Map making tool

[STARP_Social_Officer]

Is there a good (free) program that's good for making encounter maps etc. It needs to be easy to use and with a grid attached.
I'm sick of drawing them by hand in grid books.
What do ya'll use?

 

[blargney the second]

I draw them by hand on 2'x3' easel pads with a 1" grid.

 

[xazil]

I've always liked AutoRealm, you can find it on SourceForge last time I looked.

 

[KayOnim]

That really depends on how you intend to use it. Do you want to print the maps out to use them on the table or display the maps on a notebook?

If you want to use a notebook as battlemap replacement you could look at the inbuilt drawing features of free VTT's like MapTool: http://rptools.net/doku.php?id=maptool:intro or Gametable http://gametable.galactanet.com/. Gametable in particular is really easy to handle when used as battlemap although for full VTT play i'd recommend MapTool as it has a lot more features.

For printing you could simply recreate your maps with colored cells set to 1 inch squares in any spreadsheet application like Excel.

On the other hand, if you want your maps looking fancy, no matter if on-screen or printed, you should definitely familiarize yourself with GIMP: http://www.gimp.org and/or Inkscape: http://www.inkscape.org or any other similar program plus you should pay a visit to the Cartographers Guild: http://www.cartographersguild.com/. Their forums are a treasure trove of mapping advice and tutorials.

 

[darjr]

If you like using Dungeon Tiles there is Jais Hordlings 'Dungeon Tiles Mapper'. It's the one that WotC has for download on their site. The updated one contains more of the newer tiles, new features, and fixes.

 

[3catcircus]

Do yourself a favor - spend the money and get Dundjinni or CC3 with its DD3 and CD3 addons.

For easy, gorgeous battle maps, Dudnjinni wins hands-down. For a powerful program that allows you the ability to make any kind of map you want, and make them look gorgeous, CC3 can't be beat.

 

[Vorput]

I'm a big fan of fractal mapper. $35 though

http://www.nbos.com/products/mapper/mapper.htm

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Read my Cartography Workshop thread. That should give you some pointers on how to create such maps with Inkscape or GIMP, both of which are freely available Open Source programs.