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CowardlyPaladin
2019-01-23, 12:47 PM
I'm running a DnD game with the final dungeon being a large elaborate castle (5 floors and 5 towers plus dungeons) and I am utterly terrible at drawing maps, is there a good free online mapmaking programnd allows me to easily create a castle map online, like Castle Ravenloft. It doesn't need to be a print out, its more for me as the DM to have a mental map of the building for running the game. Thanks

Jophiel
2019-01-23, 01:01 PM
Dungeonographer (https://www.dungeonographer.com/) might work for you. It's fairly easy to use, especially for a "structure" where I assume the rooms and halls will be polygons. It has a free version that should give you enough to work with. It doesn't save online but you can easily export your maps as PDF or PNG files and upload them to cloud storage or just save the images on your device. There's a little bit of a learning curve for making attractive maps but if you just want it for self use, just slapping squares, rectangles and circles together can be done in moments.

For free, it's worth checking out.

ExLibrisMortis
2019-01-23, 01:02 PM
Mipui (https://www.mipui.net/app/) makes some nice maps (within the range of what it can do), but it can be a bit slow to load bigger maps.

TheFamilarRaven
2019-01-23, 03:44 PM
Perhaps you should clarify what you mean by being bad at drawing maps. If you mean that your artistic capabilities make anything you draw by hand incomprehensible (I fall into this category), even to yourself. Then yes, a map making application is in order. And others have suggested some good ones.

If, however, you mean that you are struggling to construct a cohesive, logical and entertaining dungeon of the scale you wish, then I recommend learning about castles; their purpose and their layout (in the historical sense). And draw inspirations from other mediums. (An example, I once designed a room based on Sen's Fortress from Dark Souls, if you're familiar with the series).

For information about castles, I find that Shadiversity on youtube is a good starting point for a castle neophyte, if you're not already aware of him. And is probably the most accessible.

CowardlyPaladin
2019-01-23, 05:35 PM
Perhaps you should clarify what you mean by being bad at drawing maps. If you mean that your artistic capabilities make anything you draw by hand incomprehensible (I fall into this category), even to yourself. Then yes, a map making application is in order. And others have suggested some good ones.

If, however, you mean that you are struggling to construct a cohesive, logical and entertaining dungeon of the scale you wish, then I recommend learning about castles; their purpose and their layout (in the historical sense). And draw inspirations from other mediums. (An example, I once designed a room based on Sen's Fortress from Dark Souls, if you're familiar with the series).

For information about castles, I find that Shadiversity on youtube is a good starting point for a castle neophyte, if you're not already aware of him. And is probably the most accessible.


No the former, I'm a historian so I know how castles work, its making them comprehensible that is the problem, I have the outline just making it work in reality is the problem. Shadiversity is a lot of fun i agree

CowardlyPaladin
2019-01-23, 06:13 PM
Clarification: I looked at a few programs mentioned (and thank you) but do you think there are any that are a little more user friendly? I was imagining something in the realm of dragging rooms unto a map type thing, but maybe that exists just in my head.
Thanks so much

Neknoh
2019-01-23, 06:48 PM
I recently used Dungeonfog, it worked great, did leave watermarks in each square, but eh, I can live with that.

Jophiel
2019-01-23, 08:18 PM
Mapforge uses tiles but I found it faster to just draw my rooms in Dungeonographer than to paw through tiles trying to find the right ones in Mapforge. You might want to try it though.

www.mapforge-software.com/overview

Vegan Squirrel
2019-01-24, 01:22 AM
A couple links I've got saved for potential mapmaking:

http://deepnight.net/tools/tabletop-rpg-map-editor/
http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/

They're not quite dragging-rooms-onto-a-map, but they're useful to put together rooms pretty quickly.