WoRSketch, the map planner

A board is one plan. It carries a stack of slides, and each slide is a sheet over one map, or a blank sheet over nothing. That is what lets a single board brief a whole engagement: the approach on one slide, what to do if the bridge is held on the next, the order of march on a blank one at the end.

Everything you draw saves itself as you go. There is no save button and nothing to lose by closing the tab.

1. Start from a map

   Open any map and press Plan this map. With nothing drawn yet it makes your board for that map; after that it lists the plans you already have for it and offers a new one, so the button is a way back to your work rather than a way to collect empty boards.

2. Or start from the hub

   WoRSketch lists everything you can reach: your own boards, your unit's, ones shared with you, and what the rest of the site has published. Start a new one on any map, or on a blank sheet.

3. You do not need an account

   A board drawn signed out belongs to your browser and works exactly like any other, room and all. It is thrown away after a day: the banner across the top says how long it has left and offers to keep it, and signing in turns it into yours permanently with everything already on it.

The toolbar runs across the top, clustered by what you are doing, and the space beside it holds exactly the controls that apply to whatever you have armed or selected. Every tool has a letter, and the letter is faster than the button once you know it. Hold Shift while drawing to lock a line to a bearing or a box to a square, and press Esc to abandon whatever you have half-drawn.

A plan is about particular units, so the marker tool places particular units. Choosing one from the palette arms the tool; clicking the map puts it down. Choosing one while counters are selected re-points those counters at it instead, the same way choosing a color recolors a selection.

• The map's order of battle

  The units that actually deploy on the slide's map, grouped by side, straight from the site's own game data. A placed counter draws its short designator, so “126th New York” reads as 126th NY and “Battery Clark” as Clark, because the branch glyph has already said battery. A pool slot places too, and says it is a pool rather than pretending its occupant is known.

• Plain counters

  Anything not on the order of battle: a detachment, a hypothetical, a guess at where the enemy will be. Pick a side and a branch and place it. Real units add to this rather than replacing it.

• Your own markers

  The marker library holds art you have uploaded and presets you have saved, yours or your unit's, so a symbol your unit always uses is two clicks away on every board rather than redrawn each time.

Counters can carry the piece the unit mostly fields, name themselves as you place them, and be renamed later with F2 or a double-click. A counter keeps the words it was drawn with even if the unit is later renamed: a plan is a record of what somebody intended on the day, not a live view of the catalog.

Who is fielding it

A counter says which in-game unit holds a position. The other half of a real plan is which community is spawning as it, and the properties panel asks that directly: pick the units from the site's own directory under Fielded by, and their Discord crests are drawn on the counter. A position often belongs to several units together, so up to five crests sit on one counter rather than the plan naming one and making the rest invisible. You can also say how many players each expects to bring.

Like everything else on a plan, this is recorded rather than looked up: the crest and the name are kept as they were on the day, so a board still reads correctly after a unit renames itself, changes its crest, or disbands.

The ruler measures ground in yards along as many segments as you need, and the guns tool draws what a battery covers. Both report real distances, which means both need the map's real scale: a site admin calibrates a map once by marking two points a known distance apart, and every board on it reads true from then on, including boards already drawn.

Gun ranges are drawn honestly, which surprises people the first time. A battery gets one ring per distinct range it fields, not one at its longest: a battery of three Parrotts reaching 5000 yards and three Napoleons reaching 1300 draws both, because a single outer ring would claim six guns reach 5000 when half reach a quarter of that. Identical ranges collapse into one ring.

The maps are the playable ground, a few hundred meters across, while the guns reach thousands of yards. So most true rings are larger than the whole map, and rather than draw a circle nobody can scroll to, the counter states the coverage in words and draws stepped reference rings you can actually judge distance against. Rings are off until you ask for them, per counter, and only artillery gets them.

The filmstrip along the bottom is the deck. Every tile shows what is actually drawn on that slide and who is standing on it, so you can see what is happening on slide three without leaving slide one. Add a slide on the same map, on another map, or blank; drag to reorder; double-click to rename. Deleting one takes what is drawn on it, so it asks first.

Each slide has its own layers, listed down the right. Draw the friendly plan on one, what you expect the enemy to do on another, and turn the second off when you brief. Hiding a layer takes it off the board for everyone in the room, because that is a decision about the briefing rather than a private view setting; locking one leaves it visible but stops it being picked up by accident. New work lands on whichever layer is selected, and each row says how much is already on it.

Beside them, the properties panel holds everything about what is selected: its placement, its colors, its size, and who fields it. Pinning is the same idea as a locked layer applied to one object: Ctrl + Shift + L pins a counter so dragging past it moves the map instead of moving it.

Anyone who can reach a board can be in it at the same time. You see each other's cursors, each other's strokes as they are drawn rather than after they land, and who is reading which slide. Signed-in people appear by name and avatar; everybody else gets a guest name they can change.

• Point at things

  Alt-click drops a ping everyone in the room sees, from whatever tool you are holding. It works on a board you can only read, which is the point: you can join a briefing and still say “there”.

• Present

  Presenting drives everyone else's slide and view, so the room is looking at what you are looking at. Anyone can break off to check a flank on their own and press Rejoin to snap back.

• Hold the floor

  The host can lock the board while they talk, which suspends everyone's drawing without throwing anybody out, and can remove somebody from the room outright.

Reaching a board and drawing on it are two separate questions, asked separately in Board settings. The audience decides who gets in and whether they arrive holding a pen; the tiers depend on who owns the board.

On top of the audience you can name individual people and say what each may do, and put out a link that lets in whoever holds it, with a password, an expiry, or a use limit if you want one. Somebody with no account can open a link and draw. The layers only ever add, so the most open route a person has is the one they get, and nothing here can take away what another layer gave.

On a unit's board, rank covers all of this: anyone whose rank can manage battle plans manages every board the unit holds. That belongs to the unit rather than to one board, so it is stated in the settings dialog and set on the Ranks page.

• Export a picture

  Download or copy the open slide as a PNG. Frame it as what you are looking at, the whole map, or tight around the drawing, at up to three times its own size, and see the picture itself before you take it.

• Post it to Discord

  Send the plan into one of your unit's channels. The picture goes as an attachment, full width, with a button under it that opens the board read-only, so a channel can reach it whatever the board's audience is.

• Hand it to your unit

  A personal board can be given to a unit and becomes one of its battle plans: the unit owns it, staff can correct it, and it stays if you leave. You are left on it as an editor. It asks first, because it is a real change of owner.

• Copy somebody else's

  Any board you can open can be copied into a new one of your own on the same map, which is how you build on a published plan without touching it.

• The board's own picture

  A board earns a thumbnail from what is drawn on it the first time somebody draws and it saves. Until then its card and its Discord post show the map art, since there is nothing else to show yet.

• Report a published board

  Anyone can open a plan somebody published to the whole site, so anyone who opens one can flag what is drawn on it for a moderator.

The keys worth learning first. The editor keeps the complete list behind the ? key, generated from the bindings it is actually running, so that one is never out of date.

Every shortcut and gesture, generated from the live bindings

?

Abandon an unfinished shape, close a rename, put down what is held

Esc

Undo; Ctrl + Shift + Z redoes

Ctrl + Z

Delete the selection

Delete

Duplicate the selection

Ctrl + D

Copy, and paste onto this slide or another one

Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V

Nudge the selection; Shift moves ten times as far

Arrow keys

Name the selected marker

F2

Pin the selection so it stops being dragged by accident

Ctrl + Shift + L

Frame the whole map; + and - zoom

0

And what the mouse, the touchscreen, and the stylus do:

Pan

Middle-drag, right-drag, Space + drag, or the Pan tool

Zoom

Mouse wheel, or the on-canvas buttons

Touch

Drag to move the map, pinch to zoom; with a drawing tool, one finger draws

Select

Click an object; Shift-click to select several; drag empty space to box-select

Straighten

Hold Shift while drawing to lock a line to a bearing, or a box to a square

Stylus

Pressure varies the stroke width; the eraser end is not used

Name a marker

Double-click it, or turn on naming as you place

Ping

Alt-click drops a marker everyone in the room sees

Map display

The Map button dims or sharpens the base map; it only affects your screen

Slides

Double-click a slide to rename it

Following

Move the map yourself to explore; Rejoin snaps back to the presenter

Ruler and guns

Measured in yards on a calibrated map; disabled until an admin calibrates it

The things that stop people, most of them the result of a deliberate decision rather than a fault, which is exactly why they need saying out loud.

• I can open a board but I cannot draw on it.

  Reaching a board and drawing on it are two separate settings, so being let in does not by itself hand you a pen. Whoever owns it sets what its audience may do, read or draw, and can name you on top of that from Board settings. Two other things stop a pen that should work: a host can lock a board while they talk, which suspends everyone's editing until they unlock it, and a board you reached through a link is held to whatever that link grants. Ping still works throughout, so you can point at what you mean.

• I opened my board to everyone and now nobody can draw on it.

  Publishing drops the audience back to reading unless the same change asks for drawing as well. The people a board reached when it was shared with your unit are not the people it reaches once it is open to the whole site, so letting everybody draw is something to choose rather than something to inherit. Set it to draw again in Board settings if that is genuinely what you want, and note what the warning there says: anyone can then change it, with or without an account.

• I drew a plan without an account. Will it still be there tomorrow?

  Not unless you keep it. A board drawn without an account belongs to your browser and is thrown away after a day, which is what lets anyone start drawing without signing up first. The banner across the top says how long it has left and offers to keep it: sign in and it becomes yours permanently, with everything already on it. Clearing your cookies loses it sooner, since the browser is the only thing holding the claim.

• The ruler and the gun ranges are greyed out on my map.

  Those tools need the map's real-world scale, and a map nobody has calibrated has none, so they are hidden rather than shown lying. A site admin calibrates a map once by marking two points a known distance apart, and every board drawn on it reads true distances from then on, including boards already drawn. A blank slide has no scale either, and never will: there is no ground behind it to measure. Report the map from the contact page and it can be calibrated.

• I turned on gun ranges and my battery drew nothing.

  Almost certainly because the ring is bigger than the map. A playable map is a few hundred meters across while a gun reaches one to five thousand yards, so at true scale most rings enclose the whole thing. Rather than draw a circle nobody can scroll to, the counter says the range covers the map in words and draws stepped reference rings you can actually judge distance against. Two other reasons it draws nothing: only artillery gets rings, since a ring around a revolver is noise, and an uncalibrated map has no scale at all.

• A unit was renamed and my board still shows the old name.

  On purpose. A plan is a record of what somebody intended on the day, so a counter keeps the words it was drawn with instead of quietly restating itself as the catalog changes underneath it. It also means a board draws itself with no lookup, in an export, in a Discord post, and years later. Rename the counter yourself if the new name matters more than the record.

• Who can open a board I have made?

  Whoever you say. A board belongs to you, to your unit, or to your browser, and Board settings decides who reaches it: invite only, your followers, or everyone for a personal board; staff, the unit, or everyone for a unit's. On top of that you can name individual people, and put out a link that lets in whoever holds it, with a password and an expiry if you want one. The layers only ever add, so the most open route somebody has is the one they get. Boards shared with a unit show on its profile.

• The board I posted to Discord shows the map instead of my plan.

  A board earns its picture the first time somebody draws on it and saves, so a board posted before that has nothing but the map art to show. Draw, let it save, then post again. If the post is up to date but the plan looks wrong, check the framing you chose: a picture can be what you were looking at, the whole map, or tight around the drawing, and the three look very different on a board that is zoomed in.

• I pressed Present and nothing happened.

  Presenting drives everybody else's slide and view, so on your own screen there is nothing to see. The bar says who it is reaching. Anyone following you can break off to look around on their own and press Rejoin to snap back, which is deliberate: somebody checking a flank should not have to interrupt the briefing to do it.

• I drew a plan on my own account. Can my unit have it?

  Hand it over from Board settings and it becomes one of the unit's battle plans: the unit owns it, its staff can correct it, and it stays with the unit if you ever leave. You are left on it as an editor, and a setting with no meaning under a unit is mapped across, so shared with your followers becomes shared with the unit. It is a real change of owner rather than a link, which is why it asks first. Copy the board beforehand if you want to keep your own version.