I have been gaming for around 35 years, mainly role playing. In the olden days I used pen and paper usually with a grid or something to produce my maps but as we all know times have progressed. Now having access to graphics & mapping software has revolutionized the things I can as I confess to being rubbish at actual art. Nowadays I still use my old PhotoImpact 10 alongside my new Corel X9 to create symbols, textures and other bits as well as touching up my final maps sometimes. However 99% of my maps are originally created with Fractal Mapper (NBOS software). I now have two instances of this program on my PC one with all the default symbols etc. and one that is loaded with only the symbols I have created, this allows me to know that the map is my content only. So that's what I do I had just better post a couple of maps then.