Just starting

[Ascent]

Hello everyone.
I'm new to this map making thing and hoping to learn how to make a half decent map.
I'm just planning to start a new D&D campaign as the GM and want to make maps of the main locations I'm planning on using.
I'd like to create a city and an island and see how my skills develop and see how much of the rest of the world I can do.

I'm planning too look through what you've got and your tutorials and see where I stand after that.

Cheers, Ascent

[eepjr24]

Welcome! As a newbie myself I can tell you you have come to the right place. There is tons of information about both city and regional maps here as well as battle maps galore to use as examples.

I would say the first thing to do is get some software and start looking at tutorials for that software. I chose GIMP, but there are many people out there who use Krita, Inkscape or one of the various commercial software packages (Photoshop, Paint Shop, Etc.) or the various map making softwares (Campaign Cartographer, etc.). There are lots of PDF's in the tutorial section, and youtube has a good number of specific techniques if you search by software (GIMP + Cavern or Photoshop + City).

I have found that posting my works here also gives me a sense of accomplishment, even if I don't get a ton of responses I know that people are seeing it and that makes me strive to do better.

I am still months off from running my campaign, so I started with a rough idea of the world (which I partly cribbed from the wonderful Azgaar Fantasy Map Generator) and then have picked a single region that I am working on developing for the party. Once that is better settled I will flesh out the other areas politically and such and then longer term work on maps and such for them as well.

Anyway, have fun and welcome to the forum!

- E

[Ascent]

Thanks.

I've decided to try and start with Krita and see what I can do. I've looked at a couple of tutorials and am going to start from those.

I don't know when I'll get the chance to start my campaign due to the lockdown but the city and island will be the homebase area so to speak so will be the starting point for everything.