Histories and Heroes

Overview

Histories and Heroes is a tool for procedurally generating fantasy worlds. It is the legacy version of “LoreGen” that I created in the fall and winter of 2013 and 2014. In mid-2014, I rebooted the project as LoreGen.

You can read the story behind Histories and Heroes here.

Download

Histories and Heroes is available as a free download.

Version

The latest download is version 0.95. No future versions will be released.

Compatibility

Histories and Heroes works on Windows. It works best on large displays or two-monitor displays.

Features

Histories and Heroes creates fantasy worlds and allows you to explore and progress these worlds.

  • Worlds have between 3 and 9 continents, and each continent has between 1 and 9 regions
  • World map can be viewed in 6 different contexts, including a terrain-based tile-drawn map
  • Each world has dozens to hundreds of nations
  • World has a timeline of nations rising and falling in power over time
  • Each nation has a lineage of rulers and systems of government
  • Nations have central towns and population distributions
  • Each ruler has a custom biography
  • Detailed language generator based off linguistic models and real-world phonetic vocabularies
  • Regions have terrain and climate distribution based off of one of 50+ biomes
  • Simulation of passage of time — history progresses based on political rise and fall
  • BONUS! “Hero Sandbox” supports exploration of an unknown world with views of towns, nations, climates, and more

Version History

See “Story So Far” for background.

  • 0.95 – Hero sandbox, improved tiles, cleaning up interface (2014/03)
  • 0.9 – Language generator, tile-based display, towns, population distribution (2013/11/12)
  • 0.8 – Progression through time, dynamic glossary, improved nation territories (2013/10/28)
  • 0.7 – Bios for rulers, better continent shapes, improved nation territories (2013/10/19)
  • 0.65 – Improved interface, improved Terrain map view (2013/10/14)
  • 0.6 – Added biomes, re-designed interface (2013/10)
  • 0.5 – Touched up interface (2013/10)
  • 0.4 – Generation of rulers, national boundaries, and multilevel history (2013/10)
  • 0.3 – Richer infrastructure for tracking continents and regions as a grid (2013/10)
  • 0.2 – First working version with nations and histories (2013/10)