Where I Get Maps for D&D

these days i know a lot more of us are playing our d d games online and among many considerations for those of us moving from mainly physical tabletop gaming to online tabletop gaming we need to consider where we are going to get our maps now it doesn't take long at all to find high quality maps online but in this video i'm gonna be talking about some of my favorite sources for digital rpg maps or how i sometimes make them as well hi everyone my name is nate and you are watching wasd 20 a channel about tabletop rpgs and fantasy maps if you're not yet subscribed make sure you hit that subscribe button below for more videos like this so about two weeks ago i put out a video on my virtual tabletop of choice these days which is owlbear rodeo and that video is doing very well and there are lots and lots of comments and the second most popular comment was along the lines of okay great this looks like a cool tool but where do you get the maps because you don't make maps in owl bear rodeo by the way by far the most popular comment was why would i ever use this over roll 20 isn't this basically like a worse version of roll 20 and to that i say absolutely not and i'm working on a video along those lines and that'll probably be out next week so when it is i will put a link right up there you can check that out but back to the topic of this video where do i get my maps so one of the first options is for you to draw your own maps and i have done a lot of that a lot of you know that i'm kind of a map guy and i like to draw maps but the reality is while i have drawn some maps and i'll put some up on the screen here that i've drawn either for my patrons or for my website or for a video and just kind of give it away for free online encounter and dungeon maps are not really my specialty and i'm usually looking for something quick something easy i don't want to spend two or three hours drawing my own now when i do want to make a map if there's something i can't find online lately i have been using dungeon draft and this is i think a 20 application you can download it on your computer it is not web-based and you buy it once it's not a subscription service so it's all good in those ways but i will say i kind of actually prefer like a web-based thing because i lose things and i actually made some maps and dungeon draft this past fall and i reformatted my computer and i'm not sure where they are i'm pretty sure i backed them up and they're on a drive somewhere so maybe i'll find those someday but anyway dungeon draft is a cool program i really like it because it doesn't have like a digital map feel the maps feel a little bit more like hand-drawn and almost painterly in a way so i really like that about it and anyway maybe i'll do a full review at some point but it is a piece of software i recommend and also there are tons and tons of free asset packs out there or inexpensive asset packs that people are making so that if you're not really happy with the options which there's a fair amount of options built in you can easily import more it's a little bit time consuming but in the end you can get some really great looking maps and there's a lot of resources out there for dungeon draft so check it out another great source of maps would be from actual rpg books that you're buying digital versions of like on roll 20 or fantasy grounds or even on drive through rpg just getting a pdf personally i use the maps from dnd beyond since i own a lot of the books on dnd beyond right now i'm running ice windale and i'll grab the maps from the module and just take screen grabs and import them into owlbear rodeo or whatever and that works really well however even though i am running a module there's lots of times where i want maps that aren't included in the book maybe there's a wilderness encounter a random encounter that i want a map for or when i ran the lake monster quest in session one by the way i'll put a link to the campaign up at the top there if you want to check it out but when i ran that one i made a map for it in dungeon draft because i couldn't find a good map with the lake and some ice floes and things like that and when i say i couldn't find one what do i mean where do i try to find maps well the main thing i do is just go to google image search honestly that's one of the main first places i go and from there i usually find links to various creators websites or sometimes to reddit or pinterest or something like that be a little bit careful with what you do with these maps because understand a lot of artists have put hard work into them and if you're sharing them around with your friends or posting them on reddit or other places please let us know who the artist is it's really important to give attribution so that artists get credit and more people can find their work and support them now i do want to recognize that i just made a video about finding maps in which one of my pieces of advice was google it and that's not super useful so when you are googling let me give you some useful advice if you're looking for example for a refinery map notice nothing really comes up so you might understand that you need to add something else like refinery map dnd and we get much better results that way or refinery map rpg also pretty good results or ravine map not getting a whole lot that's useful here a couple but let's try ravine encounter map and see what we come up with much much better a lot of great maps here so encounter rpg dnd including those terms along with your search will be really helpful one place that i often browse for maps and i can also search there would be the d d maps subreddit r d d maps go check it out there are tons and tons of great maps there there's also some kind of you know crappier ones it's a little bit hit or miss sometimes but overall it's a huge library of maps and you can use the little tags on the right hand side bar and click on encounter or dungeon or whatever you're looking for to get a little bit more specific and of course you can use the search bar and you can even type in the names of specific modules so if you're running curse of straud or storm king's thunder or icewind dale you can type those in and people have actually made maps for those campaigns a lot of the maps you find there are from various creators who have a patreon and i'm going to talk about that in a minute but you know sometimes it's good to support those people too so keep that in mind a lot of times they'll give out a few free maps and you can get a lot more if you support them on patreon again as specific as possible you can be in your searches that's better if you're looking for a forest temple or something like that you know typing in those specific terms can really help produce results and honestly sometimes i just go through and i'll just download a bunch of maps if i've got space on my hard drive i just kind of collect maps in case i come across scenarios where i need some of them now speaking of patreon creators let's talk about a few of my favorites i feel like these creators are kind of a dime a dozen right now and there are some really good ones that i'm not gonna mention just because there's so many there's tons that i haven't heard of so definitely put some of your favorites down in the comments as well but here are a few that i have really noticed as standouts that do really good work the first one is two minute tabletop two minute tabletop has a patreon but he also has his own website and you can go there and you can download tons and tons of free great-looking rpg maps almost all of his maps are in counter maps and you can get them in gridded or non-gridded versions a lot of them are pay what you want and usually when i go and download something from him i'll give him a dollar or two because it's nice to support the creator yes you could absolutely just pay nothing but you know remember the creators these people need to make a living so two minute tabletop top notch been around for several years now and i've always loved his stuff another great encounter map artist would be dyson logos now almost all his maps are black and white but they've got this very classic old-school rpg feel and i just love them so go check out dyson logos as well i'm putting links to all these down in the video description by the way thirdly definitely check out chaora kayora does a lot more than just encounter maps he also does tokens and world and region maps and things like that but keora used to be blue sword games now keora great high quality vibrant color maps really love the style lots of paid stuff but also lots of free stuff and of course he does have a patreon as i've looked around in google image search and rd d maps i have found some others that i wanted to shout out to two that come to mind are first of all neutral party and the other one is party of two really high quality color rpg maps so go check those out as well so usually with those sources for my maps i have no shortage of high quality battle maps and again it's good to keep like a folder or a location somewhere where you just have a bunch of random ones that you think would be useful in lots of situations really just versatile maps sometimes just having a map of a certain kind of terrain or like a road going through a certain sort of terrain those are really valuable when you come across those encounters that maybe you didn't expect or didn't plan for and that's one of the things i love about owlbear rodeo by the way is it's just so quick to just throw any old map in there really quick and get your players in as well so those are my sources for high quality digital rpg maps but i definitely want to hear from you as well whether it's an artist or whether it's a tool you use for making your own maps put those down in the comments below before we go i do want to give a huge thank you to the wasd 20 patrons patrons are people who support the channel on a monthly basis i could not do what i do without them they're the lifeblood of the channel and they also get some pretty cool rewards things like weekly live map drawing streams with me and campaign diaries for my ongoing ice window campaign so go check it all out over at patreon.com wasd20 thank you all for watching as well i really appreciate it if you enjoyed this one make sure you give it a thumbs up and take care you'll see me again very [Music] soon [Music] you

Channel: WASD20

Views: 161,331

Keywords: d&d, dungeons and dragons

Id: tZAgEW6D3Kk

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021