This is Merc Town
Merc Town is an interactive digital map designed for role-playing games and LARP. Think of it as a dynamic game board connected to a public wiki and social media, making it easy for everyone to build and explore the game world together. While developed specifically for the mercenary campaign in the world of Mythodea, Merc Town can be used for any open-world RPG. Every player can share knowledge - from details about a location to the history of a person or a story - and see that information appear directly on the digital map. This allows your group to collaboratively create the world, write its history, and access it all in one central place.
What makes role-playing so special is that feeling of truly getting lost in another world. Everyone imagines that world a little differently, and that's what makes your shared story so unique. To play together smoothly, it's crucial to have a shared understanding of the world and its rules. That's where Merc Town comes in. It's your central hub for collecting and sharing knowledge, helping you and your friends make every adventure even more immersive.
Collective knowledge base
The most important tool for knowledge sharing in Merc Town is a wiki, a digital guide that the players themselves build and maintain. Just like Wikipedia, this wiki is a collaborative space where everyone can add, edit, and organize game knowledge. The wiki is easy to use and has lots of tools for formatting text, so you can make your entries clear and easy to read. Since many people can work on it at the same time, it's a living, breathing resource that grows and changes with the community. It's the ultimate guide created by players, for players.
Every time you add an entry to the wiki, the map creates a knowledge token. These tokens are like digital sticky notes you can attach to buildings, landmarks, or anything else in the game. When you hover over or click on these items on the map, you can instantly see all the information connected to them. It's a quick and easy way to learn about the world without leaving the map view.
The map isn't static, it has a timeline. You can travel back and forth in time to see how the landscape and buildings have changed. This also applies to the knowledge tokens, which can be linked to specific moments in history. This feature lets you explore the world's history in two ways: by seeing how places change over time and by exploring the events that shaped them chronologically. It's an interactive way to witness the history of Merc Town unfold.
Game master mode
Most role-playing games are run by a Game Master (GM) who crafts the story, world events, and challenges. The GM holds the secrets of the world and decides what information players get to discover. Merc Town puts this power directly into the GM's hands with a special Master Mode. In this mode, GMs can create hidden knowledge tokens - valuable secrets that stay locked until the perfect moment. These tokens can be set to unlock automatically on a specific date or when players complete a crucial goal, making every new piece of information feel like a reward.
When you start the game, the map is a blank slate with just your starting location. To reveal more, you have to spend actions to explore nodes on the map. Each node you explore is a new discovery, revealing valuable details about the area - whether it's hidden resources or important landmarks - and pulling back the fog of war to show a new part of the world around you.
Support the project
Merc Town is an ongoing project. To follow along with its development or support me, check out my social media pages, the dev blog, or my Patreon. Your support helps bring the world of Merc Town to life!
