Mapmaking services?

[WarrentheHero]

Anyone know of any good (preferably free) mapmaking services for D&D? I know there's a few free services for world or regional maps (such as Inkarnate Worlds or Hexographer), but I don't know of any that are solid for, say, building a town or even a battlemat. In particualr, I really like the aesthetic/style that Wizards of the Coast uses for their published adventures (especially the towns), but don't know of any service that emulates that. Is there anything out there that is comparable?

[Mirkul]

Well from the free ones, the best is probably Autorealm, which I am trying to use now.

But if you want to really have great maps and you are willing to put some time and money to it, then Campaing Cartographer is probably what you want. There are bunch of tutorial videos on youtube for that so even if it is a little bit harder to get familiar with it, it can be done quickly. That's where I would like to get

[Beans]

Pyromancers.com has Dungeon Painter, which allows you to create encounter maps (as well as having an archive of maps people have made). It's pretty darn good and has various packs of textures and props ranging from medievalish-fantasy to modernish to sci-fi-ish. I've used it for my Kamen Rider game I run via Roll20.

I think they're trying to put a better version on Steam too.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Oh wow. Pyromancers in particular is pretty good.

I have used a simple photoediting program, Paint.net to free hand draw maps which don't look bad for WWII games and a D&D map.

For the D&D map I started by googling a parchment paper background and going from there. Paint.net is a decent teacher of Photoshop type skills.

[Knaight]

On the battlemat side there's always Dungeonographer. Otherwise I'd look into something like Maptools and the people who have put significant time into making art for it - unfortunately a lot of the old sources I'm familiar with have switched to being completely commercial.

[marycrook]

I just like this game.

[Cealocanth]

Free ones have already been stated. Campaign Cartographer and Dungeon Designer are really good for not free services. They are single-purchase and allow for as many downloads you may need, for however many years down the road you might need to download it again, though.

[ProphetSword]

If you're making battlemats, you could do what I do. I utilize the toolsets available to me in various D&D based video games and create really nice battlefields. Then again, my group uses a digital table:







And maps like the ones you see here are done using the Neverwinter Nights toolset (like the example provided below), and are projected onto the screen using MapTools.



Something like this could also be printed out for a nice battlemat as well.

The three games that are excellent for building maps in this way for great and dramatic battle scenes are Neverwinter Nights, Neverwinter Nights 2 and Sword Coast Legends. So, if you have any of those games, you already have some map building tools you can use.

[obstructor]

I know there's a few free services for world or regional maps (such as Inkarnate Worlds or Hexographer)

I just use hexographer for everything and if it doesn't work I draw it by hand. Don't try to use dungeonographer for anything, its too time intensive for too little result. Cityographer is probably alright for a random generated city, but its difficult to steer which is fine for cities you don't care about.

[Anxe]

Roll20 is pretty good if you buy the modular map packs. $5 each for a particular setting type (Dungeon, Sewer, Jungle, etc). The images are a little higher quality than Dungeon Designer.

[Kane0]

Neverwinter nights toolset on a table display

That is awesome. You have my kudos sir.

Does anyone have ideas for larger world maps? Donjon is great but i cant modify them.

[Anxe]

That is awesome. You have my kudos sir.

Does anyone have ideas for larger world maps? Donjon is great but i cant modify them.

I think Campaign Cartographer is one of the better resources out there for making your own world maps.

[ArgentumRegio]

The most important thing you need to understand, in order to get a particular 'style of map' out of a mapping software is that you often have to make CUSTOM BRUSHES. This is true for both autorealm and GIMP in my experience.