D&D 5E Please help me understand Dnd Beyond "Maps"

[Stalker0]

Hey all,

So periodically people tell me how great the dnd beyond Maps program is....but every time I have tried to use it, I just can't get it to do basically anything. I am sure I am just completely misunderstanding even the basics of how to get started.

What I am trying to do is this:

1) Take a picture and load it into maps (I believe you can add gridlines to the picture as well? I would love to do that).
2) Get some tokens for my players (I have pictures of their characters outside of beyond, but if I have to use pics in beyond that is fine I can adjust)
3) Get some monster tokens.

And that's it, I just want to have a map with players and monster tokens and go to work. While I would love to get more fancy with rollers and other things, I'm just trying to get that far.

Would someone be willing to help me?

 

[Echohawk]

A few questions first...

Do you have a campaign showing up on this page?
Do your players have characters that have joined the campaign you want to use Maps for?
Have your players uploaded pictures of their characters onto their D&D Beyond character sheets?

 

[Echohawk]

Assuming that the answers to those three questions are yes, yes and yes, then go to this page, select the campaign you want to use maps for and click "Go".

 

[Echohawk]

If you haven't used maps for that campaign before, you should immediately drop into the Map Browser. If that's not open, click on Select Map at the top of the screen and then Open Map Browser. Since you mentioned wanting to upload your own map (rather than use one provided by WotC), click on My Uploaded Maps. You should now see "UPLOAD MAP" like this:

 

[Echohawk]

Your screen should now look like this:

 

[Stalker0]

A few questions first...

Do you have a campaign showing up on this page?
Do your players have characters that have joined the campaign you want to use Maps for?
Have your players uploaded pictures of their characters onto their D&D Beyond character sheets?

yep haven't even done that. Ok I made a campaign. Do my players need to be subscribers to join the campaign or can I just put their characters in there?

I don't mind moving their characters for example, I just want to get the map and the tokens up when we do our calls and then share the screen on discord.

 

[Echohawk]

Your players will need to have D&D Beyond character sheets for you to get the most out of Maps, but they don't need to have paid accounts to make characters. You will need to give them the campaign link so that they can join the campaign. To get to this, go back to the page listing your campaigns, and click on View Campaign and you'll see a box like this on the right of your screen:

 

[Echohawk]

Back to adding your own map. I'm going to use the Red Dragon Lair map from "Tactical Maps Reincarnated". To add this, I drop the file where it says "Drag image here to upload" and I give it a name:

 

[Echohawk]

Click Next, wait a little bit and then you will need to match the square with a circle to the grid of your image. Do that, and then click Save:

 

[Echohawk]

You should now see "Red Dragon Lair" in your list of "My Uploaded Map" in the Map Browser. Click the plus sign to add it. It will now appear in the list of maps for this campaign, and you can close the map browser. You screen should now look something like this, which means you've done item 1 on your list.