I'm Colin, and I'm absolutely terrible at making maps

[colinboxall1972]

I am a 43 year old who has been playing D&D since I was 7 years old. I have never been much good at making maps, and anything above ground I make is just awful. I'm totally left brained and have no aesthetic ability to speak of. However I love maps, particularly data rich maps on square or hex grids. I'm running a campaign for my kids, fiance' and brother-in-law, and I'm hoping to find some ideas and some help for my map needs as the party progresses. I am a Mystara only DM, but there is basically an infinite amount of territory that can be mapped in greater detail and so forth. :-)

[ChickPea]

Hi Colin, welcome to the Guild. There are lots of new mapmakers posting, so don't feel daunted. The best advice is to work through a few mapping tutorials to get some practice. Even if you don't much like the look of the tutorial, working through the steps will teach you some tricks that you can use to develop the map you want. There are lots of guides in the Tutorials/How To section, as well as some downloadable PDFs. Just pick one and see how you go. Perhaps the Hand-Drawn Mapping (for the Artistically Challenged) tutorial might be right up your street!

If you're stuck with something or can't find an answer to a specific question, just start a thread and ask away. I'm sure someone will be able to help you out.

[Wired]

Hi Colin, good to have you here. ChickPea has pretty much covered all the necessary links already. Depending on what kind of tools you use you might find my Lineart Map Tutorial for Beginners useful. It leads you through the complete creation of a B&W map.

[ChickPea]

@Wired, I'd forgotten about your tutorial and it was a good one too! Did you upload a PDF to the Guild? We could add a link in the PDF tutorials thread if you did.

[Wired]

@Wired, I'd forgotten about your tutorial and it was a good one too! Did you upload a PDF to the Guild? We could add a link in the PDF tutorials thread if you did.

Sadly, the file is too large, if only by a few hundred Kbyte. Every attempt to make it smaller only ended with serious problems with quality and legibility.

[ChickPea]

Is that even with the new upload limits? I see you're a Supporter, so you get 12Mb for PDFs. I can't remember if Robbie had already changed the limits when you posted your tutorial originally, or if the increased sizes came after that.

It's too bad if the file's too big.

[Wired]

Is that even with the new upload limits? I see you're a Supporter, so you get 12Mb for PDFs. I can't remember if Robbie had already changed the limits when you posted your tutorial originally, or if the increased sizes came after that.

It's too bad if the file's too big.

It's 12.3 Mbyte...

[ChickPea]

Aw, that's a shame

[Azélor]

Don't worry, we all start bad and usually we get better by doing it.

@Wired maybe a dropbox link could work, or something like that.

[Wired]

Don't worry, we all start bad and usually we get better by doing it.

@Wired maybe a dropbox link could work, or something like that.

It's available as a full PDF under the link I provided in my first post in this thread.