This article is part of the Instant World Builder Project.
Instant World Builder #1: Maps
Drawing maps for a new campaign might be my favorite DM activity. It’s what I start with when I design worlds and campaigns. I am usually motivated, inspired and always surprised to see the plot hooks that arise during map-drawing.
Unfortunately I can’t let myself do too much map-drawing otherwise I would never get around to doing anything else. So here are a few thoughts on creating maps:
Write on the map
It saves time to write notes directly on the map. It allows for a better work flow if you don’t have to write on 2 different sheets or documents. For those of you who are artistically inclined it might not be fun because too much writing on the map makes for an ugly final product. But you’ll be the only one looking at the map so a lot of time can be saved by not caring about the looks of the map.
Let the players and their characters work on the map
One of the best worlds I’ve created was almost completely drawn by a player. When the party would explore an unknown area I would draw a very rough copy of my map and let the cartographer of the group draw it. The more skilled he became at cartography - both as a player and a character - the better the map I would draw for the party.
As the players traveled the world the map would expand and lots of details were added - the climate, the type of creatures encountered, odd places they wanted to explore, sites of their great victories, where they got owned by a red dragon, whatever. The end result was a map 10 times richer than the one I originally drew, and it was fairly accurate.
Note: I wrote an article on drawing dungeon maps that could also apply to drawing world maps.
Do you have any nifty map-drawing tricks?
I’d love to hone my skills! Feel free to share your knowledge.
10 Comments
7:38 pm on September 28th, 2007
I plan on trying Dawn of Worlds ( http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf ) with my players before I start my D&D game and with a bit of luck that will be the world we adventure in.
Sorry, I don’t know how to turn that address into a link.
7:44 pm on September 28th, 2007
However, I see your website does know how. Kewl!
7:47 pm on September 28th, 2007
(My last comment today. I promise.)
Just read the footer. How about an article on how to get a life
1. Create a mind-blowing thrilling life.
2. Not spending anytime doing it!
7:50 pm on September 28th, 2007
I like your idea for an Instant Social Life Builder!
11:27 pm on September 28th, 2007
I must say that i love my maps and spend ages making them perfectly 2 scale, something that Yax seemed to disagree with in his “drawing dungeon maps” (but he shows players secreat doors :P) i also dont draw in anything other than doors and the rooms on my maps, i code every room and then on a seperate piece of papper i describe it. as far as my world is concerened that is coulor coded, different coulers for different terain, it doesnt look nerely as proffetional as other maps but it very easy to use! my towns and key locations are numbered so that iff i show it to the Players they wont know wat all the places they havnt been to are!
12:57 am on September 29th, 2007
Color coding is a great idea. It’s a great visual cue. Somehow I never thought about it.
And yes, I once was very tired and drew a secret door on the player map. My friends have been shoving it back in my face for years. 8[ That’s what friends do! :)
5:06 am on October 16th, 2007
@jill seal: the link you provided seems to be dead.
6:41 am on November 5th, 2007
Hi Michael
Sorry I’ve only just seen your comment.
Perhaps it was just a temporary blip - I’ve just tried it and it seems to work OK.
Otherwise try “Dawn of Worlds” in Google
9:52 pm on June 12th, 2008
I’m the GM of a D&D group at my high school, and I’ve recently started preparation for the next year and recently had an idea for a map that has worked out really well for me. First, sorry to comment on an ancient post but you recently linked to this.
What I did was take the map of the school that we go to, it’s one of those types that has a bunch of small buildings, scaled it up to the size of a world, and worked from there. Things like a small stream become a raging river, and a small lawn becomes an expansive fertile plain. On another layer I took the purposes of the buildings to make particular landmarks, for instance the science building is going to be a currently latent steampunk city, the main academic building The Omniversity, so on and so forth. It really makes it easy to have defined themes for certain areas.
Know this doesn’t mean you can’t add in things that aren’t at your school. To start with I just zoomed in on one small section and begin planning from there.
10:58 pm on July 12th, 2008
i need some good software for maping, something simple, something free. i’m not talking super 3d and stuff. you know, something like this http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:R-Tml6Nr2FjbQM:http://bp0.blogger.com/_lpL870wV2A4/RtQH5eR1T0I/AAAAAAAABRI/dPlFvRIm2VE/s400/zonemap.jpg
old school mapping, spiral staircases, secret doors.