Hello Stuart,
Thanks for the extended response.
Verbosity is not something I suffer from a lack of.
Which is as much a curse as a blessing. I'll try to be more succinct.
I see the more complete freeform control I could have with your approach. I will need to consider it more. Adding the learning curve to the time investment is an issue. I figured I'd scale my approach in phases.
Well I'd consider myself a beginner with JQuery, but I am willing to try to answer any questions you may have about how I implemented the dual level maps and selection areas. I used maphilight for the heavy lifting work and that is someone else's code library.
I can see how redrawing borders automatically would be pretty complex;
I think it could be done without too much pain. Initial setup would be a bit complex, but once defined the coords of a province wouldn't change. If my thinking is correct then to merge provinces into a group (county/duchy/principality) would just be a matter of identifying the shared edges (vectors) and eliminating them from the collection of all the provinces in the group. Then it should be just a matter of outputting what is left as a logical sequence of points to encapsulate one area (i.e. no edge-lines/vectors should cross one another). This would also happily cater for the situation where you nab a province which isn't adjacent to your existing lands.
Roads, trade routes, ley lines would be similarly so
Definitely useful to be able to hide/show these on a map. Layers seems to be the answer here, but I don't have the details on how to achieve that... yet. I was thinking about it and really all you'd need was to identify the middle of a province and use that as an endpoint for the leyline, trade-route, or road. For realm management purposes you don't need to know the exact route of any of those, just that the province is covered.
...holding icons probably not very useful anyway. Easier to present that stuff in a window or formatted notes area drawing from the database. The PBEM/PBP games already use some form or other of database and forms, of necessity.
Totally do-able, as the example from birthright.net shows already. Simple to throw data up on screen in tables.
You've said you love the Birthright setting and would like to see more done with it...what would be on your wish list?
I have done the whole realm management side of things (with Excel mostly) as both Player and DM; though it was enjoyable I found it very disjointed for Players used to RPGs and that it edged away from Role-Playing into War-Gaming. I prefer Role-Playing to War-Gaming so I wasn't entirely happy with the change. Having to take that whole "Adventure" action to do modules and major encounters was quite limiting.
For the past ten or more years I've been using the setting as the host world to standard adventuring parties and it works very well for that imo. All the realm information provides a wealth of plot ideas and adventure hooks no matter where you go in all Cerilia. Obviously the resulting campaigns are political heavy as the setting encourages that.
My wishlist does contain the realm management tool you describe, but it is below a "campaign tracking tool". I would like a campaign tracker which has a dashboard which shows all the things I might be asked by a Player. Weather, phase of moon, day of week, upcoming holy days (regional or global), route tracking on a map (with customisable historical fade), calendar/journal, PC character sheet, PC relationships to NPCs and Organisations (preferably a diagram format), all this with the ability to make notes onto a zoomable (either transitional layers or smooth zoom) atlas style map to reflect specific campaign notes (non-canon). Now the only part of that related to Cartographer's Guild is the map with route tracking and custom notes. On that map I'd like to be able to drill down to City Designer (Campaign Cartographer terminology) level so I can make notes on buildings if needed. None of that "campaign tracking tool" needs be Birthright specific in itself, but I would end up using it for my Birthright games anyway.
Do I want to see more done with the BR setting? Absolutely! For me it is like Firefly... it was abandoned why? For the love of whatever god you hold dear, WHY!?!?
I'd love for ALL the domains to have a Player's Secrets booklet done for them. I'd like to see more adventures for the setting. New Awnsheghlien, perhaps evolved from the defeat of old Awnsheghlien such as The Vampire is. The module "Hunt for Bloodsilver" was one of my all-time favourites, and I think it showcased the setting very well. There should be more of that showcasing of why Birthright is such a great setting and what makes it unique/special.
Dang! Succinct... fail! Sorry.
(Oh and don't think I didn't notice you avoided answering my final question! You didn't have to, of course, as is your prerogative, but I was interested in knowing the amount of investment you envisioned having.)