Chronicles is a brand new characteristic on World Anvil that allows you to map your world’s historical past by making a file of occasions and areas! It’s not only a common timeline device, although—with Chronicles, you interactively interconnect occasions and locations on a map. This allows you to and your viewers (readers or gamers) visually determine the place every occasion came about!

What’s Chronicles?

Chronicles is designed to make explaining your world lore extraordinarily straightforward! As an alternative of getting your gamers learn pages of historical past to grasp your D&D marketing campaign’s backstory, you possibly can simply give them your chronicle. Its timeline will not be solely very straightforward to grasp, it’s additionally visually related to a map! Which means, as a substitute of getting to think about the place every little thing came about, you possibly can simply see it! And, come on, who doesn’t love a great interactive map, proper?

You possibly can see on the backside how straightforward and clear it’s to show parallel occasions utilizing the 4 lanes!

In fact, you may as well hyperlink all occasions to articles in your world for individuals who actually wish to dig into your lore! These are just a few methods you should use Chronicles in your novel or RPG marketing campaign:

Map your total world’s historical past

Historical past is a vital a part of any world constructing challenge! Simply making a primary historical past with two or three eras and a few essential historic occasions sprinkled in will make your viewers (gamers or readers) imagine that the world is a lot deeper. It’s the phantasm of depth! Now, you could possibly, after all, use the old-school methodology and simply write a textual content wall along with your world’s historical past… or you could possibly use Chronicles for a way more visible and interesting method!

Historical past will not be a straight line: occasions overlap, which is why a Chronicle’s timeline has 4 parallel lanes the place you possibly can place occasions (and it may well have a number of timelines too!). This implies that you may present simply what’s occurring on the similar time in numerous elements of the world. Plus, because it’s so visible, understanding how occasions relate to one another and their penalties is a bit of cake!

Particular occasions or locations intimately

Attempting to clarify with conventional prose every little thing that occurred in a single place (or all of the totally different phases of a single occasion) might be very troublesome. Most individuals may have a tough time understanding paragraphs upon paragraphs of exposition—however with Chronicles, it’s tremendous straightforward! You possibly can scale the timeline right down to hours and even minutes, so you possibly can particulars issues like a battlefield or a heist!

Or, if you wish to clearly see every little thing that occurred in a single place, simply click on the map marker and Chronicles will present you a timeline of that place!

When you choose a marker, this sidebar on the left will open—discover the mechanically generated “Historical past” part!

Doc your marketing campaign’s occasions

In case you’re something like me, you like trying again at previous video games and remembering the epic occasions (and foolish shenanigans) your get together bought concerned with. Properly, what for those who may see these recollections? In fact, you would possibly have already got session reviews or notes, however why not put every little thing on a map that your gamers can work together with? It is going to be an effective way to combine the get together’s adventures into the world’s lore and to reminisce about your adventures collectively too!

Cataclysms and world-changing occasions

Does your world have an occasion that modified the form of the world? You possibly can present that in Chronicles! Since you possibly can hyperlink occasions to totally different maps, your gamers or readers will be capable to see how the world modified after that asteroid got here (or no matter it was)! In fact, you should use altering maps for different issues too. For instance, you could possibly have 4 maps, one for every season! Or you could possibly clarify the geological historical past of the planet, utilizing totally different maps to indicate how the continents modified form.

This Chronicle has a number of maps. By setting occasions to totally different maps, you possibly can see how the forest modifications with time!

The best way to map your world’s historical past with Chronicles

You possibly can entry your world’s Chronicles from the “Timelines” possibility within the sidebar. You’ll see the listing of Chronicles underneath the “Chronicles” header!

While you create a Chronicle, a creation wizard will provide help to by the set-up course of, which incorporates organising the calendar and importing the map. In case your Chronicle is for a D&D or Pathfinder setting, there are pre-defined calendars for Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Golarion Absalom. However you may as well create your individual for those who want!

After organising the chronicle, comply with these fast steps to create your first occasion:

1. Proper-click wherever on the map to create a pin. Place it on the map, within the location the place an occasion came about. Its identify must be the situation and it may be linked to an article the explains extra concerning the place.
2. Then, right-click wherever on the timeline to create a brand new occasion. Fill within the particulars and hyperlink it to the marker you created.

And that’s it! In fact, there are numerous extra choices to create a chronicle in precisely the best way it’s good to—however these three steps will likely be sufficient to get you began. In case you’re on the lookout for a extra detailed information on the characteristic, try the Codex documentation or the YouTube video:

Chronicles can be found for Masters of the Guild and above tiers, so create an account on World Anvil and map your world’s historical past immediately!

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