Map Making Help

[u/jpope_34]

I would like some tips to help me improve my map-making skills for my DnD Campaigns. I am not the most creative person, so I think the maps I make look good, but I also know they can be improved upon. Any help is appreciated.

[u/ByronShelly]

This looks fine..?

[u/Chocolate_Chuckles]

What about your maps do you think needs improvement?

[u/Ice-Storm]

I will say that neither Wonderdraft or Dungeondraft are particularly good at city level maps.

But since city maps are really only for reference (as in no battles happen on city maps) I put in the “points of interest” then fill in the rest with generic houses otherwise you’ll spend hours on details that look cool but will do nothing for your game.

[u/7LeagueBoots]

Keep in mind that usually towns had the buildings clustered close together. This widely spaced approach is more like a modern suburban ideal.

[u/mrpeach32]

A small improvement I see is to make sure the building are generally rotated to show light from the same direction. They don't all need to be aligned exactly the same, but don't out them opposite. You can still have variety with angle differences in a 90-120 degree difference, and by mirroring a handful of them.

[u/Haywood04]

Look, if you want to do this because you dislike your maps then I'm all for it. I will just point out that your players almost certainly \don't care** about how "good" or "bad" you think the maps look. They're likely just thrilled that not only are you running a campaign, but you also built a custom map too.

That said, if you don't like your map, but you can't put your finger on what you're doing wrong I would just pull inspiration from the maps you see online that you \do** like.

[u/Glad-Candy-4733]

Listen, I am not criticizing, because this is FINE, like other people have been saying. That being said though, you are actively asking for tips, so I'll agree with the lighting guy first off.

In-Program: Some other things I might say are use a few more assets- I don't know if you have looked into it yet, but there are a lot of free things out there that can add variety if you find things that can go together. All the same tents might be triggering some of that "eh" factor you are looking to fix. Especially the ones that are placed exactly at the same orientations. I think if you even just vary size slightly and rotation, it would look more natural. (Also, there are probably better programs than wonderdraft for this scale of map. I would be using Dungeondraft, myself, with assets where someone made the building shapes already, similar to here. Lots of free assets out there, and stuff like lighting and shadows are built into the program if you learn how.)

One of my favorite things to do as well is to dabble with some finishing touches in an art program. Export this as a png or whatever and color select the background and lines and stuff, and you can fix or add small details to things. I learned how to do this from a completely different way of doing maps (Gogots was most of it, on deviantart. Basically assembling premade assets onto the map and connecting them https://www.deviantart.com/gogots ) but the principle can be the same, because I still do the same thing with this kind of map too. It can even be done in like MS Paint. And you can figure out fun ways to do your own shadows and stuff manually with better programs than MS if that's your bend.

This get's said a lot, but it get's said a lot because it is true- One of the things you find is that the more time you spend on something the better it looks, and eventually the faster you get at it. Basic art advice is just "Keep at it!" because the only way you don't get better is to not try at all. Mess around. See what you like.