A world can have more than one map (a continent and a city, say): Add another map… is in the … menu, and a menu at the top of the screen switches between them. A place can be pinned on each. Switching maps and back keeps where you were on each of them while the screen is open.

Routes and distances

A map can measure as well as show. Set its scale once, then draw routes and read off how far they run and how long the journey takes.

Set the scale

Choose Routes, then Set scale.
Choose two points on the map a known distance apart: a city and the next one, say, or the ends of the map's own scale bar.
Enter the real distance between them and pick Kilometres, Miles or Leagues, then Save.

A scale bar appears at the top left of the map and grows and shrinks as you zoom. Change scale in the Routes menu sets it again; Remove scale… takes it away (routes stay, but lose their lengths).

Draw a route

Choose Routes, then Draw route.
Choose a spot on the map for each point along the way. Choosing a pin (its marker or its name), or a spot just beside it, snaps to it, so the route runs from place to place; choosing a spot on or beside another route joins that route at that spot. While you draw, a small ring sits at the foot of every pin, and another follows the pointer along any route it comes near; the ring fills when a tap would snap, and a ripple confirms a tap on a pin. Switch on Curved to bend the line smoothly through your points (it takes three or more), and see the bend as you go.
Choose Done (or press Enter) and name the route. Cancel (or Escape) throws the drawing away.

Routes are drawn as lines over the map, with their length at the middle once the scale is set. Select a route to see its card:

Length along the line and as the crow flies, the straight line between its ends.
Travel: how many days the journey takes on foot (30 km a day), on horseback (50), by cart (25) or by ship (150). Custom speed takes a distance per day of your own.
Curved, to straighten or bend the route again (the length follows the curve).
A colour, so a trade road and a pilgrim's path tell apart.
Rename and Delete route.

A route's card with its length and days of travel — A route's card: length, as the crow flies, and travel time on foot.

Travel time is just distance divided by how far a day takes you, and the scale is what turns the picture into distance:

How a route's length becomes days of travel.

The scale and the routes are saved in the map's file with its pins, so they sync and back up with the rest of the world.

How the map, the lorebook and the writing connect

A pin is only a position for a lore entry, so everything else follows from the entry. A scene's Location is a lore entry, and so is a place an event happened (its Where): the map finds both through the pin.

How pins link places, scenes and events.

The layers, and the names that hang off three of them.

Where maps live

A map is two files in your library: the picture in the world's images folder and maps/<name>.md, which lists the pins (with their markers and colours), regions, labels, the scale and the routes. They sync, back up and export with the rest of the world. Deleting a map (from the … menu) deletes both; the places stay in the lorebook.