Daystor

[MikelaC1]

I have just begun a long overdue project of digitizing everything related to my campaign world of Daystor (many board members have probably adventured in it once of twice) and I have a couple of problems that I would appreciate help with.
The first and biggest problem is where to put all this stuff. I'm not paying for a website as I dont have that kind of money. I am currently in the progress of tying everything into various GoogleDocs (one for geography, one for deities, one for economics, etc) and I do plan to make some sort of main document that will link to each one, but I have nowhere to "park" it, so to speak. Right now, they sit on my home PC but thats clearly not optimal, if my PC ever crashes or I decide to upgrade my computer, thats a ton of work out the window.
The next is the big name NPCs. There are about 20-30 Epic NPCs who drift in and out of each campaign, while they are not in the game to be killed or even fought, I still think it would be interesting for players to see who exactly these people are. While I suppose I could do a Myth-Weavers sheet for each one, I dont imagine MW would appreciate so many sheets sitting on their system that are never entering their games, not to mention the fact that MW has had some history of going on the fritz and the whole point of this exercise is to eventually tossing out all the hard copy notes I have. I suppose I could make a GoogleDocs sheet for each one, but that seems a bit labor intensive as MW does all the calculations for me.
The last, and this is a real big one is the world maps. Right now, Daystor has 5 maps, one for each continent (all of them are separated by water) and each one of those maps covers a 28'"X22" sheet of bristolboard. Clearly there is no way to scan and upload something of that size so I need some sort of drawing program (remember low cost) that I can detail sheets on to, preferably one where I can do things by touch, as a mouse pointer will simply not give the sort of shoreline and wilderness details that I want, not to mention the fact that any break in one of those lines causes spillage of coloring if there is a break in them when I go to fill.
Those are my issues and if anyone can help, it would be greatly appreciated.

[Ridai]

Google Docs live in your Google Drive, so they are always available online, and people can look at them if you provide access rights.

As for NPCs, if you really want to write down definitive stats for them, I'd go with NPC statblocks instead of sheets.

Can't help much with mapmaking, haven't used the various software available. I am aware of Inkarnate (free version with limitations, 5$/month or 25$/year subscription for full version) and Wonderdraft (one-time purchase, 30$). Both for PCs, not sure if you are looking for a tablet app or what you intend to use for drawing.

[MikelaC1]

I dont suppose there is a "try before you buy" option for Wonderdraft, it makes beautiful maps from what I see but I would like to see if I can handle it and if my PC can handle it.

[Ridai]

Not as far as I know. Basically the same model as Dungeondraft, their software meant for, well, dungeons, towns and such. Youtube has a fair share of reviews (such as this one, basically randomly picked. It's from two years ago, so current version might have more features), tutorials and other videos on it, and I found Dungeondraft relatively easy to learn and use after trying out the various tools and such. Not sure how much of that translates over to Wonderdraft, though. The website has the system requirements as well.

[Breitheamh]

In regard to the documents, Google Drive is a pretty darn reliable place to put all this stuff, for sure. There's also World Anvil, which you can do for free, or for various tiers of price up to $300 per year. I personally use the $40 per year "Journeyman" option on World Anvil, and it has everything I could want as a hobbyist world-builder.

The nice thing about World Anvil is that it's designed specifically for world-buiilding, so once you put in all the information, you can organize it within itself so that linked items connect to each other, you can upload maps and have pins on them that lead to different articles to explain the lore of specific locations, etc. And you can publish it on the site for others to see and read and learn about very easily.

However, downside is you need to pay to get the most out of it, which may be a problem depending on your budget.

In regard to the maps, I honestly am not sure how to help with that. I know Ridai mentioned Inkarnate, which I use myself, and I like a lot, but as far as I know it doesn't quite have what you're looking for in terms of precision.

[Debatra]

For maps, I'd recommend taking a look at Dungeonographer for small-scale and Worldographer for large-scale. They both have free versions with a few features unavailable, though nothing I'd personally consider vital.

For the lore side of things, look into Campfire. It's also free to try with limited features (no missing features, just caps on the existing ones; like X number of character profiles or Y number of major timeline events, etc), with options to pay for individual features if you want certain things but don't care about others. It even lets you upload and interact with your maps.

[MikelaC1]

Does everyone see this outline

Daystor

Its vey rough, I dont have the time to fill in the forest areas that I have outlined, cities appear to cost money, and I dont see anything for rivers and lakes....but Daystor has made its first online appearance

[Ridai]

No, can't see it. You will likely need to export the map as an image and upload it somewhere (I am guessing here, I tried Inkarnate about a year ago). Google Drive is one option if you don't want to embed the image in a post and you can always access and manage it, otherwise use an image hoster like postimages.org.

Might also be worth trying the other tools people mentioned here (well, those that can be tried for free) to see how they perform in comparison to the trial version of Inkarnate.

[Debatra]

You appear to have posted an edit link, so that may have something to do with it.

[MikelaC1]

One more try, hopefully

Daystor

[Lacco]

For NPC notekeeping, I found OneNote working well for me. If you have MS Office installed, it should be free.

It takes some time to set up and prepare templates/tables, but it handles linking quite well and can be used cross-platform.

But I have no real experience as I am not as systematic and keep my notes on paper as it helps me think.

[Breitheamh]

One more try, hopefully

Daystor

Yep! I can see that now.

[MikelaC1]

What I would really like to do is make sub-maps, one for each of the 5 continents blown up to full screen so that I can make them more detailed, but there is no way I would be able to duplicate those outlines. Does anyone know of a function that would do that. Im also probably going to have to crack open the wallet to get a paid subscription so that I can add cities and maybe shade the forests properly. Currently there are 3 levels of forest in Daystor, light, heavy and rain i.e. enchanted, which are denoted by tree lines in 100 font, 50 font and 35 font, but I only shaded in the rain forest. I would also like to add some desert lands.

[Breitheamh]

What I would really like to do is make sub-maps, one for each of the 5 continents blown up to full screen so that I can make them more detailed, but there is no way I would be able to duplicate those outlines. Does anyone know of a function that would do that. Im also probably going to have to crack open the wallet to get a paid subscription so that I can add cities and maybe shade the forests properly. Currently there are 3 levels of forest in Daystor, light, heavy and rain i.e. enchanted, which are denoted by tree lines in 100 font, 50 font and 35 font, but I only shaded in the rain forest. I would also like to add some desert lands.

I’m not sure, but you MIGHT be able to copy your map and then crop it so that it is only one continent at a time. But I’m not sure if you can then adjust the resolution.

[MikelaC1]

Found a free stamp for cities, will add names very soon. Happy with what I am getting so far, but there doesnt appear to be a swamp land coloring.

[MikelaC1]

I have added all the major cities, with names, along with naming the oceans, seas, swamps, and mountains. The forests are all now shaded in, either enchanted/rain forest, heavy forest and light forest, along with the deserts, and arctic areas. The unshaded (or rather, brown) areas are all either untamed wilderness or agricultural, the closer to the cities, the more agricultural the area. I am debating whether or not to put the lines of the various empires on or not, but wondering if that would make it too crowded?

[MikelaC1]

Went ahead and put in the borders and names of the empires/kingdoms/whatever.

[Kama Itachi]

If you want to digitize the maps, you don't have many options. The best results version, and the easiest to do, is to to take it to a copy shop or office store and have them cut it into pieces to scan, then reassemble in GIMP or another image editing program. Oh, and the scanner will probably impart some compression artifacts regardless of settings. You could also try to make a rig to hold a high-resolution camera above your map.

For your NPCs, I would recommend downloading (or creating, it's pretty easy) a spreadsheet template that looks like a character sheet and has the formulas already in there.


My final piece of advice is to NOT throw out all of the hard-copy notes you have. Find a drawer or file cabinet to store them in. People are used to the cloud "just working" because they only go to the top 20 sites on the internet and all of those "just work" most of the time, but if you actually try to use the internet to store files, you discover that stuff goes wrong all the time. Maybe it was digitized incorrectly (the JBIG2 compression, universally used in scanners, can alter document text, for example). Maybe the provider you used lost the files in some data loss/corruption event. Maybe you lost the password. Maybe your host goes out of business or gets raided by the FBI like Megaupload. Maybe they have a temporary outage when you need the files.Maybe you make some changes and then the company has to restore from an earlier backup. These sites only mostly work most of the time because they have huge teams of people dedicated to making that happen. You don't have that. The reality of anything computer is that anything even slightly complicated is always breaking all the time for sometimes seemingly no reason. That's especially true for anything involving the internet.

[MikelaC1]

Everything on my map seems to be subtly shifting, in some cases it isnt an issue but in others, like putting a city into the ocean, it is. Finding the city stamp int the maze of all the other stamps is painstakingly slow. Does anyone know why the cities might be shifting like that, or a faster way to find the stamp of each city?

[MikelaC1]

For those of you still following this project, I have managed to redraw the cities, coasts and rivers enough that everything still makes sense. In other pieces of news, I have finished the chart that shows statistics and levels of all the epic NPCs, the chart on deities, domains and high priest(ess), the geography and politics document, the Daystor magic guilds, and the Daystor corporations. Next up would be at least a basic outline of items for the NPCs, at least in terms of what sort of armor or protective devices, and I also aim to outline which guilds are best for which sort of prestige class training.

[MikelaC1]

After fussing with icons that were subtly moving and not generally happy about the display, I cloned the map and re-did the display of terrain, increased the size of the city icons (with making bigger cities represented by slightly bigger icons) and increased the font on city names. Mountain areas are now less crowded, allowing for more precise placement of cities, the enchanted forests are now represented by color instead of a mass of trees

Daystor

I thought that by publishing it would create a link that would allow you to view but not edit, but the same issue keeps cropping up.
Edit: and now that works. You can see, but not touch.

[MikelaC1]

Daystor

Geography, Politics

Daystor Deities

Epic NPCs

Daystor Magic Guilds

Daystor Corporations

Elder Great Wyrms

[Debatra]

The map is good, but none of the google docs can be publically read.

(Also, would you prefer that I DM you things like this instead of saying it publically in the thread?)

[MikelaC1]

Go ahead and say it publicly, anything helps/

As for not being able to read the threads, I dont understand. I did them the exact same way as I did for the battle map in the game, what would be different this time around?
EDIT: I went into the documents, and saw a "share" button, so I set the access to anyone with a link, it should work now?

[Cavir]

Yup, it works now. Very cool.

[Ridai]

Since I am more or less not that tooth pain addled anymore (here's hoping it won't come back), I finally took a look at this. Interesting insights in these, like the many companies and big movers I have not met in your games so far. And seeing some familiar names among the high priest(esse)s, faction leaders, and Elder Great Wyrms (hello Kahoutek). Together with the map, it lets me kind of see where those past adventures were at and how far they moved around. The Geography & Politics doc could use a little bit of formating for readability, like bolded headlines for the continents and a bit of white space between the continent entries (or paragraphs, whatever is your preference), but the content seems good overall.

And on a personal note, it is nice to see how far Daciana has come (level 30, wow), and that she apparently is now the City of Garden's second in command.