Atalantes always starts with an outline

Last post I said the shape is mine and the mountains are code. This one is about what that means, and about the world that sits on the map, because a map with nobody on it is just a nice picture, and if I drew it, it might not even be that.

Every time I start a Campaign or a Campaign Setting, or a world or the ultimate goal of a persistent world as a Campaign Setting, I always start with the Map.

Why an island

I wanted an island because I knew I wanted Atalantes. I did not know how big I was going to make it. Big enough to play many different campaigns on, but not so big that it made the world tip over. An Island contains and constrains things, it separates the setting from the world it is in. Things can be different in the Setting and not make the 'Real' world change.

So in September 2026 I opened Wonderdraft and drew an outline. The main island first. Then, in a second sitting, three more large islands around it. That is all it was: an outline of landforms, the way I wanted the coast to run, where I thought the bays and headlands should sit. No relief, no rivers, no names. I am still no cartographer, and this time I did not have to be.

Then two steps. Step 1, place the islands in the Atlantic. Step 2, AI.

The outline as I drew it in Wonderdraft, September 2026. The main island first, then the three islands.

What the AI did with it

The map went into code on 21 September. The first run took my coastline and initially we just ran iterations to ensure that the Coast line was evident, real, established and known.

I defined where the top left corner of the map was in Longitude and Latitude in Google Earth and then got some AI workers to research geomorphology and plate tectonics and then adjusted the outputs until they were what I wanted. I knew there would be a long North-South mountain range. I knew one side would be drier than the other. I stipulated that a small desert was to be included "in a logical place."

Now it was an outline of the main map in the Atlantic, with a bunch of Game level geology and geography and geomorphology, not real but enough.

Then we enhanced it, and laid down the first nine mountain ranges. Over the next week came elevation, climate and rivers on the 26th, biomes, resources and wildlife on the 27th, the islands on the 28th, and a clean-up of the mountains against the elevation on the 29th.

The map is 1,330 km from west to east and 1,225 km from north to south. Every place on it is a pair of kilometre coordinates, x running east and y running south from the map's origin, in the top left (it made sense when I was placing it in Google Earth). There are no hexes. There were, and I will come back to that.

I used a bunch of tools to create the elevations and mountains and they were wrong every time. They just didn't work and they just looked wrong.

So now the relief is real, both for me that I found an answer and because I asked AI to go find me some licensable data to use. On 2 and 3 October the terrain was regenerated from real-world elevation data: public satellite elevation of actual mountain ranges, borrowed and reshaped to fit my outline. I think some of the Pyrenees went in. I am not sure, and I find I do not mind not being sure. What matters is that the valleys drain the way real valleys drain and the ridges sit the way real ridges sit, because they were real once, and somewhere they still are.

The look came later, and it came from old maps. On 23 September I decided the relief would be drawn by code in the style of about 1820. On 27 October a research run went through what that actually means: Cassini's survey of France, the first Ordnance Survey sheets, the staff maps that armies carried, and Admiralty charts. The hachured style, the engraver's hatching for slopes that you see on maps of that era, went in on 28 October, and blue rivers were added to it on 3 November. The whole map is now drawn three ways: painted, topographic with contours, and hachured. On 4 November all 16,334 tiles of the hachured map went live on the site, sharp at every zoom. More styles to come later once I get into a campaign. Now that the how to build it is done future styles can be added, not simply, but certainly with ease to start and review.

Same map, in three styles, Hachured 1800s, Painted, and Modern Topographic.

One more thing is coming because of a habit. When I was in the army the maps had grids on them at set distances depending on the scale. I asked for a grid layer, and it is in a later development cycle. Old habits die hard, and old soldiers die with sore knees and back.

The moment it felt real

On 4 October I asked whether the map's heights could go into Google Earth, so I could tilt the island and fly around it like a real place. They could, with the limit that Google Earth will not swap its own terrain for ours, so Atalantes would sit as a model on the open Atlantic. Then on 9 October, as I was cruising the Mediterranean I was looking at the world floating past and had a thought. So I asked for something better: the topographic map and the terrain in 3D, in a browser, on the iPad. I was given options and picked the one that built our own viewer page. A worker exported the heights, with the satellite, topographic and painted looks aligned to them, in about eight minutes. The Conductor wrote the viewer page itself, and it was live that same morning. Whole island, drag to turn, pinch to zoom, tap the land for a readout in kilometres and metres, and a slider to exaggerate the height up to eight times so you could see what the ranges do. My brain exploded, my wife looked at me like I was crazy (so basically like usual). And it came to me that this was probably going to be doable. If I could get a 3D rendered view of Atalantes in 8 mins, while lazing around on a Cruise Ship using Starlink and WiFi, then I figured AI was at the point where this was going to happen.

That was the moment it first felt real, and the first time I thought this was likely to succeed. Everything before it had been files and reports. This was a place.

The sea was flat that first morning. By the evening the viewer had a sea floor, because the oceanography work landed the same afternoon: real depths on the shelf, canyons running out of the gulfs. On 11 October I asked for a rerun with as much oceanography as existed, and it came back as a chart: a pale shelf, depth contours from 20 m down to 4,000 m, navy deep water, and fourteen named sea features, eight canyons, three banks and three seamounts. That is the render I linked last week.

The 3D viewer, version 3, 11 October. The sea floor as a chart, the land in its satellite look.

The honest bit: hexes, and the elevation restarts

Two big things went wrong on the map, and both taught me something.

The first is hexes. On 2 October, hexes were the map's unit. Every wargamer knows hexes, every campaign map I have ever used had them, and the first map contract made hexes the thing a position was measured in. Within days I reversed it: "I want hexes, if used, to refer to coordinates, and for coordinates to be the source of truth." The reason is simple once you see it. A hex is a grid laid over the ground at one scale, and the moment you want another scale, a tactical table or the whole island, the hex is the wrong size. A kilometre coordinate is the ground. Hexes can be an overlay later if anyone wants them. The cost of those few days was an audit, a round of fixes across eight items, and a brief written days later that still said "per hex" because it had been copied from an older plan. The hex index was finally retired at the end of October.

The second is the terrain itself. The first plan for mountain detail was to add it at render time and leave the stored heights alone. That plan was superseded within two hours by the regeneration from real elevation I described above, and the two days of terrain work took at least fifteen worker runs. Then on 8 October I asked to see a village from the side, at eye level, so I could see what a community looked like. Thirteen runs went into eye-level and side views before the geometry was right. The lesson written down afterwards was: check a brief's geometry with one run before fanning out. The lesson I took was that "show me" is the most expensive sentence I can give to an AI. By moving to the real world mountains, merged into new locations, all the rendering of mountains, valleys, cliffs, ridges, rivers and the like (which takes ages in AI terms, like days of compute time each run) was replaced with real data that already works. The rivers could then be put in places that made sense and everything fit and worked.

The world on the map

A map is nothing without the idea that people live on it. That one idea is the thing that carried over from 2024: various peoples arrive on Atalantes at different points in time. Everything else about the world was built again from scratch.

The history runs from 180 BC to 2026. Eighteen eras, each named for its war technology (at the moment), in six periods: Ancients, Medieval, Renaissance, Horse and Musket, World Wars and Modern. The first era is Tribal and the first rules is Tribal 2nd Edition, from 180 BC. The last is the Contemporary. I am starting with Tribal, because it is small, skirmish sized, and gives my first peoples a lot of agency in the history of Atalantes. Though I expect that to change over time and I know the Romans are coming in around 116 AD so my Pre-Columbian North American transplants and the Gauls had better get themselves situated before then!

Atalantes is settled in waves, by sea, by real-world peoples who in our history never met. Each wave carries its own law, its own gods and its own way of war, and each generation remembers the last arrival wrongly or correctly (I mean they know they are right, but what they know may not be based on accurate recall). The first peoples, with their working names are the Dawnland People, who arrived in 180 BC. The River Villagers and the Copper Lineage, some years after. Then the Ship-Kin, from Armorica. Later come other Celts, and in 116 AD a colony founded by the VIIII Hispana Roman Legion. The inspirations are plain enough: the mound builders of North America, the Celts of Brittany, Rome. I want to deal respectfully with the ancient cultures those are drawn from. At the same time the setting is entirely fictional, and it has wars in it, because no war was ever started by everyone getting along splendidly and respecting each other's beliefs and wants.

The World Chronicle is the record of all of it. It started on 24 September as the single record of everything that has happened in Atalantes, and it holds two things: what happened, and, apart from that, what each people believes happened. Earlier events survive as distorted legend. Gaps are allowed. Where the record is silent, the setting says so and does not invent. The Lore is what is known in any era, by each polity. So Chronicle is a record of what actually happened, when and where and by whom, owned by an AI called Chronicler, and Lore is what people of a time and place know and that is owned by an AI called Loremaster. The chronicle and the lore may be close, but they also may not be. That will come in handy later in the 'history' of Atalantes and in the Development of Atalantes Campaign Setting (ACS) when I get to the in-depth work on an AI called TimeShift. Once a campaign ends, the 'plan' is for me and the players to choose the next era and rules. If it is a different era from the last campaign then something has to move the timeline into the future or the past, and that is TimeShift in conjunction with Chronicler and Loremaster.

Speculation

Since this hasn't been completed yet this section is speculation. TimeShift working with Chronicler and Loremaster 'should' work through the time between the two campaigns and settle the lore of the new Campaign. Facts in Chronicle may not support that lore, or they may; it will depend on how much chronicle exists and the relevant polities and their technology. I'm going to leave this here since it is not in development for a while.

It's a kind of magic

There is no magic. Nothing supernatural is ever confirmed. Peoples believe in spirits, ancestors, omens and curses, and belief shapes what they do: a warband fighting beneath its ancestors may hold when it should break. In the rules that shows up as morale, cohesion and leadership. No unit, leader or place has a supernatural ability. That is the rule for now. Maybe one day, if this keeps working, an alt-alt-world with magic in it. Not this one.

Each people keeps its own calendar. The turn header on the site at the moment reads "Turn 11, Tobacco Time, year 31 beneath the Mound: Ash Day 8 Seed Moon to Ash Day 14 Seed Moon (30 August to 5 September 131 BC)". I am not convinced by it yet, it seems convoluted, but that is why I am a core wargamer not a core Role Player, so I'm leaving it in. It is either the thing that makes the world feel inhabited or the thing that makes a player reach for the bracket every time, and I want playtester feedback in the alpha and the beta before I decide.

The world that will move

What I have described is the world as it stands. Behind it is a set of designs that are not built yet: the economy, muster and manpower, population, how polities grow, politics, faith, and the seasonal and yearly tick that will move all of it forward, with supply in the field. They were designed over October and the first week of November, in a run of sessions where I was given options and chose. None of it is in the campaign yet. When one is, I will say so here. The point of all of it is that what the peoples do in one campaign becomes part of the record, and later campaigns start from it. The map and the kilometre coordinates do not change. A river drawn in 131 BC is the same river in AD 1914.

Warlord Catumaros leader of the Herd Guard.

Warriors with Long Weapons.

Some Heroes and their faithful hounds.

Marksmen of the Herd Guard

Warriors of the Herd Guard with Short Weapons.

The Development Cycles so far.

Dev Cycle 0: Foundations (closed, 44 of 44 done)

Play live with Campaign 1.1 at turn 7 and its first engagement resolved; map v0.14, oceans, paths, coordinates, audience and the Napoleonic style done.

✓ Audience field A4 and A5
✓ Chronicle locations as km grid references, hex ids out of the data
✓ Chronicle core: definitions, schemas and the acs build
✓ Generators, polity life cycle and the Campaign 1 era set-up
✓ Polity snapshots for Play and the bundle import
✓ Chronicle names, points and territories exported to the map
✓ Routes as Chronicle places, known per polity
✓ Schema plan S1 to S17: profiles, tech ladders, eras and new classes
✓ Resources and wildlife by location
✓ Territories and rivers by geometry
✓ Outside design review assessed (ten steps)
✓ Rules input terminal and method
✓ Turn 1 and the first battle
✓ Force data before the first engagement
✓ Legend class and lore legends
✓ Loremaster runs
✓ Map sheets exported for Play
✓ Base map data: terrain, rivers, climate, biomes, resources, islands, regions
✓ Map contract 0.14
✓ Code-drawn renderer, asset sheets, labels and style families
✓ Napoleonic map style registered
✓ Oceanography O0 to O13
✓ Parley between polities
✓ Paths plan map runs M-P1 to M-P5
✓ Persona Manager v0 and the Naming Kit
✓ Atalantes Play live with Campaign 1.1 turn 0 done
✓ Quick result for a fight
✓ Fixes found during the campaign (Review E1 to E4)
✓ Blood & Bayonets How to store forces module
✓ Infamy 2020 How to store forces module
✓ Tribal 2e How to store forces module
✓ Settlement plans, table frames and local ground
✓ Stand-in personalities (cautious, bold, raider, trader)
✓ Tactical phase and consent rules
✓ TimeShift v0: snapshot, gap report, evolve and branch new
✓ Fix the two stale turn 0 sheets
✓ Umpire pack for the adjudicator
✓ The World Meta filed as the setting's statement of scope

Dev Cycle 1: Whole map and real dates (closed, 10 of 10 done)

As Admin and as each polity, Kelvin sees the whole of Atalantes, gives an order anywhere on it, reads every date as a calendar date with the modern date in brackets, and the Inbox cards and Admin links read right; Campaign 1.1 has moved to the whole map at a turn boundary with earlier turns replaying byte for byte.

Theme: Kelvin sees the whole world and gives orders on it, with real dates.

Not this cycle: The knowledge layer (what each polity's map marks) waits for c2.

✓ Backups you can prove
✓ Culture calendars and the 24-hour clock in Play
✓ Development cycles and their test plans running: Visionary
✓ Foundations: economy core and manpower (sessions 1 and 2)
✓ Hyde Wargame Campaign learnings: the nine map questions walk (C1)
✓ Hyde Wargame Campaign learnings: adjudicator and turn 0 pack wording (C1, C3 to C6, R11)
✓ Pack inbox: packs loaded without the upload form
✓ Renders R4 build folder and R5 release packaging
✓ UI Option A (Map Room) beyond the first build
✓ Play shows the whole map, never a campaign window

Dev Cycle 2: Knowledge and results on the map (current, 31 of 33 done)

Each polity's map marks only what it knows; the Admin can tell a polity; results replay as pins beside a feed; every released bundle is in the Chronicle; one deliberate restore done.

Theme: What each polity knows, and results shown on the map.

Not this cycle: Closing Campaign 1.1, map styles and sharp zoom, and any new period or ruleset.

▶ Map Room: results on the map, art, action sheet, phone tabs, Admin pins
▶ Each polity's map marks only what it knows
✓ Accept ADR 0135, the living-world tick
✓ Approach orders: what each side saw, surprise, and the table
✓ Dependency graph as the Board's navigation and go place
✓ Chronicle reader for the map's area planes
✓ Campaign results into the Chronicle
✓ Foundations session 3: demographics
✓ Foundations session 4: polity growth
✓ Foundations session 5: politics and power struggles
✓ Foundations session 6: religion
✓ Foundations session 7: the living-world tick
✓ Full test suite runner in each repository
✓ Admin and participant guides rewritten, live and as artifacts
✓ Pamphlets name the Admin, the Player and the Adjudicator in bold
✓ Guides update: Pamphlets 1 to 5, with the ACS timeline
✓ Hyde Wargame Campaign learnings: standing contingencies and order of march (C2)
✓ Hyde Wargame Campaign learnings: pursuit after an action (C10)
✓ Hyde Wargame Campaign learnings: season scoreboard and terms (C7)
✓ Hyde Wargame Campaign learnings: weather with memory (C8)
✓ Map planes for regions and named areas
✓ Map aids for the nine questions
✓ Adjudicator pack: a line on surprised sides
✓ Adjudicator's pack says how a force splits
✓ Close refuses while the season is on
✓ Playtester guidance: what feedback is needed and how to give it
✓ Roles chart: who acts, when, where and why (A3 landscape)
✓ Vocabulary rule: combat words allowed inside a named action
✓ Routes as an era-accurate overlay in every map style
✓ Whole map at one high quality, sharp at deep zoom

Next post is the campaign site and how a turn is played, with the whole why of Tribal.

Two years later and Atalantes rises from the ocean, born anew.

 It has been two years. The last post here was October 2024 and it ended with me promising photos. Well… clearly that didn’t happen.

Let me start where that left off, because I said in the second post that I don't like going back to edit, and I still don't. What follows is the catch-up, in four parts, one a week. This one is about where the two years went and what I decided at the end of them.

What happened to the Napoleonic campaign?

It did not start.

The 69th Foot were painted, the 69ième were painted, the Bourbonaise got their coats, and the first campaign, Sharp Practice on land and Black Seas at sea, never got as far as a first turn. Too many obstacles, as always.

Look at what I was promising myself in 2024. Bourbon French against Imperial French in 1807. The Ninth Legion sailing to Atalantes instead of vanishing in Caledonia. Russians against English in 1811 on plains where Europe's alliances don't reach. Every one of those needs the same things underneath it: a map with places on it, a history that says why anyone is there, a record of what has happened so far, and some way of working out what happens next when nobody is at the table. And before any of that, I had said I needed to start at 180 BC and work forward through AD 800, the 1630s and the 1750s to get to 1789 at all.

What I actually had was a borrowed map, a Copilot history I had called trash in print, and a notebook. The gap between the two was the obstacle, and it was not one more weekend's painting.

The figures did get painted though. That part of the hobby never stops. I will put a force in each of these posts, starting with the Tribal pre-Columbians below, because that is where the story has ended up.

The mounted warriors of the First Nations Atalanteans, with two totem poles.

The warband of Guards-the-bones on foot: Guards-the-bones in the tall feather headdress.

The gap

So what did I do with the two years? Mostly, I learned AI.

Properly, I mean, not the "ask Copilot for a blog post and laugh at the unit types" way of that last post. Although that post was not wrong about the method, and it is still the method: give it something, see what comes back, throw out the trash, keep the rest, change the prompt so it does not do that again.

In my day job I am basically an AI wrangler now, so while a steep learning curve, not as steep as hitting a cliff face. We all had GPT 3, 3.5 and 4 then Copilot, then for Atalantes I tried GitHub Copilot for actual building, not just prose, and it was nowhere near good enough for what I wanted. So I went to Claude, which is what I use at work, and moving to Claude Code was the best move ever. It is the most robust of the lot. That is the one I stuck with, and the one that has done the building since.

The thing I came to understand in those two years is that the obstacles that stopped the Napoleonic campaign were not painting obstacles or time obstacles. The obstacles were the kind of work that an assistant or a software dev team can do, if the assistant is good enough or you have the money for the software dev team and you are prepared to check everything they do. By the middle of 2026 I was ready to try again. My own Claude Subscription, my own plans, my own distilled desires. 

This time the map is mine.

In September 2026 I sat down in Wonderdraft and drew a new continent.

Not the 2024 one. That was another designer's map, used with their blessing, and the only thing it shares with the current map is that both were made in Wonderdraft. 

This one I drew myself, in two goes: the main island first, then three more large islands around it. I am still no cartographer. But I didn’t have to be. I drew the outline of the map landforms. Then started the geomorphology AI work. Step 1, place the island/s in the Atlantic. Step 2 AI.

What the AI work has done since is take my outline and enhance it, the coastline, the relief, the rivers, into something I would not be embarrassed to print at a decent size. Part 2 is about the map and the world, so I will stop here and just say that the shape is mine and the mountains are code.

The decision

Here is the thing I decided, and it is the reason this blog is back.

I was never going to build the campaign setting I have wanted for thirty years by hand. Not the map, not two thousand years of history, not the tools that move armies about and work out who can see whom. I could pay someone to build it. I did the sums on that later, out of curiosity: for what now exists, a low-cost Australian development house would have wanted somewhere between $1.1 million and $1.9 million, or about $580,000 to $1 million from the cheapest kind of shop, the kind that hands the work offshore, with a team of seven taking ten to eighteen months. It is an estimate from the amount of work produced and the usual rules of thumb, not a quote, and the lower figure is the safer one. I will write that up properly in a later post, with how it was worked out, because the method matters more than the number.

What it actually cost was a monthly AI subscription, a few dollars of web hosting, and thirty-one days from the first commit to the end of the first development cycle.

So AI-built just became the best choice. Not the cheapest way to do it. The only way it was ever going to get done.

How it works, in a paragraph

I talk to one AI session, which I call the Conductor. It holds the whole programme of work. When I say go, it writes a precise job for a separate worker session: what to build, which files it may touch, how it proves it worked. The worker does that one job, commits its work and reports back. The Conductor reads every change before anything is kept, and brings me the decisions. Most of my decisions are a choice between options it has set out, and quite often I take the one it recommends. Some I don't. I design, I decide, I check. I have defined the model to use and the effort the worker gives, and then Conductor starts it, lets it run, monitors what it outputs and reports back. Again a more in depth look in a later post.

The honest bit

It is not magic and it is not free of mistakes. On 4 October a one-character slip in the website's build file went live in one step and took the site down for about eighty minutes, with a damaged backup for company. Workers take shortcuts their briefs forbid, and say so in their reports, which is better than not saying so. Running several things at once ran the machine out of memory more than once. Each of those produced a rule: work lands on a development branch and the live site moves only on my word; every job carries an exact list of what it may do; one big test run at a time. The rules are the real product of the first month, as much as the code.

In that month, 1 October to 1 November, the count was 682 separate tasks handed to workers, 2,370 saved changes across six projects, and about 218,000 lines of software and tests. I have not read every one of those lines. I have read every report. And I was on holiday on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean from 5OCT to 24OCT and did all the interactions via my iPad.

What came out of September

The order of work was the one from the 2024 posts, just with help: first the map, then the structures that hold the setting, then the tools that do things with it. The map went into code on 21 September. The World Chronicle, the single record of everything that has happened in Atalantes, started on the 24th. The first rule set was chosen on the 26th. The Conductor took over on 1 October, and the first campaign was approved on the 4th. It was a very early release, it wasn’t horrible and it isn’t something I’d do again, but it showed  me a lot of gaps.

The idea is the same as it was in the first post: a campaign world for historical war games, any period, where the battles have a reason and an outcome that matters to the next one. Same continent, same plan of starting at 180 BC and working forward. What changed is that the setting is now software, with a map, a chronicle, and a site where a campaign runs, and AI sessions do the drafting and the building to my direction.

Why not Napoleonic

One more thing before I stop, because it is the question anyone who read the 2024 posts will ask. The first campaign is not Napoleonic. It is tribal, set in the summer of 131 BC, fought with Tribal, the skirmish rules from Mana Press.

Partly that is the history: it starts at 180 BC, so the first campaign starts where the history starts. Mostly it is simpler than that. I had played a couple of games of Tribal, a friend was interested, and Napoleonic games are hard to find locally. I built the New Recruit force files for Tribal, which got me talking to Ara Harwood, the designer from Mana Press. So it just worked. There may be a post on the Tribal New Recruit files at some point.

Leaders and champions of the warband.

Guards-the-Bones Warlord and leader of the Bone Guards, beside one of the totems.

In a future post I’ll go through the whole why, and how a turn is played. Next post is the map and the world.

Heroes of the Bone Guards.

Here are some screen grabs of the current build:

The campaign site as it stands today, address redacted.

And a 3D Render of the Islands

An AI Blog Post

So IRL I work in the IT.

AI is pretty hip and hot right now, and I can't go a day without a vendor, or a colleague talking to me about AI this or AI that.

I am pretty much a cool-aid drinking convert to the altar of AI makes things easier. But it still takes effort to get it to work right.

AI is in my view one of the enabling techs for this Atalantes Project.

I can build a prompt, provide some information then ask for some content and then modify it until it is what I want.

As an example I ran some AI and then had it summarise the "story so far" as a blog post. I am going to post it here then keep commenting:

The Birth of Atalantes: A Journey Through Time and Conflict

As the creator of the Atalantes campaign setting, I am thrilled to share the rich tapestry of history, conflict, and unity that defines this alternate world. Atalantes is a land where the echoes of ancient battles and the whispers of alliances shape the destinies of its people. This blog post delves into the early history of Atalantes, highlighting the arrival of various factions, their struggles, and their eventual unity.

The Arrival of the Tribes (180 BC - 150 BC)

In 180 BC, the North American Tribes, including the Wabanaki Confederacy, Haudenosaunee, and Oceti Sakowin, arrived in Atalantes. They settled in the fertile valleys and along the rivers, living in harmony with nature. Initial conflicts over territory and resources eventually gave way to trade routes and a period of relative peace.

The Celts’ Arrival (150 BC - 100 BC)

The Celts arrived from Europe in 150 BC, bringing advanced metalworking and agricultural techniques. They settled in the western regions of Atalantes and engaged in trade with the North American Tribes. While tensions occasionally flared, diplomacy and intermarriage often resolved conflicts.

The Picts’ Arrival (100 BC - 50 BC)

Known for their fierce warrior culture, the Picts arrived in 100 BC and settled in the northern regions. They formed alliances with both the Celts and the North American Tribes, recognizing the benefits of cooperation against common threats. Skirmishes occurred as the Picts expanded their territory, but these were often short-lived.

The Gauls’ Arrival (50 BC - AD 10)

The Gauls arrived in 50 BC, bringing a strong military tradition and a hierarchical society. They settled in the central regions of Atalantes and integrated with the existing cultures. Their arrival led to a power struggle, but their military prowess and strategic alliances helped them establish a dominant position.

Key Locations and Strategic Insights

• Valley of Echoes: Controlled by the Wabanaki Confederacy, this fertile valley is strategically important due to its abundant resources and natural defenses.
• Ironwood Forest: Inhabited by the Haudenosaunee, this dense forest offers excellent cover and ambush opportunities.
• Bison Plains: Roamed by the Oceti Sakowin, these vast plains provide a strategic advantage for their cavalry units.
• Stone Circle: A sacred site for the Celts, offering a strong defensive position and spiritual significance.
• Northern Highlands: Controlled by the Picts, this rugged terrain provides natural fortifications and a vantage point for monitoring enemy movements.
• Central Stronghold: The fortified settlements of the Gauls, serving as a hub for trade and military operations.

Unique Unit Types and Capabilities

• Wabanaki Canoe Warriors: Skilled in navigating waterways, these units can launch surprise attacks and quickly retreat.
• Haudenosaunee Longhouse Defenders: Experts in defending fortified positions, with strong defensive capabilities.
• Oceti Sakowin Cavalry: Highly mobile and effective in hit-and-run tactics, excelling in open plains.
• Celtic Druids: Providing magical support and healing, enhancing the combat effectiveness of allied units.
• Pictish Berserkers: Fearsome warriors with high attack power, excelling in close combat.
• Gallic Legionnaires: Well-trained and disciplined infantry, capable of holding the line and executing complex maneuvers.

Engaging Narratives

• The Battle of the Valley of Echoes: A pivotal conflict where the Wabanaki Confederacy defends their homeland against a coalition of Celts and Gauls.
• The Siege of Ironwood Forest: The Haudenosaunee’s strategic defense against a Pictish invasion, showcasing their mastery of guerrilla tactics.
• The Plains War: A series of skirmishes between the Oceti Sakowin and the Gauls, highlighting the mobility and resilience of the Oceti Sakowin cavalry.
• The Alliance of the Stone Circle: A diplomatic gathering where the Celts, Picts, and North American Tribes form a united front against the Gauls’ expansion.

Conclusion

The early history of Atalantes is a testament to the resilience and adaptability of its people. Through conflict and cooperation, they forged a land rich in culture, strategy, and adventure. As we continue to explore the world of Atalantes, we honor the legacy of our ancestors and the bonds that hold us together. Join us in this epic journey and may the spirit of unity guide us in the battles to come.

I wrote a prompt, then fed it and some dates and arrivals, the general location of Atalantes and nothing more into Copilot, then got it to produce some history, then I took that history and asked Copilot to write a blog post.

Some of it is trash for what I want, like the unit type stuff, some of the locations don't match the map, and I didn't give much information on the where of things. And some of it will likely make it into production.

I can change the locations with some editing, ignore the unit specialisation or anything else or use it to prompt something out of my own head.

The point of this post is to demonstrate how with a bit of information, and some Prompt Engineering I can have an AI assistant do all the hard work of starting things off, I can quickly work out what I don't like, then either delete it, change it or modify the prompt so it doesn't produce that type thing again in the future.

I can even use it to get Icons to put on the Map for capital settlements.

They still need work and are literally just the result of simple AI prompts:

A Stonefort for the Gauls.

A Celtic round house

Nomadic Tribe

Settled Tribe

These need work and need to be formatted and put into a form that Wonderdraft can use them, but that is just nerdery, I can do that, what I can do is draw, or work out how to put the right things together. I can however right an AI prompt like this one:

simple black and white line art icon of a typical Celtic home in 80BC, 50x50 pixels

So that I hope outlines some of the methodology behind the creation process. Nothing will take away the work of putting things on a map, in Wonderdraft, or ensuring that things work with whatever rules system I am aiming for, but the use of AI to augment my thinking, and to do a lot of the early framing of things, and also the art creation is fairly amazing. To me at least.

My Hobbies and the fevered pitch of a relentlessly restless mind

 Generally, my brain doesn’t stop doing things, solving problems, inventing problems, playing games, whatever, there is just always something happening in here.

Clearly, I spend 40-50 hours a week working, which pays for all the other hours of the week when I am hobbying or reluctantly sleeping.

So, while I am a War Gamer, and that is my Hobby, I have a set of other hobbies that are complimentary or adjacent, mostly to keep my brain busy when I am not War Gaming, but also because as an IT Manager, it is nice to be able to make things that are real, rather than software, policy or decisions.

So, beyond the battlefield and my passion for tabletop games, I have added bookbinding, leatherworking, laser cutting, terrain building, 3D resin printing and miniature painting to allow me to create and customize as much of my gaming experience as I can and also to keep my brain busy. Each project, whether it’s crafting a personalized journal or designing terrain, is a labour of love that enhances my connection to the main hobby, but I also enjoy these other hobbies as well.

Wargaming

Napoleonic Era

Land: Engaging in 28mm Sharp Practice and 15mm other rules, I recreate the grand battles of the Napoleonic era.

Sea: Commanding fleets in the game Black Seas, I navigate the treacherous waters of historical naval warfare.

Modern Era

Land: Utilizing micro-scale models, I simulate modern land battles with intricate detail and strategy.

Warhammer: The Old World

Dwarfen Mountain Holds: With 2700 points of painted 28mm figures, my Dwarfen army stands ready to defend their mountain strongholds.

Tomb Kings of Khemri: My 4500 points of painted 28mm Tomb Kings bring the ancient undead to life on the battlefield.

Warhammer 40K

Tau Kill Team: A small but formidable force, my Tau Kill Team is ready for skirmishes and larger battles, and when the Historical 3D printing wanes I have a bunch of Tau to print to beef up this force.

BattleTech

Mercenary Company: From the pre-clan days, my mercenary company is a force to be reckoned with.

Clan Mechs: Currently in the process of being painted, these mechs will soon join the fray.

Tabletop Games

With countless games in boxes, my collection of tabletop games offers the opportunity of endless hours of entertainment and challenges.

Bookbinding

Journals: Crafting personalized journals is a passion of mine for rule sets, campaigns or art folios for my daughter and grand daughters.

Printed books to bind: I print and bind copies of PDF rules or other materials, creating durable and beautiful rulebooks, and lasting resources for the other hobbies.

Tools and Manuals: My collection of bookbinding tools and manuals is enough to  allow me to explore various techniques and styles.

Leatherworking

Journal Folios: Designing and crafting journal folios is a rewarding creative outlet.

Tools and Manuals: My leatherworking toolkit is well-stocked, enabling me to tackle a wide range of projects.

Laser Cutting and Engraving

MDF Bases, Dials, Markers, Tokens: Using an X Tool S1, I create custom bases, dials, markers, and tokens for my games, leather patterns and anything else I can think of, like game box inserts (which I just remembered).

Leather Cutting: Precision cutting of leather for various projects is made easy with my laser cutter. While I love the handcrafting getting the laser cutter to put the stitching holes exactly where I want them or cutting a curve on an edge exactly as I pictured it is very rewarding.

3D Resin Printing

Warhammer Figures: I have hundreds of 28mm Warhammer figures and tens of Warhammer 40K figures.

Historical Figures: My collection includes hundreds of 28mm historical figures for Napoleonic and Napoleonesque battles.

Future Projects: I plan to print ships for Black Seas, modern tanks and troops, and various other historical and fantasy figures.

Equipment: I use an Elegoo Mars 4 Max and an Elegoo Wash unit, and I tend to buy resin in bulk.

Foam Wire Cutter

Terrain Building: Creating realistic terrain for my games is a crucial part of my hobby.

How I Hobby

My goal is to play tabletop historical battles as part of a long-form war campaign. When I’m not actively gaming, I’m preparing for the next battle by:

• Printing Figures: Using my 3D resin printer to create detailed miniatures.
• Painting Figures: Bringing my miniatures to life with paint.
• Preparing Imagi-Nations: Crafting fictional nations and scenarios for my games.
• Prepping Rules: Printing and binding PDF rules using a process called imposition.
• Designing and Cutting Leather: Creating custom bindings for books, rules, or journals.
• Making Terrain: Building realistic terrain and table covers with textured tops.
• Gaming: Fantasy, Historical, Sci-Fi, Boardgame, PC.

I rotate between these activities based on my mood, available products, pieces and parts, motivation, and upcoming game needs. Whether I’m printing, painting, cutting, gluing, sewing, folding, binding, or gaming, each step enhances my tabletop experience and keeps my brain busy.

I have recently added this blog to the rota, it helps me to get my thoughts together, forces me to consider how I would explain what I am doing, gives me a reference to what I was thinking at the time and gives me another outlet to keep my brain busy and fend of sleep.