maps

I have spent my entire life within arms reach of a pad of graph paper, and I'm very passionate about map making. But it's time to enter the 21st century and learn how to make them digitally. I'm certain I'll PBP for life, and I'd like to really show off my maps.

Where do I even start?

There are some good options:
Wonderdraft is for making overworld maps
Dungeondraft is for dungeon maps
MapTool is a map maker AND virtual tabletop
Dungeon Scrawl for making old school maps
Dungeonographer is a simple one for dungeons. Comes by recommendation of Matt Colville in his Running the Game series

Inkarnate is super easy and makes some pretty overland maps. I used it for battlemaps for Roll20 as well with mixed results. Examples I made with very little time invested in learning are below.

A quick desert city map for an online game, took about 15 min.

An this overland map for a friends' Pathfinder game. Also didn't take too terribly long. Back and forth in email with edits twice and I think I was done in under 2 hours, including time waiting for email replies.

This was a battle map (used the Roll20 grid) for an homebrewed Avernus encounter at the entrance to a buried statue.

I second Inkarnate. It's very easy to use and is updated every few weeks with new assets.

Thank you!

I'd like to refine my question a bit. I really want to make grand world maps (of course) but what I really need first is a way to make battle maps that are compatible with GP, I often find it difficult to upload images here.

After trying many different methods I found Google Slides worked best for me.

Until On The Fly Battlemaps (OtFBM)

What do you mean by this? is there an error you've been encountering?
or are you talking about hosting Images because we now can host Images through this:


I still can't understand Otfbm, but I'm more used to theatre of the mind anyways, if my players realy need something I'll either drop a map without tokens and write where they would be or use the [zoommap="" ] feature

Yoinks! Don't mind me, stealing those links for my Resources Page...

I have no tech skills, I can upload an image so long as I have a web address, but when I have an image of my own making in a sketchup or a pages file, I have no idea how to get it moved

thank you this looks like a great place to start

@Skallagrimm GP has some features to make otfbm easier to use on the forum. Check THIS out for details. It also describes zoom maps, which might be useful for you.

Using that item on the toolbar uploads an image from your computer to imgur and adds the URL to the post.

You may have to export the image as a .jpg or .png. I don't know what formats sketchup or pages uses.

For quick maps try the OtFBM GM Sheet.

thank you !

maybe if my teachers in school had added a dramatic soundtrack I would have paid attention

Can you change the color of the tokens on the otfbm? Or customize them in anyway? On the otfbm sure there are options for colors and images but I can’t seem to get them to work on GP

Update
I just figured out how to change their color. Still anyway to change the image would be great

Find yourself an online image that you like for the token. Copy its URL.

Type https://token.otfbm.io/meta/?url=(img url goes here w/o parentheses) into your browser's address bar. This will generate a short code.

Once you generate the token code, insert it into your map URL after a tilde.

[map]https://otfbm.io/5x4/@3
/B1H-Red-Dragon~2sxag
[/map]

1. Add the OtFBM gm sheet to your game.

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2. Use the OtFBM sheet in your game.

2.1 Select the OtFBM sheet
2.2 Paste the image URL of the token to create.
2.3 Click 'Get token'

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3. A new tab will open with your OtFBM token code.

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4. Use that token code by placing it after a ~, like this.