Organizing Your World
Your world has a layered structure that gives NPCs context about where they are. Each layer shapes conversations — an NPC in a struggling mining settlement inside a contested border region talks differently than one in a thriving capital.
World → Region → Settlement → District → Building / Landmark
World Profile
Start by defining your world at the top level. Open the Atlas World tab to edit the world profile — fields for era, geography, powers, conflicts, economy, and more. Every NPC draws on this for their understanding of the broader setting.
Drawing Areas
All boundaries — regions, settlements, and districts — are drawn with the Settlement tool in build mode.
- Select the Settlement tool from the toolbar.
- Draw the boundary in either of the tool's two modes:
- Hexes — tap hexes to claim them, then hit Finish. Selected hexes light up and the outline previews as you go; tap a hex again to drop it. Hexes must touch, and a gap fully ringed by your selection is filled in for you. One hex is about a mid-sized village — this mode is how a proper city (or a whole kingdom) claims the space it deserves.
- Draw — free-hand: click 3 or more points on the map to draw a polygon, then close it by clicking near the starting point or pressing Enter.
- A Create Area dialog appears. What you can create depends on where you drew:
| Where you drew | What you can create |
|---|---|
| Open map (not inside anything) | Region or Settlement |
| Inside a region | Settlement (automatically associated with that region) |
| Inside a settlement | District (automatically associated with that settlement) |
Name the area and choose a subtype:
- Region subtypes: Kingdom, Country, Province, Territory
- Settlement subtypes: Village, Town, City
- District subtypes: Quarter, Ward, District, Zone
Fill in the profile using Quick Start (AI-generated from a short description, no credit cost) or write it manually.
Districts can overlap — a harbor district and a merchant quarter might share a few blocks.
Hex-drawn boundaries snap to hex edges but behave like any other boundary afterward — drag their corners to pull the edge off the grid where the city meets a river.
Regions
Regions are your broadest organizational layer. A kingdom, a coastal province, a mountain territory.
Each region has a profile with fields for geography, culture, politics, economy, tensions, and history. NPCs in the region reference these details — a merchant in a trade-heavy region might mention tariffs, a soldier in a contested border region might talk about recent skirmishes.
Settlements drawn inside a region boundary are automatically associated.
Settlements
Settlements are named areas with buildings, roads, and NPCs. A settlement can span several hexes and still lives as one place — people go about their day across every hex of it, and someone can live on one side of town and work on the other. See World & Locations for full details on settlement profiles and buildings.
Districts
Districts divide settlements into distinct zones — each with its own character. An NPC working in a market district knows it as the commercial hub; an NPC in a noble quarter speaks differently about the neighborhood.
District profiles layer on top of settlement and region context. Buildings inside a district boundary are automatically detected and associated.
Managing Areas
There are two things you can update about a region, settlement, or district — its profile and its footprint — and they're edited in different places.
Updating the profile (name, geography, culture, politics, economy, tensions, history). Open the Atlas World tab. It shows a drillable tree: Regions → Settlements → Districts. Click into any level to edit its profile. Changes save automatically and feed straight back into NPC conversations.
Updating the footprint (the shape it covers on the map). Open worldbuilding mode and double-click the region to put its boundary into edit mode, then drag the waypoints to reshape it. The same works for settlement and district boundaries. Settlements and buildings that fall inside the new shape are re-associated automatically.
Map Labels
Regions and districts display labels on the map. Label colors match your world's map theme.
Lorebook Scopes
Regions and districts work as lorebook scopes. You can scope a lorebook entry to a specific region, settlement, district, building, or NPC — or combine scopes. An entry scoped to both a region and a building only activates at that building within that region.
See Lorebooks for more on scoping.