Fantasy heraldry and genealogy tool

[Kennin]

I know, there are genealogy tools out there. But... they are made for this real world of ours. There are so many disadvantages that just make them not suitable for role playing purposes.

Features that need to be in the tool that aren't:
1. Show TWO images. 1 for the character portrait, 1 for the crest.
2. Nice fantasy layouts. The modern layouts are just a bit too sterile.
3. Custom calendars. I know not of one single fantasy game that is set in "2020" of their calendar. For example, in my prefered game, we're currently at 1040'ish. But also the months and days of the months, as well as the days of the week as well as the amount of days in a week should be customisable.
4. Making it visible for your players, but only the parts up until the date. So you can add dates of death or birth in the family tree that did not yet happen. But once that day arrives, it's displayed.
5. Heraldry. This should be intertwined with a *GOOD* heraldic tool.
5.1. The tool should based on the blazoning, with all kinds of tweaks. So say you'd want to make this crest: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... broke).svg (of course you wouldn't, because it's an existing one and you really shouldn't use existing crests for fantasy purposes!). The blazoning reads: "Barry of ten Argent and Azure an orle of martlets Gules". Nobody who's not into heraldry understands this. What is gules? And Barry, that's a name, right?
But by smart menus, this should be possible to solve. "Barry of ten argent" could be: [10] [white] and [blue] [bars (horizontal bands)], which generates the blazoning "Barry of ten argent and azure" as well as the back of the shield.
5.2 Multilingual, obviously. We play in Dutch and I know a LOT of people who play in German. We have no use of English blazoning. But here is where I can help! I can help with the blazoning functions in English, Dutch and German!
5.3 Vectors. Crests should be made in vectors. It's easier to generate vectors in heraldry, than in pixel images. Trust me, I've tried both! And I started to learn Inkscape, virtually only for heraldry!
5.4 A growing DB of usable vectors. Searching for copyleft heraldic drawings (ordanaries and charges, to be precise) is a good one, here!
5.4.1 Possibilities to import vectors of your own. Perhaps even with the rule: "by importing your own vectors, you agree to upload the vector into the DB of the tool, free to use for every user of this tool"
5.4.2. One thing is important though: the uploaded charges have to be in the same format. Meaning: the outlines of the drawing are the strokes of the image, and the fills are exactly that. No separately drawn outlines that actually are fields instead of strokes. Believe me, those are a terrible mess.
5.4.3. The parts of the charges have to be properly grouped, so they can be part of the blazoning. For example an eagle can be "beaked" or "clawed" in another colour, or the entire feet can be in a different colour. Or even the teeth or the tail. That should be possible to define in the menus.

[wolph42]

Hi Kennin,

Welcome to the maptool forum, note that theres also a discord channel where there is more activity nowadays.
Do I understand your Dutch (like me)?

As for your post, you've not told the purpose of your post, are you currently developing such a tool and want feedback?
Are you looking for collaborators?
Are you requesting someone to build it? If so, who?

And you've not said anything about the tools purpose, just to be clear: 'to create a genealogy tree' is not a purpose, what you're going to do with it or what others can do with it is the purpose.

again welcome! I hope you'll enjoy the stay.

[Kennin]

Hi. I live in Antwerpen, Belgium, though I'm German. Yet my first language is indeed Dutch, with German being a close second and English a close third.

As to your questions: this is the RPTools forum, so I think this would be a very good app to create. I have no knowledge of coding, nor do I have the mental strength to learn how to code.
So it's a suggestion for the RPTools team. Or for any other takers, for that matter.

And what you can do with it sounds rather obvious, I thought. Incorporating a clear connection between related characters for your RPG.
I only play one RPG, Oog des Meesters/Das Schwarze Auge/The Dark Eye. In this amazing setting, there are quite a lot of NPC's with huge family trees. It gives your game quite an extra depth if you encounter one of these NPC's, and as a GM it just makes it more easy to keep track of the family.
It also will grant you more possibilities to generate more well-thought families for your own pool of npc's.
And as a player, it grants you the possibility to generate more and nicer backgrounds.

[wolph42]

Thank you for elaborating. and cool, het oog des meesters is my very first rpg game ever! IRC I was 13 when I started gm-ing that game.

Although i agree that a geneology tree will give depth to your character I doubt it merits the creation of an entire tool for that...but that said, I've build tools for which you can say the same!
What is important however is that you have to realise that this community is entirely voluntarily. And that only works if people are passionate what they're creating, either from a frustation (why isn't there a tool that...) or passion (wouldn't it be cool if). Most stuff created originates from their frustration/passion, fed by user who align to their ideas. You appear to have such a passion, so I would urge you to instead of waiting to see if someone aligns with you, to also have a look at what you can do yourself!
There are btw also other tools to keep track of that stuff, but geneology specifically is not something that rings a bell.

Anyhoot! I hope you find someone with the same passion, but I more hope so that you can find the energy within to initiate it yourself!