VTT DMs--where do you get your battlemaps?

[PhoenixPhyre]

I've (reluctantly) turned to playing online, despite strongly preferring being in person. And it's ok. I have a VTT license, and I can use it. But the hands-down most time-consuming part of it is getting maps. I could draw everything by hand, but a) that would take longer than it's worth (my art skills are minimal, and using the built-in drawing tools is painful on my particular VTT for anything more than just circling things) and b) seems to defeat one of the advantages of the format, which is higher visual fidelity. I've been using google image search (trying to make sure I'm only getting the freely-licensed ones rather than outright piracy) and a small selection of various programs, but it's getting annoying.

I'd like a source, even if I had to pay for decent-looking, widely-varying battlemaps. Ideally at 100 px/sq, but anything from 50 and up would work. Recommendations for simple map-making software would also be appreciated.

[Rynjin]

I either draw everything by hand or poach maps from published adventures and modules that I like. Chances are if you can think of a location to have a fight in, someone else has already made a professional rendition of something approximate enough to work.

[Azuresun]

I'd like a source, even if I had to pay for decent-looking, widely-varying battlemaps. Ideally at 100 px/sq, but anything from 50 and up would work. Recommendations for simple map-making software would also be appreciated.

The stores at Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds both have a wide selection of map packs (some of them amazingly good quality), for around $5-10 each.

https://2minutetabletop.com/ is another one I use regularly--good quality, cheap, clean and easy to adapt.

[Christopher K.]

The stores at Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds both have a wide selection of map packs (some of them amazingly good quality), for around $5-10 each.

https://2minutetabletop.com/ is another one I use regularly--good quality, cheap, clean and easy to adapt.

I came here to say 2 Minute Tabletop is my go-to. I enjoy their style, I appreciate that they're consistently sized(hoo boy does that become tedious to deal with in VTTs), and they're clean enough that if you wanna play around with customizing them, it's not all that hard. I did some hue shifting for those dragon's lair maps and desert ruins when my players were up against a white dragon recently and they worked beautifully.

Another really useful thing about 2 Minute Tabletops' maps is that they were designed with a grid in mind form the start, so you don't get nearly as many of those awkward, ambiguous "is this a passable square or no?" slivers of terrain.

If you're drawing maps, though, you can get a lot out of them with pretty limited artistic ability by finding some landscape pictures online that match the tone you're going for and just pasting them in the dead space on your hand-drawn map. Your players can see the image and project some of that feel into what they're seeing. After all, TTRPGs are an imagination based game, even on a screen.

One last trick that I've never seen anyone else do - use overworld maps from GBA/SNES games. I find Chrono Trigger works pretty well by virtue of having no transitions between overworld and battle scenes and being a time travel game, you've got a decent range of environments to work with.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre
I'd like a source, even if I had to pay for decent-looking, widely-varying battlemaps. Ideally at 100 px/sq, but anything from 50 and up would work. Recommendations for simple map-making software would also be appreciated.

If you’re willing to be flexible with what you find, you can check out the Finished Maps forum at Cartographer’s Guild. They’re also a good resource on the technology and craft of making maps, and they even have a section for commissions.

[Zhorn]

Big fan of csp_kris from Crooked Staff Terrain (YouTube) and Crooked Staff Publishing (DriveThruRPG).
He does a lot of print'n'paste stuff on a 'pay what you want' model for those that like making cheap cardboard props and tiles for their physical games,
BUT he also has an impressive selection of VTT tiles for dungeons and caves that can be slapped together in any number of configurations, and the majority of those are out for free.

Love his dungeon tiles for both types since the pieces are all good for mixing and matching.

[Mr.Sandman]

If you have access to one of the RPG maker games you can make some pretty good maps in it's map maker, with the added bonus of this allowing you to maintain art style throughout your maps, be they towns, dungeons, or outside locations.

[Composer99]

If I have the time and inclination, I'll make a map on Inkarnate. If not, I might buy one on the VTT market place or from a pay-what-you-want service.

[FrogInATopHat]

Aside from stealing from pre-made adventures like others said (Acrobat Pro or Photoshop or whatever are good for cleaning up the maps if you need), I also bought this bundle a while back.

The artist is also worth a follow on social media because he releases free maps every so often.

In may cases, the maps are just reskins of an identical layout, so one map might have a lava version and a water version and a.... and so on. But it was still a really good investment and most maps are provided in several resolutions with grids pre-addded, which was nice.

Despite a generally high art quality, I found a lot of maps from Pathfinder modules and APs and the like weren't drawn to perfect scale for VTT so needed a bit of tweaking to make the pre-existing grid line up perfectly. But it can be done and is less of a problem with newer material.

[Zombimode]

So far a quick google search with "XYZ battle map" or "XYZ D&D map" or something along those lines has been enough for all my map needs.

I only run into trouble when I had a rather concrete picture of the scene in question in my mind and then tried to find a map that was conform to this picture.


Edit: but I'm not using VTT (I'm using Fantasy Grounds Unity) so I have no idea what special considerations are needed for the use of maps.

[Frankbit]

I use RPG maker to make some pretty good maps

[LordCdrMilitant]

I generally make my maps in powerpoint using the spline tool and shapes. [Like the way I make most of my RPG art]

Specifically, I make lots of parts and assets [like a reinforced concrete wall, a grated catwalk segments, an energy field barrier line, a table with a computer, intermodal train cars, etc.] that I load into roll20, and then I can place the assets on the board to construct the map.

At this point, I've amassed a lot of stuff to make maps with.



Lately, for Time of War, because it's on the hexgrid, I've been using Panzer Blitz/Panzer Leader boards for the maps [there's PNG's of them on Imaginative Strategist], and also drawing my own complete maps using powerpoint.

[Grek]

I like to use a mixture of Illwinter Floorplan Generator, MSPaint and the Roll20 draw tool. It works a lot better than you're probably imagining.

[Atarax]

Dungeondraft was the answer to this same predicament for me. So much so, in fact, that I almost hate to quit using it as we return to playing in person. Roll20 has some beautiful assets, but trying to drag and drop them without having them overlap is cumbersome and time consuming. Plus, a lot of the stuff on there is sorta prefabricated so you can't be as flexible as you'd like (they'd rather you buy many different sets than allow you the flexibility). So then I started looking around and trying dungeon editors. I found Dungeondraft which was a only a decent solution at first, but then I figured out how to import images. This meant that I could buy assets from roll20, then import a few walls and floors into dd so I could then quickly make entire dungeons with those floors and walls. If I load those dungeons back into Roll20, other assets from that same artist still match up, so I can drag and drop furnishings, doors, and other things in and it looks the way it should. Highly recommend it. There's some learning curve there with learning how to import the stuff (file locations and scale), but having made it through that, I'm disappointed I can't keep using it for in person gaming. I was ready to start cranking stuff out.

[LordCdrMilitant]

Also, you can use hexographer/worldographer/dungeonographer, or the dojon dungeon generator tool. Both work well as well.

[jjordan]

I've been using DungeonFog. My son is trying to sell me on TaleSpire and it looks like fun.

[heruca]

I've (reluctantly) turned to playing online, despite strongly preferring being in person. And it's ok. I have a VTT license, and I can use it. But the hands-down most time-consuming part of it is getting maps. I could draw everything by hand, but a) that would take longer than it's worth (my art skills are minimal, and using the built-in drawing tools is painful on my particular VTT for anything more than just circling things) and b) seems to defeat one of the advantages of the format, which is higher visual fidelity. I've been using google image search (trying to make sure I'm only getting the freely-licensed ones rather than outright piracy) and a small selection of various programs, but it's getting annoying.

I'd like a source, even if I had to pay for decent-looking, widely-varying battlemaps. Ideally at 100 px/sq, but anything from 50 and up would work. Recommendations for simple map-making software would also be appreciated.

Give the free version of MapForge a try. It currently offers 49 free content Add-Ons (containing many many thousands of mapping assets!). If you like it and want to get a license to unlock high-res output, it's just a one-time fee (not a recurring subscription, like many other mapping apps). If you don't want to limit yourself to just the free content, there are also tons of paid content Add-Ons for MapForge, covering all major game genres.

I'm assuming you're wanting to make top-down tactical-scale battlemaps, but if you ever feel like trying hex-tile maps or isometric maps, MapForge works for those, too. But if world maps is what you're after, you'll have to look elsewhere. This list of mapping apps should help.

[KorvinStarmast]

some great resources here, I may tap into a few of them.

[3SecondCultist]

I follow CzePeku on Patreon (I'm a $5 subscriber for full map access). Their map collection is absolutely stunning, and they have hundreds of variations for any number of scenarios. Seriously, there is pretty much every kind of map you could ever want there and they are of top notch quality.