Mapping Software
- Thread starter cmanos
- Start date
Other software
Depending on the final form for the generated maps there are other ways to produce maps.
We like to use our maps on our computers... Originally we had a single monitor for the players with a number of mice scattered over the table to move them around. Now all our players have computers that they use from home or bring laptops, so we just use software that lets everyone see a common map and move pieces around.
The GM simply creates all the maps in the software and brings them on his laptop to load in for the players.
We wrote and use http://rptools.net/maptool.php. It provides primitive drawing tools which are meant to be more like your wet-erase battlemaps, but you can use downloaded images for the background (so Wizards modules with published maps work great).
It doesn't let you save the maps in formats that would work outside maptool.
Depending on the final form for the generated maps there are other ways to produce maps.
We like to use our maps on our computers... Originally we had a single monitor for the players with a number of mice scattered over the table to move them around. Now all our players have computers that they use from home or bring laptops, so we just use software that lets everyone see a common map and move pieces around.
The GM simply creates all the maps in the software and brings them on his laptop to load in for the players.
We wrote and use http://rptools.net/maptool.php. It provides primitive drawing tools which are meant to be more like your wet-erase battlemaps, but you can use downloaded images for the background (so Wizards modules with published maps work great).
It doesn't let you save the maps in formats that would work outside maptool.
James Heard
Explorer
If you're simply talking best then I'm still in the Adobe camp. Sure, forking over several hundred dollars for a powerful image editing suite is scary - but the results can be amazing. Next down the line I'd go with the cheaper alternatives, GIMP and all the others. Campaign Cartographer, if I were going to go with a dedicated mapper, would be the way to go I think. Mostly because I'm pretty sure it's going to be around next year and might eventually come out with new, easier versions and that's something you just can't stress enough with software that you're going to want to invest some large amount of effort into learning. Plus CC seems to produce usable maps even if you didn't go to art school, which I suppose is a plus for a lot of folks.
