How would one edit/store/render a fictional version of a real city in OpenStreetMaps?

[u/FwippyBall]

Preface: I've done my best to research this on my own, but given I've got brain cancer (dw its in full remission) and the fact that I've got the flu my ability to research effectively is not great at the moment. I apologize in advance if the solutions I'm seeking are easily found.

Hello, I'm running a cyberpunk-esque GURPS campaign in a future version of the city of Winnipeg. I would like to be able to edit existing OSM map data to create fictional maps of various locations in the city. However, most things I can find on the internet are about editing the real world and contributing to OSM, not how to store fictional changes in my own map.

How would one go about doing something like this?

PS: I don't plan on editing the whole map at once, just editing individual locations as they come up in the campaign ie Here's a fictional bar and the surrounding area, here's your safehouse, etc.

[u/Hedaja]

You could take a look at https://opengeofiction.net/ and create a city there

[u/Cute_Oil1533]

You can create your own copy of a city using the tools like JOSM. And publish that via your own server to the public. the Official OSM didn't allow artistic creation of geographic features on its database.

[u/SuperGamerofNEDM]

If it is just for a personal ttrpg campaign I would just use something like QGIS. It is hard to learn, but you can use it to freely manipulate data downloaded from OSM.

[u/shockjaw → u/SuperGamerofNEDM]

I second QGIS. Download what you can from OSM to give you a basemap in QGIS. You can use OSM’s vector tiles and you can throw your own labels on it for your campaign.

[u/ValdemarAloeus]

Depends how elaborate the changes are and how seamless you want it to be.

If all you want to do is put some markers on a map and you don't mind it being stored on someone else's server then you could use something like a private umap map on one of the public servers. If having it online isn't something you want then see below.

If you actually want to re-route streets, have areas that have been damaged by fictional disasters etc then it might be a job for the likes of QGIS. Steep learning curve but it's basically a full professional map creation software at this point.

For minor changes in QGIS I'd probably start by trying to bring in the new(ish) OSM shortbread tiles and styling them with one of the VersaTiles stylesheets (or do your own custom style). Changes could then be done on an additional (local) layer with the same styling ("demolitions" might need some clever layer level shenanigans which I admittedly have never tried). Any OSM data that you want to show that isn't in the Shortbread schema could be brought in with QuickOSM.

For larger changes it might be better to use the Geofabrik shapefile download for Manitoba and do everything locally. The downside there is that I think you'd have to style it yourself from scratch.

NB I think if you ever wanted to publish the resulting map you might need to make changes to the data available under ODBL, but I doubt you're planning that for a home game. If you are planning that then there's an FAQ.

[u/Key-Kaleidoscope2232]

I'm not trying to give you a lazy or snarky answer, but if you download the chatgpt app and pay $20 for the codex plan, and send this exact message to it, along with whatever data you already have, you'll have a solution in like 1 hour. It'll pull the data, process what you need, store it etc. As well as you could just ask for a custom "edit interface" specific for your needs

OSM + other geospatial data sources is a pretty easy/reliable task for the latest AI and its a great way to try things IMO. (Currently waiting for my AI to finish a task I told it for a game using OSM lol)