Best map maker?

[Jinglehopper]

Hi there,

I'm starting up a new campaign and thinking about all the maps I'm hungry to make (I love maps as a player and want to extend that to my DMing.) We play in an apartment with projection capabilities and I plan on extensively using it to display artwork but also maps of the area, cities, etc.

Problem is, I'm not much of an artist. In the past, I've hand drawn maps and then scanned them in order to project on the wall. They were passable, but not awesome. For this new campaign, I want the maps to look good but also want them to be edited and generated easily. I don't have tons of money but I'm willing to purchase something if I think it's warranted.

I'm soliciting the EN crowd for the experiences you've had with map making software. I've looked at a few, but it's hard to tell their success without some anecdotal evidence.

What do you think?

What's the best map maker out there?


Greg

 

[mudbunny]

While I can't provide a direct answer, I recommend checking out Cartographers Guild :: Homepage. Mapping is what they do, and they can recommend all sorts of programs, and provide tutorials/help to boot.

 

[Stoat]

Folks are going to suggest Campaign Cartographer, Dundjinni and Photoshop.

I'm a fan of Campaign Cartographer. It has a very steep learning curve, but once you figure it out you can bang out good looking maps quickly.

I used to use Campaign Cartographer with a projector for all my games. Once the map is complete, its easy to move icons around to represent the PC's and monsters. With a little more work, it's possible to draw a map so that you can hide or expose each room at will.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

I use a projector for my game too. Of late, I've found all I need is Photoshop.

Creek Encounter

Mountain Encounter

Mountain Encounter 2

Basement Dungeon (Well leads down to Basement Dungeon 2)

Basement Dungeon 2 (White Dragon Lair)

 

[jdrakeh]

For 'old school' overland hexmaps, there's really nothing better than Hex Mapper. I tried CC3 a couple of years back but found it far too complex. I'm currently fooling around with Fractal Mapper, which I find to be very comparable to CC3 with a much more gentle learning curve. For all of these programs, I recommend Photoshop as a near necessary companion — the large array of texture filters and text options is absolutely fantastic.

 

[Maggan]

I use a projector for my game too. Of late, I've found all I need is Photoshop.

Awesome cool! Are you using photos as base graphics?

/M

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Awesome cool! Are you using photos as base graphics?

/M

Yeah, for the most part.

 

[slwoyach]

Civ 3 map editor?

 

[Jan van Leyden]

What kind of maps do you want to produce and how much awesomeness are you aiming at?

If you want to focus on battlemaps, Dundjinni or your trusted ol' CorelDraw are good candidates. Dundjinni has a very active community which can help you and give you lots of axamples, and you can achieve very good results. CorelDraw or a comparable CAD software lets you easily whip up a battlemap, re-using a lot of previous work. You can search the net for free tiles to use as building blocks, but will be hard pressed to get pseudo-realistic looking maps.

If you want to focus on large-scale, overland, world or town/city maps, Campaign Cartographer Fractal Mapper fit the bill. Look around at their web-sites to get an impression of what kind of results you'll get "out of the box". For simple, utalitarian maps probably like you did them by hand, the free Autorealm might suffice.

The Holy Grail of world-building/map-making would be a GIS, but I have yet to see one which makes the process easy enough for roleplaying gamers.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

[Photoshopped encounter maps.]

Wow. Those are seriously impressive. Like, professional game cartographer impressive.

My players would bitch about them anyway. "Can we stand in this square?" "Is this square difficult terrain?" And so on. If I had the skills to do that (I don't), I'd have to lay the grid down first and work the image into the grid, which would impact the aesthetics.