A good-looking map for a tabletop role-playing session can not only help your players figure out where they are and where to go, it can also give atmosphere to the adventure. As someone with no artistic skills to speak of, I’ve never been able to make nice maps on my own, but fortunately there are services for that now.
One I’ve been playing around with lately is Inkarnate. Inkarnate can produce maps in several different styles, including large-scale geographic maps, regional brid’s-eye views, and maps for individual buildings and dungeons. You can define coastlines and paint in ground and water textures. Then you can add individual items like mountains and towns on larger maps, or walls, chairs, and treasure chests on smaller-scale ones, each of which can be individually scaled and rotated.
There’s a good free version you can try out if you want to see how it works. It has only a limited set of assets to use, but there’s plenty you can do with just these. I made these maps below for a game earlier this year just using the free assets.
I like Inkarnate enough that I’m considering paying for a full membership. I really like what it is helping me produce. If you’re looking for an easy way to make your own game maps, you might want to check it out.
Images created by Erik Jensen using Inkarnate
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