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The world-map time slider

Open a world map that belongs to a world with timeline events and a time slider runs along the bottom. Drag it back and forth to watch the map change through history: a city that hadn’t been founded yet disappears; a tower that was later destroyed vanishes once you pass the year it fell.

  • Parked at the far right (the default) every feature is visible — the map looks exactly as you authored it. Scrubbing is opt-in; nothing is hidden until you move the slider.
  • Dragging back in time removes features whose linked events haven’t happened yet, and brings back features that were later destroyed.
  • Features with no timeline links stay put at every position — so a world that hasn’t linked anything yet still shows the slider, with every pin in place.

Where it turns up depends on what you’re doing:

  • Exploring the map — it’s there automatically.
  • Editing the map — it’s hidden until you turn it on. Click Show timeline controls (the timeline icon) in the map toolbar; the same button reads Hide timeline controls once it’s open.

That toolbar button only appears once the world actually has dated events to scrub through, and players can use it as well as GMs.

Alongside the slider itself:

Control What it does
Skip to previous / next event Jump straight to the moments the map actually changes
Step backward / forward 1 day Nudge the date one day at a time
Play / pause Auto-advance through history
Show everything Jump to the latest event so every feature is visible again

Ticks along the track mark every dated event, so you can see at a glance where your world’s history is busiest — and jump straight to “the day something changed”.

To make a pin, region, or path react to the slider, attach it to one or more timeline events.

  1. Click a pin, region, or path to open its tool panel.
  2. Find the Linked timeline events section (just below Linked entity).
  3. Click Add timeline event, search for the event, choose how it relates (for a pin the default is created), and click the result.
  4. The chip appears immediately and the map updates — drag the slider before that event and the feature fades out.

The relationship you pick matters for when the feature shows:

  • created / location / involved / … — the feature appears from that event onward.
  • destroyed — the feature disappears from that event onward.

A feature with both a created and a destroyed link is visible only between the two. See Appearing and disappearing features for the full rules.