Good Hexagon mapmaking tools.

[Nagash]

Hey all. I'm having a bit of a conundrum.

We just started a new game of starwars and the players all decided they wanted a change of pace and to go with highly tactical combat on the ground and in space battles. Probably because we've just done narrative combat for years.

So I agreed, why not give it a try right? Well after one session i remembered why I stopped doing that the first time. I HATE drawing maps. And I hate stopping the game to draw different maps and encounter locations in the middle of a session even more.

I do use a computer hooked to my TV screen for visuals though. So I'm hoping that someone knows a good program I can use to quickly put together tactical maps, I dont need a ton of detail. Just something I can spend a few hours during the week making and saving a bunch of semi generic maps I can move on screen icons around on to represent combatants.

Oh and with the holidays coming the cheaper the better (free is best).

Thx in advance all.

[Knaight]

Maptool and Tokentool can take care of the representation of movable figures easily enough, along with providing grid overlays you can use. Then you just get a top down representation of something, stick the hex grid overlay on it, and call it a day.

Of course, you need maps and figures. Tokentool works pretty well with basically any character art, particularly if you don't want a super consistent style. There are some free tokens and similar from Rpgnow and Drivethrurpg, along with things that can be made into tokens easily from Wargames Vault. Sadly, most have a bit of a fantasy bias.

For maps, you've got two main options. One is to look for complete maps, another to work with tiles. Tiles are generally square, but that's actually not much of an issue due to the grid overlay. I'd recommend Cartographer's Guild for either as a source, Dundjini also works. There's also an off chance that the material that was on Greytale's Nook prior to it gong down (probably due to hacking) showing up again, it had some good stuff.

Sadly, I lost this post and basically all of the links, so the rest of this won't be up to par. What I will say is that the Dundjini tiles section has some usable stuff for your needs and a ton of fantasy stuff, and basically any top down map can be put on a grid and used.

[Cazero]

Hexographer has a free version including a complete random map generator with customisable terrain types and a variety of basic icons. The free version might lack SF themed icons and terrain types, but I think it can still be used to generate backgrounds on wich you would put your screen icons.

[Nagash]

awesome thx guys. Ill check those out