Dungeondraft

When talking about map making before I think I made it known how much I like Wonderdraft. It's not the best or most in depth  map making program I've ever seen out there, but it makes good looking maps quickly with little skill on the part of the user. And ultimately, that's all I need. I'm not looking to make professional maps to sell to Wizards of the Coast. I'm looking for a visual guide to my world that I can share with players.

You can imagine how delighted I was to find that Wonderdraft now also makes a dungeon mapping software called Dungeondraft. Like Wonderdraft, Dungeondraft puts out solid quality maps quickly and with little skill required on the part of the user. You can see more about it in the video they have advertising it here:

And below you can see a map I made earlier today for a game I'm running on Friday. As far as battle maps go it is serviceable. But it didn't take long to make, just a bit of futzing around with the tools.

My favorite part though is there is a random generator for dungeons or caves so you can just click a few buttons and get a random layout that you then populate with decorations. Definitely useful when you just want something small and quick, or something you can potentially reuse in different scenarios.

Not bad for $20.

Building A World From The Ground Up

The other day I had an idea for a world for a potential future campaign. It was focused on my semi-fascination with sunken cities, ships, castles, etc as a location for adventures in movies, comics, videogames, RPGs, and everything else. The idea became persistent to the point it wouldn't let me think about other stuff. And so last night I set out to make the world. Only I had one problem: I know basically nothing about geology, and most of my friends know - especially by comparison - quite a bit. It happens a lot where aspects of maps irk them just because it goes against expectations.

Now I'm a big fan of fantasy being able to break rules from how the real world works. After all, in a Fantasy universe gods, magic, and monsters are all provably real. But it is also nice to have a grounding in at least the basic aspects of our world. If nothing else it pre-emptively solves problems. You don't need to figure out where is dry - and why it is dry - when you know how the winds generally travel in your world. And so working with my friends over the course of about two hours we made the following world, and I figure I will present it step by step so you can see how it went.

Starting A New Game - Making A World Map

World maps aren't necessary for all games, and you should never feel bad for not having a map. However, I made the decision I wanted to at least learn how to make maps a few years ago and have taken some steps to learn. I also find for some games - particularly campaign style RPGs in fantasy universes - that it can be a lot of fun. Today I want to talk about building a world map, share some advice, and, well, we have pictures so why not.

Learning A Skill - Mapping

Visual aids can be a powerful thing in games. There's a reason most setting books have pictures and maps of the location, because they give you something to point at and go "it looks like this" and that spares you a whole ton of description. This is even better if description isn't a core skill of yours, if some aspect of the specific appearance is vitally important, or if you just don't want to take the time to describe in intricate detail every foe or monster. With cities and buildings it can be much the same way, and maps are a great way to not only show the city but also to show where a player is versus where they have to be.