10 Free Map Making Resources For D&D
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Anyone who has played Dungeons and Dragons knows that no two groups ever play the same. If you prefer a visual layout for the location of your encounters instead of just using the theater of the mind, one of the biggest issues you can run into is the cost of making a map.
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Buying props and minis can eat up a lot of money, and they definitely don’t work as well if one or more of your players have to show up online to play. If you’re looking to save a couple of dollars or just want a better way to digitize your battle maps, these resources are for you.
Mipui's Map Maker
Mipui’s Map Maker is easy to access right here in your browser. It’s best suited for your dungeon-making needs, as its simplistic graphics look similar to any graph paper maps you might draw by hand. With easy-to-manipulate stamps, you can create the shape of your dungeon with ease. You can also decorate the inside with tokens that can easily identify where any characters might stand or anything else important for your players to notice as they play through the map.
You can share the link with your friends, too, and let them explore real-time on their own screens. With special DM screen abilities, you can hide and reveal whatever you want from them as you play together on your map.
Watabou City Generator
If you want to make a city map but don’t have a specific city shape and size in mind, Watabou’s City Generator is where to go. All you need to do is input a couple of specifics, like the size of the city and any attributes you want to be sure to include, and it will randomly generate the map for you.
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If it still doesn’t look right to you, or you want to make a small change, you even have the option to drag and drop items into the city, where it will auto regenerate around it until you get the image you hope for.
Pyromancer's Dungeon Painter
Since Adobe Flash failed its death saves, Pyromancer’s Dungeon Painter isn’t available in-browser anymore. Instead, you can download the free software to your computer to use. Whether you want to make a detailed battle map or intend to decorate your town or city’s streets to showcase to your players, there are a lot of options here.
The decorations can be fairly small, too. Make simple dungeon maps to play, or make detailed interiors so the players know every possible item to waste time searching through. It will definitely help when you’re trying to show off the items related to solving the puzzles you add to your game.
Dungeon Map Doodler
Dungeon Map Doodler helps you create maps reminiscent of ones you might find in official campaign books. With simplistic graphics, you can draw your dungeon and add stamps to decorate it with objects or enemies the players will encounter.
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If you don’t have the mind to design the dungeon yourself or are short on time, you can even ask the software to randomly generate a dungeon for you, including encounters, if you want. The possibilities are endless, and your dungeon crafting will never be easier.
Donjon Fantasy Generators
Donjon has several different fantasy generators to help you out, including randomly generated city maps and dungeon maps. It takes little to no effort, depending on how much influence you want over the map’s creation. All you have to do is choose (or let the website choose) the dungeon size, shape, and some smaller details like rooms, doors, and even stairs.
Then, with a simple click of a button, it generates the entire map for you, and you can download both DM and player maps to avoid giving away secrets. It’s especially useful for dungeons with multiple floors for variation or trips underground to use your favorite random encounters in the Underdark.
Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator
Most maps for D&D are dungeon maps or cities. Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator is great for those homebrewing their entire campaign and would like to create a map of their continents to visualize the world they’re bringing to life. Choose from three different options as you build your world: a flat map, a topographic map, or a spinning globe that shows you where the continents would be around the world.
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Your maps can have different layers, too, showing off the separate kingdoms, biomes, religions, and more. Never forget the nitty-gritty details of your world-building with the help of these maps.
Dungeon Scrawl
If you want to start making your own battle maps but don’t know where to start, Dungeon Scrawl is a great piece of software to use. Make simple maps easily and tweak presets to create your own stylized maps to be exactly what you want them to be.
If you still have issues trying to figure out where to start, you can load pre-made maps randomly generated on a different site and edit them to your heart’s content. It works to update some of the plain generators into something with more style to give the map the perfect look.
Dungeon Fog
Dungeon Fog is a great interactive map-making resource perfect for any campaign, whether in a medieval world or somewhere out in the cosmos. With the option to make dungeons, towns, or terrain maps, you can create exactly what you need when you need it, with an extensive library of assets to help you find exactly what you’re looking for.
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You can export the maps in various ways, including printing and other virtual table tops, or invite them to play on the site itself with specially crafted fog of war options. If you don’t want to make your own map, you can easily borrow a user-generated map and adjust it to your needs right before you play.
RPG Map Editor 2
RPG Map Editor 2 brings a cute, pixelated style to all your dungeon maps. Whether you want to open it in your browser or download the software yourself, it has a lot of great assets for you to explore. And if that still isn’t enough, you can also upload your own images and icons to use on your map.
With fully customizable colors, different lighting, and fog effects, you can truly bring your map to life in a classic RPG game style. Make your players really feel like they’re playing a video game, and create beautiful dungeons for them to enjoy.
Inkarnate
Inkarnate is a DM’s heaven. Choose between global, city, or dungeon map-making options and explore the vast library of assets to decorate your worlds with right at your fingertips. If you like detailed, breathtaking maps and have the time to put in the extra effort, this is definitely the program for you. Using a similar interface to illustration software, it’s easy to pick up and perfectly customizable for all your map-making needs. You will have to export your creations elsewhere to play on them, but it’s worth the extra step for the great visuals it gives you.
