Online Mapmaker

[TengYt]

Hi. I'm fairly new to PBP (I usually play D&D at a tabletop, although I have been freeform roleplaying online for about six years) and I was thinking of DMing a campaign soon. The problem is, I have no scanner which means the only tool I have for making maps is MSPaint I'm very bad at drawing anyway so as you can imagine I have a bit of an issue here. Can anyone direct me to good, online mapmaking tools? I don't have much of a disposable income at the moment so I'm afraid I can only use programs that are free.

Thanks for the help in advance!

[RelentlessImp]

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is free and with a little practice with grids you'll be making decent combat maps fairly quickly.

[jseah]

You can try Maptools if your computer supports Java. Found at RPTools, IIRC.

I'm using it at the moment.



If/when you get the money, Dungeon Designer, City Designer, Campaign Cartographer and Fractal Terrains are VERY good programs for campaign world building. I highly recommend them, Fractal Terrains has a demo version that can't save maps (just print screen them) if you wish to take a look.

FT can create battlemaps as well if you want it to, although it's only really good for large scales.

[Mando Knight]

You can try Maptools if your computer supports Java. Found at RPTools, IIRC.

I'm using it at the moment.

This, or GIMP (or both. GIMP can be used to create maps, and then use Maptools to create the grid overlay). Tokentools at the same website lets you easily make customized tokens using any image.