Credit to u/Vrayloki/ that gave me the idea. All i'm doing here is using simplefog with an overlay image.
The maps themselves are created with wonderdraft
The free version isn't too shabby but the Pro version is sadly subscription based. I highly recommend Wonderdraft, which only costs $20 and isn't subscription-based. Financially it is a better move but also quality-wise I think Wonderdraft beats out Inkarnate.
Wonderdraft is currently in early access with discounted price, and is a once-off payment, rather than a subscription, which for me is a big plus, because i'm not a regular user.
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Inkarnate is what I used before, they have a free option and a subscription. It's also web-based which is probably faster for you to start messing around with.
(Wonderdraft!)[https://www.wonderdraft.net/]
It's an incredible tool for mapmaking, and the subreddit for it is incredibly active as well, constantly providing new assets, feedback, and maps. The creator also frequently updates the program with performance optimization, as well as the introduction of a ton of new tools. Its well worth the price, in my opinion, if you're looking for something a bit more powerful than something like inkarnate, but maintains it's pretty intuitive level of use.
Thanks! This guide helped me a lot in digital mapmaking using GIMP, if you end up using it this will help you a great deal. GIMP sure has a bit of a learning curve, but once you get acquainted with it you can make really good looking maps. I'm by no means a master, I'm not even close to being adept at digital mapmaking. This cost me so much time to make. But I got better since I started making this map, and learned a lot by practicing. Though if you wish for a much more easy to use softare, I recommend Wonderdraft. I do not own it, I live in Turkey and because our currency is so worthless it would cost me 170₺, which I cannot afford at the moment. But if you live somewhere where $30 is affordable, you should definitely check it out. There are lots of downloadable assets for it too. r/wonderdraft would have more info.
If you're going for the ''screw it'' option, also do consider Wonderdraft. I use it a lot and think that I belong to the group that would prefer Wonderdraft over Incarnate.
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The base assets are alright, but with some effort, you can add a ton of custom assets created by the Wonderdraft community. From there you can use it for world mapping, dungeon mapping, local towns and villages, whatever you need really.
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It costs $20 at the moment iirc. And i'd say its definitly worth it. One time purchase, and you're set for life.
I've tried a few programs and Wonderdraft is by far the best featured program I've found for world maps.
Has a lot more features than Inkarnate and is a one-time purchase. It has robust support for custom assets and a solid community to draw from. Some of my favorites are from 2-minute tabletop, but even just using the default assets you can produce really amazing maps in relatively little time.
Check out /r/Wonderdraft for some examples!
I'm back with a new version of my Forgotten Realms map for Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I hacked this one together last week, but I decided to try a true conversion using the Mere of Dead Men. This map was made using Wonderdraft.
I didn't actually hand-draw any of this. This map was made entirely using the program Wonderdraft. I found it to be a much more intuitive and impressive version of Inkarnate. You can purchase it for about 30 bucks. I highly recommend it, simply for the river and coastline tools.
They've updated to Worldographer btw, which I highly recommend. It's basically an updated version with tons of QoL improvements
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For small beautiful maps I recommend Hex Kit over Worldographer/Hexographer. However, it tends to chug when making very large maps.
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Wonderdraft is my go to for full world creation.
I've been running an online campaign with Roll20 for about 6 months now. Roll20 for all its complexity, limitations and learning curves is an extremely strong tool. However I despise the drawing tools it has.
So I've spent a lot of time looking for compatible map makers and I've got two suggestions.
For large world and continent scale maps I like using Wonderdraft its a one time purchase and even the less artistic of us (me) can make beautiful maps pretty easily.
For town maps, dungeon crawls, and actual playable areas I've been using Table Top RPG Map Editor 2 It can import some pre-generated dungeons and is incredibly intuitive to use as well as the map sizes export wonderfully to be compatible with Roll20's grid system (something I've had a lot of trouble with through other maps from pre-generated one shots or other map maker/editing programs). Once the maps are in Roll20 I use the fog of war module to reveal areas as necessary to my players.
As far as for voice, I suggest discord because Roll20's voice module is.... not great.
Wow what a shill for Wonderdraft. Lets all head on over to Wonderdraft and see if the features are what he said. That will show him. Remember that's WONDERDRAFT. 2 words together guys. Wonder and draft. I'm really skeptical about it personally and can't wait to check out how bad it is. Check it out with me at Wonderdraft
This is a combination of Wonderdraft and Photoshop. Bas the land mass of the Carribean and the coast of South America and edited them to my needs. I went for a wide variety of adventures including and treasure run through a jungle infested with Dinosaurs and Lizardfolk(Red Island); A Naval horror adventure inside the fog that covers the Sea of Ghosts, and rounded it out with a Pirate war between Tri-Islands and the Hafland Islands Pirate Factions Run by a Rakshasa Merchant king and an Illithid Grand Admiral respectively.
It isn't free, but a recently released program by the name of Wonderdraft can work wonders for anyone wanting to make a beautiful map with both little effort and little skill.
I can suggest Wattabou. This website has a lot of generators that may suit your needs. Simple dungeons, simple towns, manors, and many other things.
Wattabou Website: Watabou
For my favorite cheap Map making programs:
I would suggest Wonderdraft and Dungeondraft. Both are made by same people.
Wonderdraft Website: Wonderdraft
Dungeondraft Website: Dungeondraft
Will definitely edit my comment with this info, because I can't believe I forgot to shout out this incredible tool! Watabou's Fantasy City Generator has always been an invaluable tool for me as a DM and definitely generated the backbone of the city, as it does with most of our cities. My partner then takes the generated SVG file into Illustrator and Photoshop for a variety of effects. She will add buildings, remove buildings, move buildings, give the city the layout we generally desire. Then she'll make any of the custom buildings, like the Chateau du Pont that sits atop the highest point of the city, from scratch by herself.
She then outlines roads, districts, colour blocks, gets down to the nitty gritty like the waterfall details, compass rose, label banner and more. She uses a program called Wonderdraft to plot all the trees.
Last thing she'll do then is apply filters, textures, effects and more to make everything pop.
I used Wonderdraft. I stand by it and the sister-program Dungeondraft for just about any map I make. Though, I used Watabou to get the city layout and traced it with some building clusters from an asset pack called "FHG - City Blocks."
Though, I would warn that there's probably a better way to do this. It takes a few minutes to load the map on my gaming PC due to literally hundreds of assets on the page. Also, the buildings are paintable, but Venatus Maps has a few packs in a similar style that are colored and detailed.
I enjoy using Wonderdraft. It is $29.99 USD, one time.
If you're in the market for a dungeonographer, I recommend Dungeondraft. It is $19.99 USD, one time.
Yes, of course!
I wrote and coded everything in the game myself. It's made with Twine, using the SugarCube story format. SugarCube lets you overwrite the default appearance with a special passage called StoryInterface, which is how I got the custom look. If you're using the StoryInterface, you need a decent grasp of HTML and CSS to make it functional.
I used this template by cerberus as a base code, and then edited from there to create individual looks for different parts of the game. Making it mobile compatible took some time and patience to get all of the media queries working right. 😅
The game's main artwork (cover art and companion portraits) are by Rory Yaya, a friend of mine and a freelance artist--she's extremely talented, definitely recommend checking out her portfolio!). All of the other image assets were designed by me in Canva, using royalty-free vectors and graphics.
The maps were made in Wonderdraft, which is a fantasy map-creation program (similar to Inkarnate).
You mentioned on another comment that you tried Inkarnate, but have you tried Wonderdraft? Its got a nice balance of manual/generated bits and bobs, and the maps look fantastic.
I'm not sure of a hard upper limit in DDraft, but there's memory/storage/performance considerations with really big maps.
You might find that Wonderdraft meets your needs instead? I've used it for high level city maps (not mapping every single street and building, but showing districts, major features/roads/rivers) and it worked well.
Our campaign is about to reach my characters hometown and the DM asked me to describe it, so I made a map.
Greenreach is small town on the River Atlai, which serves as it's main trade route. To the east and south it is flanked by large hill sides, with a small brook flowing down the eastern hill, past the vineyards, through the town and into the river. The town is surrounded by many farms and fields and mainly exports agricultural goods.
The Map was done with Wonderdraft using asstes by 2-Minute Tabletop.
Thanks! I used Wonderdraft and this is the "Adventure" theme. I used some of the Avoro custom textures - I think. I made this about a year ago but I'm pretty sure I used those textures at the time.
I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I think the perspective on some of the rivers/ the lake bugs me a bit but not enough to go back and change it. I'm probably just being overly critical.
Well, if you're willing to put in the hours you're not going to regret using Photoshop.
If you wanna make decent looking maps easily and fastlike, i think Wonderdraft is the best choice.
Inkarnate is a website in which you can do some pretty decent map making. Failing that, I'd suggest Wonderdraft if you're willing to part with some money. It's my go-to
Hey, that is a cool idea but I don't think I'm the right person for this, my style is not really realistic (more cartoonish/abstract) and I really look for somebody that publishes modules and adventures on a regular basis. I can suggest you some software like Wonderdraft (29.99$) or Inkarnate (they have FREE tier), I think this will serve you good :)
From the comments section, I'm assuming that you are looking for a mapmaking tool. I think that I may have a good program.
It's a mapmaking tool called Wonderdraft. From what I've seen, its somewhat similar to Inkarnate, except it works as a program on your PC, and it has a one-time fee, with 2 optional assets you can buy from the developers.
However, I do admit that the base program doesn't have many options for more customization. But the Wonderdraft community also create their own free assets which you can install manually or using a community-created program called Mythkeeper.
Wonderdraft costs only 30 dollars. You can find it here.
They also have subreddit if you are interested: r/wonderdraft
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Or if you are looking for a program that specializes in documenting facts about your world, I'd recommend Campfire pro.
Campfire Pro can document different aspects about your world and lore (It's used by storywriters as well, so I use their story timeline feature for lore timeline). Based on what I've read in the comments, I think that the best features this program has for you is a map managing tool, where you can import images of your maps and mark specific locations, and give details about it, and the worldbuilding pack which contains the ability to create species (it also has other features, but I did see you mention species).
However, the big downside is that it's very expensive. The full version (the base program and worldbuilding pack) costs $75, with a one-time fee. Besides that, there is a free 10-day trial if you wanna check it out without the worldbuilding pack.
You can find the site here.
They also have a subreddit if you wanna check it out: r/CampfireTechnology
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I hope that, at the very least, one of these programs may be helpful for your worldbuilding needs.
Wonderdraft is my favorite for overland maps. It produces some professional-level work. Costs $30 to use forever. For dungeons I would recommend Dungeon Painter Studio
Context: I started drawing this map a few month back with Wonderdraft. Most of the places don't have a "story", yet but I have a detailed continent map of the upper left continent and even a city map. Then I thought, would be cool if you could just zoom in and the detailed maps load google-maps-like. So with the help of leaflet and several tools (some self-written), I got this this together :)
Context: I started drawing this map a few month back with Wonderdraft. Most of the places don't have a "story", yet but I have a detailed continent map of the upper left continent and even a city map. Then I thought, would be cool if you could just zoom in and the detailed maps load google-maps-like. So with the help of leaflet and several tools (some self-written), I got this this together :)
I'm still in the process of world-building the world history and races but I think it's best to start with a world and then fill it with life^^ (It will definitely be a fantasy world with magic and stuff)
I just started using a program called Wonderdraft a couple of weeks ago. It's 30 bucks, but I'm finding it easy to use and I'm updating the world map I've used for more than 25 years. That map took me a couple of days to convert over to Wonderdraft...and that's counting having to start over when I was done with everything except labels for things (because there is an image size limit that I passed and couldn't reopen my save original save file).
You can make many styles of maps with it, and there's a subreddit for it.
I highly recommend Wonderdraft, you will need to buy it but it is pretty cheap relative to some others and has some great tools. Inkarnateis also really good, I find it takes a little more effort to make something that looks great but for a free program it is pretty fantastic.
I’ve not used World Anvil though it looks similar to a world building tool that I’ve been keeping an eye on called Legend Keeper. It’s not out yet but here are some other world building tools that I use.
Legend Keeper: Looks to be similar to world anvil though it has not been released yet.
Subreddit: r/legendkeeper
Wonderdraft: A tool for making world maps.
Subreddit: r/wonderdraft
Flowscape: A tool for making small 3D scenes/maps.
Subreddit: r/flowscape
Have you tried Wonderdraft?
https://www.wonderdraft.net/?m=1
Or else, there's several free art programs out there. You'd just have to scale things to fit on an appropriate sized digital document. Maybe have to make a few layers based on how much detail you want at given zoom levels.
The campaign I'm currently running started with a shipwreck on a new continent, so my players had no idea where they were for quite a long time, and now that we've oved on to the second part of the story (where they try to rebuild their trading empire), they've obtained a full map!
This map was made in Wonderdraft, an amazing (but not free) program for making custom maps!
> a hex crawl
A hex crawl presents the players with choices like "what path do we take?" and "what order do we go to places?" and "which way is right?"
To this end use these kinds of things to make for interesting decisions on hex-by-hex movement:
> encounter tables
Encounter tables are a fun way to inject randomness, and randomness can lead to interesting stories: "we pushed on to make up for lost time but got unlucky and encountered enemies while exhausted". But random encounters can also be boring. Everyone will groan the third time they have to fight 2d6 wolves.
> tools that could be used to design the map
I very much like Wonderdraft.
Hiya! I made this map using a neat little tool called Wonderdraft. Along with some Unit assets from Cartographyassets.com
Wonderdraft link:
Players love maps, or at least mine does. If I know they're going to spend some time in a city or village I make one and give them. For smaller villages I have the major locations pointed out "Blacksmith", "Inn", "Marketplace" and so on but leave out stuff they have no way of knowing about.
For cities I mark out the districts ("Merchant's quarters", "University Campus", "Craftman's quarters", "Temple Disctrict" and so on) and the player's can make inquiries about it, this allow me to better match the players expectations about what can be found in a city without having to do a major amount of work. - is there a shrine to the godess of magic in the temple district? Sure. There is one now.
Here's a an example of a recent city my party visited. (A lowres print screen was all I had at the moment). They're actualy fairly easy to make. This one was made using Watabou (which is free and amazing), and Wonderdraft (which is cheap and great value) as well as some polish in photoshop. Very handy for DMs like me who are quite bad a drawing maps by hand.
Practice will always benefit you more than watching tutorials.
It sucks to hear, trust me I know.
I did my own maps for a while, but I've slowly been weening the goup off them. I find players look at the map and expect it to be a perfect representation of reality, and don't listen to my descriptions. Inkarnate is great for maps, as is Dungeondraft and Wonderdraft, but you should be careful relying on stuff like that. Packaged art like that has a style, and it doesn't always fit the game you're playing. Plus, the more you use them, the harder it will be for players to buy-in to your own custom content.
I just use the pencil tool in Foundry, and make them lean on my descriptions.
This map was made with WonderDraft using the default sprite set.
For context, this map is of my Campaign setting, Aureon. If a kobold named stetson sounds familiar to you, please keep it moving.
The setting is heavily inspired by the Friends at the Table, Seasons of Hieron game. A dying world surrounded by nothing and nothing doesn't like that Aureon is there.
It seems very incomplete now and the reason for that is I want to leave room to add things in as we advance. Currently my party is down in Abrissbirne taking down a thieves guild. As this is the first adventure, they have yet to hit the major campaign plot hook. Every corner of this map is ready for exploration and adventure!
As we play, I'll update the map and let you all see how it changes over time! Maybe chronicle a few adventures that lead to major changes on the map.
Important distinction: Combat/dungeon/battle maps, or world/terrain maps?
I like DungeonScrawl for dungeons and the like.
I bought a license for WonderDraft for the world/large terrain/etc, and I like the results that gives, too.
This is a bit different suggestion but.. do you know if he likes creating maps for those worlds and if he already has a good program for it? If he doesn't, Wonderdraft could be a nice gift as well =)
Sure :)
The buildings are a mix of the official Wonderdraft assets included in the base package + the official premium fantasy package: https://www.wonderdraft.net/p/packs.html#Fantasy
The only custom asset used is the wonderfull tree clumps - which can be found here https://cartographyassets.com/assets/5293/tree-clumps-for-wonderdraft/ (Big thanks to u/AdrianRWalker :D )
I’d suggest Inkarnate or https://www.wonderdraft.net/?m=1 as a map maker. Check out their respective subreddits for the sort of content they produce. Wonderdraft is the best and allows you to import your own assets.
A couple people are recommending Inkarnate, but I've found Wonderdraft a lot easier to use personally. Lots of nice little quality of life stuff to help generate a map if you're starting from scratch, and from there it's just drag and drop. There's a fairly active community behind it generating custom asset packs if you have a particular style of icons you're looking for. Generating an entire world map took me less than an hour. If you're interested in TTRPG battle maps, same developer has another product called Dungeondraft that is by far the best battle map design software I've seen.
Programs like Inkarnate or Wonderdraft are both fantastic tools for creating maps, otherwise using some google-fu you should be able to find community created content for all major published adventures.
You can't beat the price ($19.99): https://dungeondraft.net
Same guy also made: Wonderdraft for world maps. ($29.99)
Brilliant programs.
This is a city that I made for a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure. I have set the map dimensions to 46080x25920 with 50 pixel grid in Foundry. Hopefully the potato laptop one of my players uses can handle it. This gets it down to 5ft squares so I can have a battle scene anywhere on the map. My plan is to have the entire adventure in this one map. The funnel will start in the farms on the outskirts where they PCs are all peasants who live outside the city gates. They are getting off work and heading into the city for the monthly trivia night at the Lonely Lobster Inn. Unfortunately, most of them won't make it there as the guards have locked the gates per the order of Lord Hubelet and animated cornhusk spiders, giant demon-crows, fishmen and a scarecrow will attempt to kill them. Survivors will level up and get to look into how this all happened.
Made in Wonderdraft using mostly Cities of Schley assets. I played around with different ideas for the farmland. All of them were tedious.
The city is around 0.5 miles from the West to East walls. If my calculations based on medieval city population density are correct, the population would be around 10,000 with farms going out several miles from the walled area.
Tout le crédit revient à u/la_souris_du_desert pour l'idée, même si je suis parti sur une version plus réaliste que réimaginée.
Si tu veux te lancer, voilà le logiciel qui a servi à la réaliser : https://www.wonderdraft.net/
C'était la première fois que je l'utilisais, c'est plutôt facile à prendre en main.
If you want manageable hex maps. worldographer is a good purchase. The UI/UX isn't great, but it has a lot of power behind it that can function as both a mapping tool and a campaign management tool for information. I don't love it, but i do find it useful.
If you want a good solid MAP, with the legwork of making it manageable on your end, i've found wonderdraft to be the best mapping software. It doesn't produced labeled hex's, but it does have a hex grid you can put on your map.
One of my first maps using Wonderdraft. Feedback or thoughts are encouraged. Know that I'm not shooting for scientific accuracy merely because I haven't learned all that goes into scientifically correct terrain formation, but I hope it is at least partially accurate. Regardless, I hope that you enjoy it. I'm welcome to answer questions or give my thoughts on anything you may have to say on it. Thanks!
Personally, I used wonderdraft which I find to be a great program and have used for a few different maps and have been very happy with. I understand Inkarnate is a good alternative as well but have not used it personally.
As for properly fleshing out the region and adding towns, I found World Anvil to be a great place to put a map and mark it up because you can make nice articles for everything and give them descriptions that you can hover over.
I haven't updated all the pages in a while but here is an example of Livsn, my Region based off Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and a bit of Finland.
Ask your players what type of campaign tgey are interested in (high combat, political intrigue, pure adventure, etc) this is both good for finding something they will enjoy over a longer period and gives you a point to start from when creating the setting
Make/find a map. There are plenty of map-making tools online like random map generators and such but if you know what the place shall look like, I recommend using Wonderdraft. This will help you place down villages and cities to which the party can travel between. Finding pre-made maps is also very great to use.
Have an idea of the story of the world. Is there a large conflict at play between certain races? Was the land once plauged by a tyrant who now seeks revenge on the bloodline who took him down? Why did the dwarves abandon a certain mine? These are things that can easily give your player a feel for the world and become more invested in the setting and gives you some good quests for them later on.
Have a reliable NPC. Maybe they get friendly with a shopkeep with magical wares or perhaps one of the city guards who rises to guard captain through the party's help. Could be that a tavern owner takes a shine to the party after they save their place from burning down. Whatever be the case, having someone they can trust and return to is a good way to build a bond with your players and give them a place they can relax after some adventuring.
These are at least some pointers I have found helpful when creating my settings.
It's quite telling that you didn't address the issue with moderation in previous spatial chat program disasters. They were flooded with racists and nazis quite quickly.
Moreover your platform doesn't have the most basic thing needed for world building - a map tool so I'll pass.
I use Dungondraft to make my ingame map layouts, and Wonderdraft to make overworld maps.
I also generally use The Forgotten Adventures Complete Mapmaking Pack for my ingame map assets.
Links:
Dungeondraft
Wonderdraft
The Forgotten Adventures Complete Mapmaking Pack
I made this map using Wonderdraft and custom assets for the forests and mountains.
You should check out Wonderdraft, link to its reddit. Its a one time payment and it has a feature that allows you to create a map from another one by zooming from a part of the original. So that could be useful to you for making your more precise regional maps. It also got another nice thing I personally use for calculating travel distance in my game of D&D, a path scale tool. It allows you to trace a path (with the scale you set up for the map) and it tells you how much distance this path is. Wonderdraft also has many other splendid feature such as layers and custom assets, so I would really recommend you to check it out.
I'm sorry if I made any mistakes in this message, English is not my native language and I'm about to go to sleep, not the most focused person around.
No problem, I hope that you find use in some / all of them! As for dungeons, I use either DonJon for randomly crafted dungeons (https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/dungeon/) or if I see something posted on the varies sub-Reddits I'll save it for later. I've seen DungeonDraft and it is a wonderful map making tool, the only other thing I could think of would be WonderDraft (https://www.wonderdraft.net/) but thats more for a world map.
Try Wonderdraft. Excellent software and quite flexible/powerful, I used to use inkarnate but haven't gone back since I started with Wonderdraft. Does everything you specified and more, and there are a lot of custom assets available. It still gets feature updates and the creator has also made Dungeondraft which is for making encounter and battle maps.
r/wonderdraft
r/dungeondraft
GIMP is free, but you don't have art assets.
If you want a buy-once alternate to Inkarnate, look at Wonderdraft by MegaSploot. It has a section on www.cartographyassets.com with free assets that can be used to make your map.
Also, unrelated to Inkarnate stuff, but MegaSploot also created DungeonDraft which has become my favorite grid/token based map builder, especially since Forgotten Adventures got their asset integration done.
Anyway, hope this helps to a degree!
Great question.
Obviously depends on your budget but I've recently bought Wonderdraft and love it.
The learning curve is gentle, the results splendid. I've used it to make an arctic peninsula north of Icewind Dale (nothing to do with Rime). It's about 25 quid, one-off, no subs, DL to own, no issue with rights or publishing etc.
All that said, I don't think it's as handy for dungeons but you can certainly bundle the symbols for towns and villages together to make a city.
EDIT: I should add that I bought it for the reason that I am hoping to publish for sale the adventure I'm writing. I'll need something to do the interior maps, but that can wait for now.
FWIW, it's $3 a month for the Journeyman tier of WorldAnvil, which gets you the private world/articles among a slew of other features. If that's still not worth it to you, then no worries, just stick with Free tier--but yes, your work on there will be public in that case. As you say, it's unlikely anyone accidentally finds your world--it's more a concern that someone with the link can see everything in the world, even stuff you might (As a GM, for instance) want to hide from them.
As for mapmaking--yeah. Inkarnate is great. So is Wonderdraft. Lots of good options out there, none of which will run you anywhere near $30/month. Wonderdraft is $30 forever--no subscription required.
I'm a big fan of Wonderdraft for world, regon, and city maps and Dungeondraft for encounter maps. Both are made by the same designer, Dungeondraft is still under development; however it is on the final stretch and works great as is. I've been using it since the earliest version was available and it's always worked great. Both come with their own assets built in and will accept custom assets to be imported into their libraries, both also have a lot of stuff currently available at www.cartographyassets.com, mostly for free.
Wonderdraft is $30 and Dungeondraft is currently $20(i believe it is supposed to go up to $30 when it releases v1.0).
Both have active subreddits, /r/wonderdraft and /r/dungeondraft, as well as a discord if you want to see examples of what people have created.
Oh, I haven't heard of that one! I'll add that to my wish list, it seems great for mapping cities and stuff. I've been using Wonderdraft for about 9 months now to make the maps for my homebrew campaign, and I've been loving it. It costs $30 and comes with a large catalog of community-made content, and you can add your own hand-drawn assets somewhat easily, too. Idk, good job on this map!
You can get this software package here:
https://www.humblebundle.com/software/maps-extravaganza-software
For many years, Campaign Cartographer is the standard for producing commercial quality maps. However, there is a steep learning curve and the user interface is un-intuitive.
Many people swears by Wonderdraft which is much more intuitive to use:
If you're willing to drop $30 there's Wonderdraft
Haven't used it myself but you can check out https://www.reddit.com/r/wonderdraft/
to see what other people have done with it.
Dungeondraft and Wonderdraft are my go-to tools for dungeons and world maps respectively. Dungeondraft is a more "realistic" (or at least stylised) tool, but you can export in print friendly mode, which looks a bit more hand drawn.
This tool might be closer to what you're looking for. It's still WIP and planned to be free, but it seems that early access is available to patreon supporters. Haven't given it a whirl yet, but looks promising for that kind of style.
Not OP but...
Dungeondraft for battle maps / tile based maps.
Wonderdraft for world maps.
Dungeondraft and Wonderdraft will only take you so far, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop have a higher learning curve but will allow greater customization, it really depends on how complex you want to make it and what art style you're aiming for. Something like OP's map can be done with Dungeondraft alone for the tiled based maps, the art itself would need to be created on Photoshop/Illustrator or you could use pre-made assets. Finally, putting it all together into a single image would be mostly Photoshop if I were to guess.
If you're interested in making grander scale maps (like planet-wide maps or regions of a world), check out Artifexian, he has some pretty cool videos on the subject.
> Does anyone else believe there is potential for Godot to be used for general application development, not just games? I know it's already been done, but there isn't a larger adoption of this because GLES2 is compatible with less devices than GTK or QT that uses the native API for GUIs.
Yes, see Pixelorama, Material Maker and Wonderdraft.
Here's an image of all the magical realms outlined
Noctuina is a vast world of both magical realms and separate planes of existence. If the realms are to the left and right of each other, the planes are above and below. Most are not accessible to humans, but some can be reached through magic, dreams, death, or other methods.
This is Cardinalis, the 'main' center plane where all of the realms reside, where most creatures and people are born and live. This is the center of all of the planes.
Every realm has different magic and most countries are kept to one realm, though a few empires cross magical boundaries. Over time the planes and realms will begin to merge, and at the end of time the split world will again be both free of evil and sin, and be one true world.
Made using a mix of Fractal Terrains 3, Photoshop, and Wonderdraft
Can confirm DMHelper is really neat and has more features than was mentioned above. Also still in development. New stuff is added all the time. Also very helpful community on Discord.
As for creating own maps i can suggest Wonderdraft and Dungeondraft.
Wonderdraft is more geared towards actual world maps.
Dungeondraft (as the name implies) is for creating caves, dungeons, rooms,..... "Battle maps" essentially. Dungeondraft is still in it's early stages and has some bugs but is already very useable and yields good results (imo).
Dungeondraft! It's in early access right now, but it's got a very active development.
If you are more interested in overworld stuff check out Wonderdraft.
They both have subreddits as well. r/dungeondraft and r/wonderdraft.
There's a discord as well that caters to both. You can find the link on the subreddits.
Check out Dungeondraft. It is an outstanding application for battle maps for a one-time purchase. (https://dungeondraft.net/). I also recommend the world map counterpart Wonderdraft. (https://www.wonderdraft.net/). Lastly, I highly recommend Encounter+. It’s a comprehensive session, initiative tracker, campaign management tool that works with Dungeondraft. See . https://twitter.com/encounterplus/status/1251242268196995072?s=21
I bought my copy through https://www.wonderdraft.net/ and when I click "v1.1.2 update available!" wonder draft closes. When I reopen it it still says "v1.1.2 update available!"
Is there another way to update?
Had a great game. Migrated to Roll20 (Discord failed us but Roll20 worked great) and have been using Wonderdraft maps, which the players have absolutely loved and appreciated. Players are now using their character sheets, via a plug in that connects dndBeyond, so they're way excited at being able to do this and not manually roll in Roll20. The game was supposed to be a one shot but players expressed interest so I'm now trying to migrate into Storm King's Thunder.
Battle was a continuation from the week before. Party finally ended up meeting at a fort two days out from Waterdeep. They all had different story lines (I never did like the "so you're all in a tavern..." storyline) and together they fought off an orc/goblin raiding party led by a wicked female Drow elf. The raiders were there to grab a piece of the >!Vonindad!< (from Storm King's Thunder), a task given to them by a fire giant.
The party pursued the orcs to a nearby abandoned mine, ended up catching up to the raiders in an ancient uncovered room (uncovered due to earth tremors and cave-ins from fire giants doing something unknown down under) only to find a confrontation between a Drider, with its horde of spiders, and the Drow elf and her party.
The party's sorcerer and rogue stealth around the confrontation to get to a certain part of the mine in order to activate the sorcerer's artifact (a crystal that imbues sorcerer points) only to come back to find the rest of the party in a huge fight actually helping the orcs fight the Drider and spiders.
Left off with the sorcerer unconscious from the 3 Magmins that arrived late in the game. Was a hot mess; players loved it.
Hmmm - there is Wonderdraft - but that’s more for regional maps than battle-maps to my knowledge.
Some Patreon map creators make things like Trees, crates and other assets available as asset packs that you can download and then use in your own maps - some people build maps from these.
And then there are just a lot of people who really like that same style of map and seem to take inspiration from each other.
How is Affinity compared to Photoshop? I was having a look at that the other day.
I think it's Wonderdraft. Their display maps almost always have those compass lines. https://www.wonderdraft.net/
I've never used it but watched a video of their stuff the other day. I've been using Inkarnate for the last year or so.
I tend to make my own maps, but it’s a difficult process if you’re working from scratch. Here’s a few strategies to you around with:
Hand-Drawn:
Spill some coffee beans on your sheet of paper and scatter them around until you’ve got some basic continental shapes. Outline in pencil and adjust as needed. Add some islands off the coasts and there you go.
Take a look at a map of Earth’s Tectonic Plates and divide your paper into different sections (assuming your world uses plate tectonics of course). Then, either repeat Strategy 1 or hand draw continents. —> You can even cut them out and scatter them around to simulate how they’ve moved around through your world’s history. I would recommend filming the process so you know where the continents started and how they got to where they are now.
If you’re using a computer program, I strongly recommend Wonderdraft . It’s very easy to use, has great coastline and river tools, and altogether just makes maps look incredible. Absolutely worth the $30 price tag. —> It has a tool to let you import map overlays, so you can pretty much just trace the best features of generated maps or even use real world continents as your base and then fix up the coastlines.
Remember: - Rivers run from high elevation to low elevation, getting wider as they flow - Lakes tend only to have one inflow and one outflow river - RIVERS DONT SPLIT but they can join together to form wider rivers - Mountains are ALMOST NEVER solitary, so you rarely see Erebors in real life -Mountain Ranges form at Tectonic borders
Hope this helps :)
I spent a day of my vacation to learn using Wonderdraft to create this custom Map of Scotland with locations mentioned in Gloryhammers songs. If you are interested in the source file to take your own spin on it (there is quite a bit of room for improvement) feel free to pm me :-).
Also heres a custom Google Maps Map.
I spent a day of my vacation to learn using Wonderdraft to create this custom Map of Scotland with locations mentioned in Gloryhammers songs. If you are interested in the source file to take your own spin on it (there is quite a bit of room for improvement) feel free to pm me :-).
Also heres a custom Google Maps Map.
I think your continent is about 400 miles wide. See below...
How did they travel? If by horse or foot, figure an approximate rate of between three and four miles an hour. Assuming ten hours of travel a day, call it thirty miles. So, thirty days times thirty miles = nine hundred miles. Your legs add up to about two and a quarter traversals of the continent. So, assuming your continent is more or less equal in most of its dimensions, that seems to indicate your continent is about four hundred miles wide. When I wrote my novel, I had the same problems to solve and used a tool called Wonderdraft to create a fantasy style map. Link is here: Wonderdraft
It really helped me to visualize my world. It cost thirty bucks, but money well spent. It is easy to use. I was doing maps in ten minutes without reading any doc. It's great software. ( I have no financial interest in anyone buying it. Just one of the better products I've bought in a while and the author is an indie creator.)
https://www.wonderdraft.net/?m=1
Is great and you can load custom assets into it as well.
The creator will also be releasing a dungeon program soon as well.
Here's the Reddit thread where the OP shows off the map itself. Wonderdraft is a wonderful tool for campaign creators and its subreddit is fairly active.
Did you use Inkarnate? It looks nice! If you ever have the cash for it, I recommend Wonderdraft. It's not subscription based and yet offers way more options for mapmaking.
I've been using wonderdraft (https://www.wonderdraft.net/) for a little while now. I'm what you would describe as "artistically ungifted", and Wonderdraft really covers that weakness pretty well.
It has a limited raise/lower land function but it's really only good for making coastlines. It won't let you, for example, raise mountains. The terrain is handled with a combination of assets that you "paint" onto the map and coloring that is also "painted" on. When it does things like mountains & hills & trees, it doesn't just tile the same thing over & over, it does a pretty good job of adding some variety to the specific designs & spacing.
There's also a subreddit of wonderdraft users that seems pretty active.
It's not free. It's a one-time purchase of I think $30
I've used Wonderdraft to make some fantasy maps, but it has capability to make lots of terrain with hex overlays, tons of assets you can find and import, etc.
Hex map example: https://i.redd.it/96kmdqk2hmg31.png
Subreddit: /r/wonderdraft
The dev didn't build the Humble Bundle sale page, they're just using the service as it was the one that the most people wanted (they actually surveyed which service to use).
Have you go ad blocks on or something that could be blocking the humble bundle widget? You literally just click 'Get Wonderdraft' in the side bar or go Here, then scroll down to the Humble Bundle widget, enter your email address and select your payment method.
Sometimes I use Wonderdraft; https://www.wonderdraft.net/
Sometimes I just use Photoshop and filter the hell out of it until I get something I like.
I actually think I usually like the end result with Photoshop a lot better, but Wonderdraft is a lot faster and easier.
Wonderdraftif you're willing to pay. It is totally worth it.
If you're not willing to pay, or can't afford to, then check out Inkarnate.
As many have already said, Wonderdraft is great! I also recommend checking out its community subreddit, r/wonderdraft. And as u/BlindAngel said Watabou Fantasy City Generator is great for generating city layouts, which you can trace into wonderdraft and tweak to fit your tastes.
These tools really do make map making a joy.
If you want to create digital maps check out Wonderdraft. You purchase the software and install it on your pc so you don't have to work online. It is pretty easy to use and create decent maps. I just started worldbuilding and making maps and so far it has been fairly easy to get the hang of.
I just got wonderdraft and map a really nice looking map and I suck ass at drawing. It's a really cool and extremely easy to use tool that has a lot of community support and tutorials on youtube. Check it out https://www.wonderdraft.net/
Nah it's cool. It'll give the comments something to meme. And I fixed it already.
There's a lot more I'd like to do to make it better. I just wanted a project to use the software for the first time.
So there is wonderdraft which does a lot of thing inkarnate does. Admittedly never used inkarnate though. I really enjoy this software and it is just downright fun to use. Head over to r/wonderdraft and check it out if you haven’t. It is a one time pay to own software but I think for its ease of use and features it is worth it.
https://www.wonderdraft.net/?m=1
Legendkeeper, also has its own sub, allows you import maps and add a sort of GUI wiki for it. It is still in open beta and requires a monthly pattern subscription to use. The developer will directly respond to questions on his sub and also maintains a discord channel for subscribers, of which are very friendly and helpful.
https://www.patreon.com/legendkeeper
When used in tandem, both of these softwares can do MOST of what you ask. Apologies for formatting I am on my phone.
For those looking at mapping software, I highly suggest Wonderdraft too. While Inkarnate is nice (free version is doable) their Pro version is subscription-based whereas Wonderdraft is a once-off payment which was a big difference for me.
Perhaps Wonderdraft? There is a free modern theme with custom assets for it if you want to step away from the fantasy-vibe.
I suggest checking out WonderDraft
Its not out yet but theres a kickstarter going for Deios, which is a mapmaker that can do city, region, world and solar system maps.
I needed one for my novel, so I used this. https://www.wonderdraft.net/
It cost a few bucks, but my map turned out well, IMHO. Tool's super easy to use. Ten minute learning curve. Here's a link to the map in my novel The Raidships : Map of Valkra
A lot of people use the Inkarnate website! It has a free demo version I’m partial to using Wonderdraft, but that one does have a price tag attached. https://www.inkarnate.com https://www.wonderdraft.net/?m=1