Nerdbuilding Roadmap...Thing

Nerdbuilding Roadmap (If what you want isn't here, let us know!)
This is a broad overview of goals for Nerdbuilding.com. In no way is this a final representation of what will be included in the generator. This is simply a list of issues that we want the generator to address, and the end goals that all of our current/early development is working towards. Things may be added or, (heaven forbid) removed, based on our development and ability to accomplish them in an efficient manner. All of these ideas are constrained by one simple thing...TIME. We are a team of only 2 people, working in our spare time after work, or on our weekends. So, the time we can dedicate to this project is limited. But make no mistake, we will continue working on this project as long as we can.
This list is not a representation of when issues will be addressed. Nerdbuilding is a living, evolving tool. Many additions to the generator will rely on the next addition which, in turn, will rely on the previous addition. We will do our best to ensure that updates are usable and understandable, even if they are not fully completed.

NPC Generation

• NPCs (Non Player Characters) are what gives any area life. A settlement is nothing but buildings and descriptions without the people who live and work there. From the beggar sitting on a street corner, to the Grandmaster blacksmith who can craft legendary weapons. Every NPC in the settlement should have a job, a name, description, quirks, values, vices… all the fun things that bring a made-up person to life. Not only that, but NPC’s should not be limited to a few people. We want to give every single person in our settlements a reason to be there. Whether that be a small hamlet of 42 people, or a Metropolis with 103,278 citizens. The ultimate goal for NPC generation is to identify every single one of them, and give them a purpose.

Koppen Climate Classification

• There are at least half a dozen different systems for identifying biomes and climates on our planet. We have settled with focusing on the “Koppen” climate classification system in order to standardize our generator. This will be an almost complete overhaul of our most basic generation mechanics. We will identify and utilize over 15 different data points, things like planetary rotation direction, planetary rotation speed, axial tilt, prevailing winds, latitudes, coastal proximity, presence of major landforms, temperature of coastal currents and many more, to more accurately generate the climate and location that a settlement inhabits. These hyper accurate generations will allow the rest of the generation to become more specifically tailored and accurate.

Shop Inventories

• Every settlement will have certain available resources and populations. Although you MIGHT find a Grandmaster Blacksmith, who retired to some quiet village, selling rare two handed axes, the probability is low. Shops, merchants, artisans, craftsmen etc need to have locally sourced resources with which to create their products. Each settlement will have a matrix of available resources, professions, and products that will dictate the majority of their available selling stock. This way, any shop generated will have an identifiable inventory, consistent with where it is located. Certain things will affect supply, but, the plan is to take care of all the mundane wares so that the GM, writer, worldbuilder, can focus on adding their own special touch that elevates something.

Food Menus

• Just like shop inventories; taverns, inns, bars, restaurants, bakeries etc, are mostly constrained by their local supplies. We are doing our best to tag and attribute all items in our generator so that we can utilize them for more incredible things. For example, certain types of wheat are better for pasta, than others. Some kinds of rice can be used for fermentation, while others are very poor quality. Identifying this kind of information will allow us to utilize generated content and really make a settlement stand out. Maybe a village by a certain river has great conditions to grow wheat that makes the best cakes within 100 miles. Or maybe the flavor of oysters from a small oceanside village are the envy of all the wealthy elite. We want to do our best to make sure settlements have every possible chance to stand out in one way or another. Food is always a fun way to make something special.

Industry and Professions

• Every citizen of a settlement has a reason for being there. Whether they are a world renowned seamstress, a simple blacksmith, a thief, or even a beggar. Based on available resources, size of settlement, access to possible trade routes etc. we can approximate the types of professions and industries that would be present in a given generation. A dye making industry may pop up in a settlement that has the best conditions for growing a certain plant, or the width of a river may make another settlement a perfect place to have tons of grain mills. Most settlements have something unique about them, something they produce or do that is different from their neighbors. We hope to capture that information with professions and industry.

NPC Relationships

• Not every quest needs to be an epic journey to save the planet. Sometimes settling domestic disputes can create hours of fun. Creating networks of drama between the citizens of a settlement was one of the first reasons I realized I was gonna need a better generator. In addition to the generation of NPC’s we want this generator to also generate links between the NPC’s. Maybe the local blacksmith is blackmailing (lol) the captain of the guard, because the blacksmith caught him stealing from the local temple. Who knows. With every NPC we generate, we increase the probability for pre-built drama that can be turned into a quest of some kind.

Quest Generation

• This ties into the NPC relationships, but also many other things. A single settlement has tons of opportunities for quest generation. A farmer needs you to check on why his sheep keep disappearing, and the nearby mountain forests are filled with wolves who have become abnormally aggressive. Not every NPC would have quests generated for them, that would be insane, but a certain percentage could have quest ideas or starter ideas.

Planet Customization

• Right now, the generator is being built using earth standard information. From the axial tilt of the planet, to the speed and direction of rotation. Each aspect is being used to create a network of relationships. One of our goals is to eventually allow users to change the standards of their planet. Maybe their planet is tilted at 47 degrees, and rotating at ½ the speed of earth… in the opposite direction. These changes would have drastic effects on generations. But, they would be fairly predictable. If we could handle all the adjustments behind the scenes then you could generate settlements without having to worry about the small details of season changes or how the changes in the direction of planetary weather cells would work. Things that would be interesting to add into this would be size of the planet and distance from the sun, or the local albedo values of the planet’s surface itself. So many things that could have predictable effects on the generation.

Regional Generations

• Very very few settlements are 100% self-sufficient. Large settlements, even less so. Regional generations will allow the user to save smaller settlements, like villages and towns and then link them to a larger settlement, like a city or metropolis. These connections would take exported resources from smaller settlements and supply the larger settlements. Imported goods and resources free up the population of larger settlements to pursue more specialized professions. Artists, musicians, magicians, professional soldiers, legendary jewelers. So many professions and specialized NPCs that would be very difficult to generate if every settlement was required to farm, and feed itself, entirely independent of the rest of the world.

Custom Indexes

• This is a big one, probably the biggest one. As I stated before, we are sticking to Earth standards for the creation of the generator and it’s massive network of relationships. While default earth information may be useful for a lot of people, we want to be able to provide a tool for the super serious worldbuilders that they will not be able to find anywhere else. You may have spent the past 5, 10, 20+ years building your world, creating animals, plants, materials, biomes...so many things. We want to provide those dedicated worldbuilders the ability to use our database architecture, our coded relationship matrix, and our servers, to create their own, custom indexes with which to completely customize generations.
• As we create this generator, I am cataloging attributes, tags, connections, constraints and more to try and gather as much information as possible. While we may not use all that information, or all the tags, we are trying our best to code the generator to use it.
• This will be an extremely advanced feature of the generator and we are already thinking of ways to help with streamlining the process so that you don’t have to sit and go through the hundreds of hours of data entry that would be required to fully take advantage of our generator.

Append or Replace Indexes

• The ability to append custom indexes, onto our default indexes, would assist users who just want some different things to generate from time to time. Maybe adding in a carnivorous wooly mammoth, or a tree that can be used like metal. Replacing indexes would be a monumental task that would require hundreds of entries, if not thousands. But, fear not, we are thinking about solutions for that.

3rd Party Integration

• World Anvil is the first, primary, integration that we will focus on. However, we understand that there are dozens of other services that our users may want to have the ability to integrate with. I am constantly looking for new opportunities to include with future plans. Integration would focus mainly on exporting generated settlements. Some ideas for importing data, with which to constrain generations, are also being considered.

Export Options

• Outside of API integrations, we want to provide other options for exporting a generated settlement. Whether that be simple HTML formats, or a more complex PDF layout that can be printed and look nice, we want our users to be able to keep control of the settlements they generated, in whatever format they choose.

Building Generations

• No two buildings are the same. No two blacksmiths in a city will have the same layout. One may have 3 forges and put out a ton of basic, mundane weapons and tools. Another may have a specialized forge that can be used to melt exotic alloys and create legendary weapons. Once we identify and generate the basic number of certain professional buildings, we can then move on to generating custom buildings within each profession to create more life and uniqueness within a settlement.

Toponyms

• Name generation is a HUGE part of generators. We have not added any name generation yet, because we want it to be as thought out as the rest of our generator. Toponymy is huge. We plan to use generated content to influence the naming conventions of a settlement. That means, we will identify certain aspects of the settlement, near a river, on a hill, has a forest, rains a lot, etc. We will take those aspects and use them, along with word banks, to generate real world names, or even conlang names.

Family Relationships and Family Trees

• This ties in with NPC relationships. Family trees and histories will give the current NPC’s a level of depth that is hard to find anywhere else. Having a baker with a family history that extends back 2-3 generations will provide hundreds of opportunities for worldbuilding.

Targeted Re-generations

• This will be a fun one. Our generation creates settlements in steps. The ability to identify a step and regenerate everything after that step, would allow users to dial in the perfect settlement. An example of this would be; You generated a settlement that you like except for the fact that Oak trees are the main wood type and you would prefer something different. Regenerating the types of trees available for the settlement would have some big effects on building materials and a few other industries, but it would have little, or no effect, on the types of ores, grains, vegetables, animals, etc that you want to keep.

Targeted Generations

• As more information and content are added to the generator, we will continue to increase the number of options available for “Pre-generation” selection. This will enable users to really dial in a specific generation, if they wish to do so. The more details a user can identify prior to generation, the fewer generations will be necessary to achieve a result that they are looking for. Most people don’t use a generator because they know exactly what they want. They use a generator because they know what they don’t want, and will recognize what they do want, when they see it.

Customizable Exports

• User settings are increasingly going to become more important. Our generator is going to vomit out an insane amount of information. You might not want all that information. Maybe you really only care about a dozen different aspects of the generation. Being able to select which items you want to export to a 3rd party, or a formatted document, would cut down on the wasted information that you might not care about.

Constraint Free Generations

• The default generator is powered by a complex network of relationships and constraints. However, we understand that sometimes you might just want something crazy and fantastical. “Constraint Free” generations would be a feature that would unlock our relationship network, and allow the generator to just put anything anywhere. Whether that would mean unlocking 100% of the network, or just some of the relationships, remains to be seen. We currently have over 175 indexes of information that we pull from, and I am expecting close to 500 indexes to satisfy the Beta release. That is a lot of information to open up to a completely random generation. Things WILL get weird.

Culture Specific Generations

• Right now, the generator is being created with information based on European history, for the years of 500 - 1500 c.e. This is based mainly on my personal upbringing. I learned more about European history than any other culture. So, my familiarity is helping me do things a little faster. In the future, I would love to add support for other cultures and timeframes. Once we have built out our relationship networks to a more finalized version, we will have the ability to add in tons of information and connect whatever we need to satisfy different types of generations.

Settlement History Generations

• No city or town pops up overnight. It takes years or decades to build the infrastructure that will support the population. While the generator is creating a snapshot of the settlement, we should be able to take certain aspects of a settlement and create a broad history for the settlement. Things like, why was it formed, how was it started, what drastic events has it endured etc.

Architecture

• A great way to show the uniqueness of a settlement is through its architecture.What do the average, everyday homes look like? How do you differentiate the ancient temple in the center of the settlement from one that was built recently? Which buildings are built from materials that had to be imported from half a world away? While we may not be able to give a full history of a settlement, architecture is a great way to create depth, beyond having every building looking the exact same.

Advanced Civilization Support

• Right now, our generator is focused on medieval/fantasy style generation. But, just like the planned addition of cultural specific generations, I believe we would be able to utilize our generator to support more advanced, space faring civilizations. Our indexes are being separated and modularized so that they will be able to support the widest range of uses.

Nation Level Generation

• This goal would build upon the “Regional Generation.” Simply by expanding the range and number of settlements able to interconnect, we could conceivably create entire nations, with trade and relationships between settlements hundreds of miles apart.

Political Systems and Relationships

• The forces of influence, and power, within a settlement will definitely play a role in generating some of the basics of a settlement. Things like taxes, infrastructure, defense, industry and more. Those same forces would assist in creating drama and intrigue within a settlement to make it feel more alive.

Settlement Focus

• Most settlements have a reason as to why they exist. Maybe it was to be a fishing village, or a rich vein of gold was found nearby and a city sprung up around the mines to support the massive industrial activities. The ability to set a focus of a settlement should affect the industries and professions within that settlement, to be more specialized, rather than spreading them out. Because obviously, if a city has multiple veins of precious metals nearby, they may focus on mining, refining, and utilizing those ores, rather than focusing on something they have to import.

Expansive Database

• Our database is a huge point of pride for us, second only to the relationship network that it supports.The more information we collect, the more detail we can add into our generations. From the types of soils found near a settlement located on the banks of a mountainous river village, to the saltiness of the stew served at a specific local Inn. By continuously adding tags and attributes to our indexes, we can make our generator better and better, until we can provide you with more information than you could ever need. Each piece of information is just another possible spark of inspiration.

Premium Accounts & Ads

• Premium accounts will become a necessity as we add more functionality to the generator. As we add in the ability for custom indexes, or multiple 3rd party integration, we may need to place some of those functions behind a premium paywall, just to help pay for our server costs. Each function will be extensively tested and analyzed before the decision is made as to whether it should be gated or not. Ads will eventually make their way onto the site. Where they will be displayed, is still under consideration. But, we will do everything we can to ensure they do not detract from the information.

Mobile App

• This is a distant dream. Creating an App that is visually pleasing, and easy to use on a mobile device, would be amazing. We would love to provide the ability to generate and explore our generations within a well crafted application would be amazing. But, we need to create the generator first.

Partial Generations

• Say your characters/players are traveling and you just need an Inn for them to stay at. You don’t want to deal with looking through an entire settlement to find an inn to use. You just want the inn. Maybe a blacksmith, or an alchemist. Partial generations would allow you to generate and view that single element, without having to scour through tons of other information. However, because of the way our generator works, the settlement would be created in the background. So, if you suddenly needed more information about where that Inn, blacksmith, etc is located, the information would be saved and ready for you to look through.

Weather/Natural Disasters

• Weather and natural disasters are a part of life. Depending on where the settlement is located, we want to provide a list of extreme weather or disasters that could be possible. From the ever present possibility of a volcanic eruption if the settlement is near a volcano, to the seasonal typhoons/hurricanes for settlements located within certain coastal areas. This would be more for “Flavor” than anything else. Just providing information to the GM/Writer/Worldbuilder of what is possible in the area.

LGBTQ, Racial and Other Considerations

• We want to make this generator as agnostic as possible. So, we will do our best to ensure that the default generator does not subscribe to any societal/cultural ideations when it comes to race, gender or sexuality. As far as the default generator is concerned, a blacksmith is just a blacksmith, any resident of the settlement who generates with the required stats to be a blacksmith, could be a blacksmith. I will reveal that our generator creates residents with only 3 primary stats at this time. Those are: Experience, education, and strength/labor. These stats are dictated by age, and nothing else.
• The option to identify a settlement as Matriarchal, Patriarchal, tolerant, accepting, intolerant, etc. is planned. This is a worldbuilding tool, and we understand the need to customize some of those aspects. But, that would need to be the decision of the user, to include those aspects, not a default function of the generator.
• We would love feedback/ideas on how to better address this issue as it pertains to generation instances and relationships, so please feel free to reach out to us and let us know what is important to you.

Defenses

• Not every settlement will have defenses. Some will have basic fences, or rely on naturally occurring defensive features.Others might be located in a strategic location and warrant the expense of building walls and towers to be manned by a standing garrison. We want to identify how defenses may be erected depending on many different factors.

Infrastructure

• Infrastructure may sound boring, deciding if a settlement has sewers, or public lighting along roads, but every little bit of information helps with generating a unique settlement. Infrastructure will look into things like the supply of fresh water, how good is drainage on streets, is there some form of trash collection, where are people buried, are public baths available.