Proposal: Atlas tool for LMs

[Glorelendil]

Here's the next software project I'm considering. Would love to get feedback from LMs on how this would be most useful to them.

Basic idea: a database of ME locations that include information about events and NPCs, with timestamps, so that you can pick a location and time ("Easterly Inn, TA 2947") and get not only the state of things there, but what news & rumors might be floating in.

In addition to locations and times, the database would also include average travel times between every location. This would be handy for computing Travel rolls, but it has a nifty side benefit: when a timestamped event is added to a location, news of that event travels to all the other locations (nodes) in the network, and when you select a specific location you can tell if news/rumor of far off events are likely to have reached it yet.

Locations would show both their current "state", including important NPCs present, and also a reverse timeline (most recent first) of changes. In another panel you would see, again with most recent first, the rumors and news that would have trickled into town, including how old the news was and how far it traveled to get there (so that LM's can make judgment calls about how accurate to make the version the heroes hear.)

I'm envisioning a sort of "private wiki" setup: you create an account and write your own notes & events, but you may also share your notes with other people you know. Thus players won't have access to the data, but other LMs you know & trust could.

In addition to specific events, LMs could also add adventure hooks, NPCs, and other color to help each other.

Stretch goal: adding coordinate information to each node would allow this to turn into an interactive map, instead of a text database. But that could come later.

So, LM's, what do you think? Would you use this? What features would you most want?

[StuartJ]

I think this is a great idea! I don't know how many Loremasters would actually end up sharing information since I imagine histories start to become quite campaign specific, but even just integrating the canonical Tale of Years would be great - Tolkien's and hopefully also the extension of this from DoM etc., assuming this is deemed fair use, and good publicity for selling C7 merchandise! Loremasters could then add their own details and conceivably end up with your model for sharing with arbitrary other users.

It may be that some campaign management tools already out there do some of this sort of thing (perhaps the enthusiasts for 'Realm Works' could comment?) but I think it could be really useful, especially for the "news/rumour management", and very cool if coupled with a mapping interface too!

As for mapping integration, I originally thought of the Google Middle Earth tie-in for the Hobbit films - but of course that's closed-source and likely to remain so... More promising, I think, is the mapping etc. at the LotrProject, which is an impressive resource in its own right, but I'm not sure how open Emil Johansson is to open-sourcing his efforts. Could always ask though.

For a real DIY effort, there are open source alternatives out there - even a 3d rendering at the Middle Earth DEM project! Probably more practical is OpenStreetMap, especially since it turns out that the current production version of OpenStreetMap runs on Ruby on Rails! I imagine adding some way of handling the temporal dimension to their wiki implementation would be the way to go. To do the mapping itself, I already found some advice about creating interactive mapping of imaginary landscapes, and it seems the Fenelon map that Heilemann has aged may be a good basis for the map tiles, and may be available for non-commercial use. At least, the Middle Earth DEM project is using it!

Regarding practical involvement, I'm some way off actually running a game myself, and family commitments mean I have really minimal time at the moment for helping with side-projects - but I'd love to see this realised. Let us know if/when you get started if you would like help and/or fellowship in your great endeavour!

[Hermes Serpent]

I've used a free package called Masterplan for running a campaign in the past http://www.habitualindolence.net/masterplan/. It's D&D 4e specific in that it contains the mechanics for running combats etc., but as a campaign management tool it's system agnostic. I can import a map as a regional map and place locations on that map linked to an encyclopaedia entry and have both open and closed (LM only) information relating to the location.

The campaign tools have a sort of mind mapping tool to link adventures together that is designed for 4e but works acceptably as a sort of plot point aide-memoire system for anything else.

It's not open source and runs only under Windows but it's sort of useful for managing things.