A map in Chronica is a picture of your world with a layer of campaign knowledge on top of it. The picture can be anything — a continent you commissioned, a dungeon level, a city ward, a hand-drawn napkin sketch you photographed. What Chronica adds is the layer above it: named locations, notes only you can see, territory borders, links through to the Places and Quests already in your campaign, and a record of how much of the world your party has actually uncovered.

That last part is the reason most tables reach for maps. A map that shows everything from session one gives away the shape of your world. Chronica lets you hand your players a mostly-hidden map and open it up as they travel, so the map itself becomes a record of the campaign rather than a spoiler.

The two kinds of map

Chronica offers two map types, and they work differently enough that they are documented as separate tracks in this guide.

• Legacy maps lay a fixed grid over your image. Every cell is a tile with its own address (a1, b4), and you reveal the world one tile at a time. Structured, tidy, and excellent for hex crawls and dungeon levels.
• Dynamic maps give you a zoomable, draggable canvas. You drop pins at exact points, draw territories and routes freehand, and reveal fog as any shape you like. Better when your world doesn't divide neatly into cells.

Section 15.1 walks through choosing between them. It is worth reading before you make your first map, because a map's type is set when you create it and cannot be changed afterwards.

Who can do what

Everyone in your campaign can look at maps. Building them is restricted.

Game Masters and Game Owners are Map Managers automatically — you do not need to also tick the role for them. To grant it to a player, open your campaign's player list and tick Map Manager on their row. It is a campaign-wide role: it lets them edit every non-secret map in the campaign, not only maps they made.

Finding your way around

Open World & Region Maps from the campaign menu. You will see a card for each map, with folder tabs across the top if your campaign uses folders. Each card carries the map's name, a thumbnail, and — for legacy maps — its grid size and how much of it your party has explored (or "overlay disabled", on maps that aren't running exploration at all). From a card you can click Explore Map to open it, or Edit to change its settings.

Map thumbnails on this index are deliberately obscured. Legacy map thumbnails stay blurred until the map is fully explored or its colour overlay is switched off, and dynamic maps show an abstract pattern instead of the real picture. This keeps a shared screen from spoiling a map at a glance. It applies to Game Masters too — a blurred thumbnail is not a sign that something is wrong.

When you click New Map, Chronica asks which type you want before it asks anything else. This is the one decision on a map you cannot revisit, so it is worth a minute of thought.

Pick Legacy when the grid is the point

Legacy maps divide your image into a fixed grid of tiles. Every tile has an address, a status, and its own label, colour, notes, and icons. Players uncover the world tile by tile.

Reach for Legacy when:

• You are running a hex crawl or point crawl and want to track exploration cell by cell.
• You want a map where "how much have we explored?" is a number — legacy maps show a percentage on their index card.
• Your map is a dungeon or building floor that already reads as a grid.
• You want the reveal to feel tidy and incremental — a chunk of the world at a time, in even squares or hexes.

Pick Dynamic when the world is freeform

Dynamic maps give you a zoomable, draggable canvas with no grid at all. You place pins exactly where things are, draw territories in whatever shape they actually take, and reveal fog by drawing regions.

Reach for Dynamic when:

• Your map is a continent or region with irregular borders that no grid respects.
• You want to zoom in close — dynamic maps pan and zoom smoothly, so one large map can serve for both the world view and city-level detail.
• You want pins that link through to Places, Quests, Kinships, Domains, Regions, Shops, and other maps, so the map becomes a way to navigate your campaign.
• You want fog of war shaped like the terrain — a revealed river valley, an explored coastline — rather than a block of cells.
• You want to draw on the map: borders, trade routes, areas of control, plain text labels across a mountain range.

A quick comparison

Once a campaign has more than a handful of maps, a flat list stops being useful. Folders group them into tabs across the top of the maps index — by continent, by story arc, by dungeon, by whatever division your campaign actually thinks in.

Creating a folder

1. From the maps index, click Manage Folders.
2. Click New Folder.
3. Give it a Name. If you leave it blank, Chronica names it "Unnamed Folder" rather than refusing to save.
4. Optionally set Secret? to hide the whole folder from players.
5. Save.

To put a map in a folder, open the map's edit form and choose from the Map Folder dropdown. Maps with no folder appear under an Unsorted tab on the index.

Reordering and renaming

The folder management screen lists your folders with a drag handle on each row. Drag them into the order you want the tabs to appear; the order saves as you drop. Edit Folder opens the same form you used to create it.

A legacy map is your image with a grid of tiles laid over it. Getting that grid to line up with the picture underneath is most of the work, and it is much easier to do before you have filled in fifty tiles — so it is worth taking the setup slowly.

Before you start

Have your image ready. Chronica accepts .jpg, .jpeg, .png, and .gif files up to 15MB. A larger image gives you more room to zoom in on detail, but the file size limit is firm, so a heavily detailed map may need compressing first.

It also helps to know roughly how many tiles you want across the image. You can change this later, but changing the grid on a map that already has tiles filled in will move which part of the picture each tile covers.

Creating the map

1. From the maps index, click New Map, then Create Legacy Map on the chooser.
2. Name your map. This is required in spirit — if you leave it blank, Chronica saves it as "Unnamed Map".
3. Optionally choose a Map Folder.
4. Game Masters can set Secret? to hide the map from players entirely while they build it.
5. Set Grid Across and Grid Down — how many tiles wide and tall the grid should be. Both accept 1 to 40, and a new map starts at 10 × 10.
6. Under Tile Settings, choose a Tile Orientation: square, horizontal hexes, or vertical hexes. Then set Tile Size (Pixels) — the default is 104px, which allows for the tile borders. Roughly 100px is the practical minimum for tiles that are still comfortable to click.
7. Under Image Settings, upload your map image.
8. Add Notes if you want — this field is shown to players, so it is the right place for the in-world description of the region.
9. Game Masters get a separate Game Master Secrets section, which players never see.
10. Click Create Map, once. Generating the grid takes a moment on a large map.

The two display toggles

Two settings on this form change what players see, and both are easy to misread:

• Disable Color Overlay removes the coloured shading that hides unexplored tiles. Turning this on means the whole map is visible to everyone all the time — the exploration mechanic is switched off. Use it for a map that was never meant to be hidden, like a city your party lives in.
• Disable Tile Codes hides the little coordinate labels (a1, b2, and so on) printed on each tile. Useful when your image already carries its own grid labels, or when the codes are visual clutter. The codes still exist behind the scenes; you just stop seeing them.

Almost no map image lines up with a grid on the first try. The tiles are slightly too big, or the image sits a few pixels too far left, or the hexes need to be a touch wider to follow the terrain. Chronica gives you two places to fix this, and they suit different jobs.

The live Map Settings panel — for alignment

Open the map and click the orange cog button (its tooltip reads "Toggle Map Settings"). A panel slides out with the settings that affect alignment, and — this is the useful part — your changes preview on the real map immediately, before you save anything.

Under Image Settings:

• Width Override (px) and Height Override (px) stretch or shrink the image behind the grid.
• Top Adjust (px) and Left Adjust (px) nudge the image's position under the grid.

Type a value and click out of the field — the map redraws straight away. Keep nudging until the grid sits where you want it, then click Save Settings.

If you make a mess of it, two reset buttons help. Reset Position puts the offsets back to zero and the preview updates immediately. Reset Size clears the two override fields, but the preview keeps showing the old size until you click Save Settings — so save after using it rather than assuming it didn't work.

Under Tile Settings you can also change Tile Orientation and Tile Size from here. Note that tile size changes need a save before you see them applied properly.

The edit form — for everything else

Click Edit Map to open the full form. This is where you rename the map, move it between folders, swap the image, change the grid dimensions, edit the notes and Game Master secrets, and toggle the colour overlay and tile codes. It carries the same alignment fields as the panel, under Additional Image Adjustment Settings, but without the live preview — so use the panel for alignment and the form for everything else.

Tiles are where a legacy map stops being a picture and starts being campaign knowledge. Each tile can carry a name, a status, a colour, notes, up to three icons, and a link to a Place in your campaign. Most tiles on most maps stay empty — you only set up the ones that matter.

Setting up a tile

Hover an empty tile and click the grey + that appears. The tile form opens with these fields:

• Label — a short name shown on the tile itself. Limited to 20 characters, so think "Wolf Den" rather than "The Abandoned Wolf Den of Karrick". Longer names belong in the notes.
• Status — Explored, Discovered, or Unexplored. This controls how much of the image shows through. See "Revealing the map" in 15.6.
• Color — a tint for the tile, useful for marking territory, terrain type, or faction control at a glance.
• Place — links the tile to a Place record in your campaign. Once linked, the tile's detail view offers a Visit link straight through to that Place, with all its description, encounters, and connections.
• Notes — a rich text field for whatever this location needs.
• Icons — up to three. There is a filter box to search the icon set by name.
• Secret? — Game Masters only. Covered in 15.11.

The form has a submit button at the top, under the Quick Create heading, as well as the usual one at the bottom — so you can save a quick label-and-status tile without scrolling past the icon picker. On a tile you are editing, that heading reads Quick Save.

Viewing a tile

Anyone can click a tile that has been set up to open its details. The Tile Information tab shows the label, icons, tile code, status, when it was created and last updated, the linked Place, and the notes.

Map Managers get two extra tabs on this view: Edit Tile, which is the tile form again for quick changes, and Move Tile.

Moving a tile's contents

The Move Tile tab shifts everything on a tile — label, status, colour, notes, icons, Place link — to a different tile code. It is built for a world that changes: an army advancing, a border shifting, a settlement that turns out to sit one hex further north than you drew it.

Clearing a tile

The red Clear Tile button on the tile form wipes every setting on that tile and returns it to empty. Like moving, it cannot be undone. Clearing a tile does not affect the Place it was linked to — the Place record itself is untouched.

Working faster on a big map

You can also click and drag the map itself to scroll around a grid that is larger than your screen, rather than hunting for scrollbars.

A legacy map hides itself behind a coloured overlay, and each tile's status decides how much of the picture underneath shows through. This is the exploration mechanic, and it is the main thing that makes a legacy map feel like a campaign artefact rather than a JPEG.

The three statuses

The "Discovered" middle tier is more useful than it first looks. It lets you reward information as well as travel — a rumour in a tavern, a map bought from a merchant, a mountain range visible from a ridge. Your players can see there is something there without knowing what.

Opening the map up as the campaign moves

After a session, open the map and right-click your way along the route the party took, setting tiles to Explored or Discovered as appropriate. It takes seconds, and players see the change the next time they open the map.

If you would rather not run exploration at all — a map of the city everyone lives in, say — switch on Disable Color Overlay in the map's settings. The whole image is visible to everyone and status stops mattering.

Checking what your players actually see

Sharing notes about the map

If a map has notes, a blue message button appears in its header. Players can click it to read the map's Notes — the in-world description, travel times, whatever context the region needs. Game Masters see a second tab in that same window for GM Secrets, which players never see and never know exists.

A dynamic map is a zoomable, draggable canvas with your image on it and no grid at all. You mark things by placing them exactly where they belong, at whatever scale makes sense. It is the closest thing Chronica has to spreading a real map across the table.

Creating one

1. From the maps index, click New Map, then Create Dynamic Map.
2. Give it a Name, and optionally a Map Folder.
3. Game Masters can set Secret? while they build it.
4. Upload your image under Image Settings — same limits as legacy maps: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, up to 15MB.
5. Add Notes for your players and, if you are a Game Master, Game Master Secrets for yourself.
6. Click Create Map.

You will notice the dynamic map form is shorter than the legacy one. There is no grid to set, no tile size, and no image alignment — none of those concepts exist here. If the map opens and tells you it has no base image yet, use Edit Map to upload one.

Getting around the canvas

• Drag anywhere to pan.
• Scroll or use the zoom controls to zoom in and out.
• Click a pin or shape to open its details.

The map fits itself to your image once, when it opens, and then leaves your view alone — later window resizes will not throw away the zoom and position you set. If you want to get back to the full map, zoom out; there is no re-fit button.

The Map Tools card

Above the canvas sits the Map Tools card. It collapses, and Chronica remembers whether you left it open, so you can fold it away once you are just reading the map. Note that the Fog of War panel (15.10) lives inside this card, so folding it away puts your fog controls out of reach until you open it again.

Everyone, players included, gets the Show row: checkboxes for Pins, Shapes, and Text. These filter what is drawn on the map for you alone — they change nothing for anyone else. On a busy map, hiding shapes to read the pins clearly is genuinely useful, and it is worth telling your players the row is there.

Everything else on the card is for Map Managers and Game Masters, and is covered in 15.8 and 15.10.

Everything you put on a dynamic map is a feature. There are five kinds you can draw, and they all share the same editor, the same colours, and the same linking.

The five feature types

• Pin — a marker at an exact point, with an optional icon and label. For settlements, dungeons, landmarks, anything that lives in one spot.
• Area — a freeform polygon. For kingdoms, forests, contested ground, areas of effect.
• Line — an open path. For roads, rivers, borders, trade routes, the path the party actually walked.
• Box — a rectangle. A quicker way to block out a region when precision doesn't matter.
• Text — a plain text label placed directly on the map, with no marker. For naming a mountain range or an ocean across the picture itself.

Drawing something

1. In the Map Tools card, under Add, click the tool you want: Pin, Area, Line, Box, or Text.
2. Draw on the map. A pin is a single click; areas and lines are a click per point; a box is a drag.
3. The feature saves as soon as you finish drawing. A new text label opens its editor straight away so you can type the text.
4. Click Select to go back to normal panning and clicking.

The Select tool is worth knowing about: while any drawing tool is active, clicking a feature draws rather than opening it. If clicking a pin isn't showing you its details, you probably still have a tool switched on.

Changing something you have drawn

Under Edit in the same card:

• Reshape — drag the individual points of an area or line to redraw its edges.
• Move — drag whole features to a new position.
• Delete — click features to remove them. The cursor changes to a red trash icon so you know the mode is live.

And if you get it wrong, Undo and Redo sit alongside. They cover drawing, deleting, and moving, so an accidental delete is recoverable as long as you undo before you leave the page.

Editing a feature's details

Click a feature to open its popup, then click Edit. The editor gives you:

• Label — the name shown on the map. Up to 120 characters, and optional. Pin labels sit permanently under the pin; area and line labels appear when you hover.
• Notes — a rich text field, shown to anyone who opens the feature.
• Color — nine swatches: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, grey, and white. The colour sets both the outline and the fill.
• Icon — pins only. Pick from your campaign's icon set, with a filter box to search it, or choose No icon for a plain marker.
• Links — connections to campaign content. See 15.9.
• Secret? — Game Masters only. See 15.11.

The green save button names what you are saving — Save Pin, Save Area, and so on. Delete at the bottom left removes the feature entirely.

This is the feature that turns a dynamic map from a picture into a way to navigate your campaign. Any pin or shape can link through to the content you have already built — and unlike legacy tiles, which link to one Place, a dynamic feature can link to as many things as it needs.

What you can link to

Seven content types: Places, Quests, Domains, Regions, Kinships, Shops, and other Maps.

That last one deserves a moment. Linking a pin to another map lets you build a chain your players can walk down: a pin on the world map opens the city map, a pin in the city's harbour district opens the smuggler's den. It is the tidiest way to run nested locations without making your players hunt through a list.

Adding a link from the feature editor

1. Open the feature and click Edit.
2. Find the Links section near the bottom.
3. Choose the type you want from the dropdown.
4. Start typing in the search box — results appear as you type.
5. Click a result to attach it. It appears as a chip; click the × on a chip to remove that link.

The Link Drawer — the faster way

If you are placing a lot of content, work the other way round. Click Link drawer at the top right of the map. A panel opens listing your campaign's content, with a type selector and a filter box.

Drag an item from the drawer onto the map. Chronica drops a pin at that spot, names it after the item, and links it — all in one action. Building a world map of twenty settlements this way takes a couple of minutes instead of twenty trips through a form.

On a touch screen, tap the item first and then tap the map — the drawer tells you so at the bottom.

What players get from links

When anyone opens a linked feature, its popup shows a Linked section with a badge for each connection, and clicking one takes them straight to that record. A pin for the town of Ashford can carry the Place, the Kinship that runs it, the Shop in its market, and the Quest that sends the party there — and your players can reach all four from the map.

Fog of War is the dynamic map's answer to legacy tile statuses. Instead of revealing cells, you cover the whole map in fog and then draw the shapes you want to open up — a river valley, a coastline, the reach of a road. The revealed area can follow the terrain, because it isn't tied to a grid.

Turning fog on

1. Open the map and find the Fog of War switch at the bottom of the Map Tools card. (If the card is collapsed, expand it first.)
2. Switch it on. The whole map is now covered, and three more controls appear.
3. Click Edit Fog of War to start revealing.

Revealing an area

While fog editing is active, the map focuses on the fog: your pins and shapes are dimmed and locked so you cannot grab them by accident, and the drawing tools narrow to the ones that make sense.

Use Area to draw a region — anything you draw in fog edit mode becomes a revealed region, not a normal shape. Draw a shape around the part of the map your party has uncovered, and the fog clears over it. Use Reshape, Move, and Delete to adjust reveals as the campaign moves.

Click Edit Fog of War again to leave fog editing and get your normal tools back.

The two checkboxes

• Show fog while editing — controls whether the fog is drawn while you are working on the map's normal features. Untick it to get the fog out of the way and see your whole map plainly while you place pins and shapes. It does not affect fog editing itself: while Edit Fog of War is active the fog is always shown, lightened, so you can see what you are cutting away.
• Preview player vision — the important one. It redraws the map with full-strength fog and drops every pin and shape that sits in a fogged area, so you can see how much of the world you have actually opened up. Use it before every session.

Fog is binary

Unlike legacy tiles, which have a "Discovered" middle tier, dynamic fog has two states: revealed, or fogged. There is no partial shading. If you want to represent "they've heard of it but haven't been", do it with a pin and its notes rather than with fog.

Maps carry more spoilers than almost anything else in a campaign, so it is worth understanding exactly what each hiding control does. All of the Secret? switches below are Game Master only — Map Managers can neither set nor clear them.

The four things you can mark secret

Secrets that hide themselves completely

Two things are hidden so thoroughly that players have no way to know they exist:

• Game Master Secrets on a map — a separate field from Notes, shown in its own tab that only Game Masters see. Notes are for your players; GM Secrets are for you.
• Secret dynamic features — filtered out before the map data ever reaches a player's browser. There is nothing to inspect and nothing to find.

The same is true of links to secret content: if a pin links to a secret Place, players see the pin without that link, and cannot tell a link was removed.

Checking your work

Marking things secret one at a time is error-prone. Chronica gives you two ways to review a whole map at once, and both are worth making a habit — but know what each one actually checks:

• On a legacy map, the Map View Toggle set to Player View shows you the player's map, with one addition: your secret tiles still carry a small eye icon so you can spot them. Everything else is what they see.
• On a dynamic map, Preview player vision checks your fog coverage — it hides everything the fog hides. It does not hide features you marked secret, so read those off their secret markers instead.

Between the two, a thirty-second sweep before a session beats finding out mid-scene.