DM Tools for Mapping

[Jd Smith1]

This is a fascinating take. I probably lean the other way with pretty being a nice to have but not as essential as accuracy. I'd of course prefer both.

While maybe battlemats could be found online, I think world maps and city maps would need to be customizable for me. I'm very much a traditional player (vs NeoTrad or Story) and exploration and the world are super important to me and I think to those interested in my games. If you care not a wit for the world of the game then I'm probably not your DM of choice.

I only GM. I care a great deal about the world, Harn being a favorite of mind. The idea of random world maps are thus extremely uninteresting.

 

[Voadam]

You may have an eidactic memory but for me with most DMs I've encountered those who run it off the cuff in their heads are DMs I don't prefer. I want them to have a well designed world (even if it is store bought) and I want them to know a lot about their NPCs before the game starts.

I do not have an eidetic memory but keeping the mashup elements of my setting straight is easy for me.

I consider my world well designed.

It has a bunch of store bought elements from a bunch of settings and includes the parts I like and I have thought a bunch on how things can syncretize such as how the immortal principality of Ustalav from Golarion fits in as a province of the Holy Lothian empire in Ptolus and precursor elements of the Eberron land of Karnath and how some Ravenloft stuff can be in the history of the land. There is a lot of in-depth existing lore for players to explore and work with and riff off of.

Since I mostly run modules I know a bunch about the main NPCs the players directly interact with before the game starts and the big setting NPCs are usually straight from sourcebooks that I have decided to include or include and modify so I have a lot of existing knowledge of NPCs to use as opposed to making everything up on the spot.

The continent maps are conceptually a bit of a mashup of the Greyhawk, Golarion, Ptolus, and Spiros Blaak ones, which works fairly well with only a little big picture rearranging (Golarion/Midgard fantasy Arabs being on the West Greyhawk style instead of off to the East in Golarion) and I have been able to use the regional Golarion maps fairly straight when running the Reign of Winter, Carrion Crown, and Iron Gods AP in my fairly Ptolus world. Exact distances have rarely been a big deal in my games.

Funny enough in my 5e Iron Gods campaign one of the PCs is a full on robot (reskinned warforged) with a cartographer background and I have made regional cartography a decently big deal recurring issue in the game and used a bunch of maps of Numeria as plot elements, including ones from the Paizo map folio, the Numeria sourcebook, and a bunch of ones from the modules and that I found online. The ridiculous inaccuracies of biological mapmakers has come up as a comment more than once as has the lack of GPS.

 

[Laurefindel]

1. How important is the ability to randomly generate vs just make a map manually?

generic random maps are of no interest to me. An AI-style, prompt-based interface for quick battlemaps could be interesting, but battlemaps are not something I use.

2. Is the prettiness of the map really important?

For world-maps, region maps, city maps? Prettiness is definitely important.
For battlemaps, legibility and clarity trumps prettiness.

3. Do you all like making battlemats? Traditionally I've used a big marker board for drawing battlegrounds. Not sure printing battlemats is worth the effort.

I like making battle "sketches" to enhance TotM experience. I'm not much into grids anymore. Printing battlemaps is both impractical (often too small) and expensive in table-top situations.

4. Is your map making tool driven by your VTT? I've been thinking about maybe looking into a VTT (e.g. Foundry) as I have some old friends more distant now. We might have a nostalgia game for old times sake.

I much prefer to play in-person and have little experience with VTTs.

5. Do you use a mapmaker for worlds, regions, small scale, dungeons, cities, towns?

Yes. Inkarnate has worked well for me, but I really enjoy the good old-fashion pens and paper way.

 

[Emerikol]

I only GM. I care a great deal about the world, Harn being a favorite of mind. The idea of random world maps are thus extremely uninteresting.

I only want the geography randomly generated and I will keep regenerating until I see something I can work with and then I modify it where I want to modify it. If doing an entire world, it is handy. I make my own nations, rivers, and I do a good bit of tweaking in the area. Still I find it to be a big time saver.

 

[ART!]

1. How important is the ability to randomly generate vs just make a map manually?
I like the idea of randomly generating maps, but by the time I'm done toggling options I could have just drawn something rough, which has the added advantage of making me better at drawing maps, so it's a win-win.

2. Is the prettiness of the map really important? I've been wondering if maybe a more lightweight tool for pretty player maps would make sense. I think Worldographer is great for knowing where things are at and keep track of nations etc...
If I had the time to do hard-core worldbuilding, I would definitely hunt for a mapmaking tool I like. Getting something pretty takes time, and knowing me I will spend too much time on it.

3. Do you all like making battlemats? Traditionally I've used a big marker board for drawing battlegrounds. Not sure printing battlemats is worth the effort.
I printed maps for almost everything the last time I ran, but I work at a printer and was using existing maps. I would not do it otherwise.

4. Is your map making tool driven by your VTT? I've been thinking about maybe looking into a VTT (e.g. Foundry) as I have some old friends more distant now. We might have a nostalgia game for old times sake.
No, because I'm not involved in any VTT right now. If I were running something using a VTT, I would import existing maps or my own hand-drawn stuff. I think the hand-drawn stuff would make a VTT feel a little more like being at a table.
I've run a game once virtually,a nd used an existing map packet. I didn't care for it, because it was a lot of work to get to the map I wanted, move the bits around, etc.

5. Do you use a mapmaker for worlds, regions, small scale, dungeons, cities, towns?
I do not. I have toyed with several map-making softwares and sites over the years, but never landed on one to use extensively. Partly that's juts my awareness of my fiddly nature; I know that I will mess around with all the cool tools in a mapmaker indefinitely, so i avoid even starting on them.

So, generally, when I need a map I just Google image search "fantasy ziggurat map" or whatever, and just use whatever captures my imagination. Or just sketch something on an erasable grid map.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I only want the geography randomly generated and I will keep regenerating until I see something I can work with and then I modify it where I want to modify it. If doing an entire world, it is handy. I make my own nations, rivers, and I do a good bit of tweaking in the area. Still I find it to be a big time saver.

I prefer in-depth settings, with Harn being a p[rime example.

 

[Emerikol]

I prefer in-depth settings, with Harn being a p[rime example.

Mine is very indepth. I don't think whether you generate geographic features makes it more or less indepth.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Mine is very indepth. I don't think whether you generate geographic features makes it more or less in depth.

Have you looked over Harn? They detail every tavern on an island the size of Ireland. Every knight. Family trees of the ruling families. Every coat of arms. Literally hundreds, if not thousands, of pages of material, with more being added.

 

[Lanefan]

So here is some questions because I'm curious how you all think?
1. How important is the ability to randomly generate vs just make a map manually?

Not important.

2. Is the prettiness of the map really important? I've been wondering if maybe a more lightweight tool for pretty player maps would make sense. I think Worldographer is great for knowing where things are at and keep track of nations etc...

Not important. Clarity and simplicity are far more important, and attempts to get "pretty" often get in the way of these (DCCRPG maps are the WORST for this!). Colour maps, though are often easier to use than monochrome; and colour allows for some prettiness while still maintaining clarity.

3. Do you all like making battlemats?

Not digitally. If it's something I'm only going to use once, such as a "battlemat", I'll just draw it on the chalkboard.

4. Is your map making tool driven by your VTT?

No. I only run in person.

5. Do you use a mapmaker for worlds, regions, small scale, dungeons, cities, towns?

I use an old art program which does the job OK for dungeons but takes way too long for anything else unless the level of detail is minimal.

So I'm just trying to stir up some creative thoughts about how we design our campaign worlds.

Something I learned in a cartography course a long time ago that is sometimes forgotten by RPG mapmakers:

A map is not truly a map unless it includes two elements: 1) a scale of distance, and 2) some indication of which way is north.

 

[aramis erak]

I've signed up for Worldographer 2025. I've been a supporter all the way back to when it was called Hexographer. I don't work for them or have an ownership.

So here is some questions because I'm curious how you all think?
1. How important is the ability to randomly generate vs just make a map manually?
2. Is the prettiness of the map really important? I've been wondering if maybe a more lightweight tool for pretty player maps would make sense. I think Worldographer is great for knowing where things are at and keep track of nations etc...
3. Do you all like making battlemats? Traditionally I've used a big marker board for drawing battlegrounds. Not sure printing battlemats is worth the effort.
4. Is your map making tool driven by your VTT? I've been thinking about maybe looking into a VTT (e.g. Foundry) as I have some old friends more distant now. We might have a nostalgia game for old times sake.
5. Do you use a mapmaker for worlds, regions, small scale, dungeons, cities, towns?

So I'm just trying to stir up some creative thoughts about how we design our campaign worlds.

1: for most of my fantasy uses, moderately important.
2: prettiness only is useful when it conveys information. I want clear over pretty.
3: I despise making battlemats other than ship deckplans. But I do so anyway. Printing them is worthwhile at the scale I use (12.5mm = 1.5m).
4: No. Then again, I'm not using a commercial VTT, either.
5: Sometimes I'll break out Galactic by Jim V for Traveller subsectors. I wish Rob Prior's metator was still available (alas, it was for 68K Mac OS 8.5+), never made the PPC switchover...