a bit of a pickle

[Snake_Storm]

i've finally caved in and decided to run a series of adventures for my nephews using the age old method of maps and miniatures. Now i have some skills when it comes to drawing, but NOTHING at ALL that would help me with cartography.

I've looked at some solutions in some old threads here, but neither was quite what i was looking for. i'm going to read a few reviews and see what i think about going commercial with something like campaign cartographer and it's competition (If memory serves there were one or two others).

Before i drop the change, however, i was wondering if anyone could reccommend something, even if it's just steering clear of one program or other such information.

Ideally i'd need it to handle Quite a wide variety of maps, ranging mostly from dungeons, underground caverns, wilderness environs...basically i need a good workhorse.

also, i should mention i'm kind of a slow learner, so the simpler the better.

Any help or recommendations would be greatly appreciated, as i'm still new to this whole miniatures based roleplaying thing, heh. Mainly my biggest reason for looking for a program is that possibly in the long run it would possibly be cheaper than merely buying a few packs of dungeon tiles and four months later possibly having enough to run one adventure.

also, if at all possible, the only requirement i have is that the maps be printable in black and white.

Thank you for your time.

[The Bane]

Hexographer is what I use (Free Online version, commercial download). I think hexes work better with minis than squares anyway, though admittedly, dungeons are Hexographer's weakness.

Enjoy,
TB

[Snake_Storm]

well i was planning on running Dymond's Fonkin trilogy for them and from what i've seen, there's a fair amount of dungeon crawling in the first two part adventure.

I Plan on using these adventures as a possible launching pad for a campaign, assuming Dymond doesn't mind.

So yeah, that may be a crippling problem, lol. thanks for the heads up though.

Edit: After checking the link there's apparently a whole version dedicated to dungeons now as well. unfortunately my PC's running REALLY slow lately so i couldn't check out their free version. i'll have to try it on a faster PC. At any rate i like the pictures i'm seeing. it sort of reminds me of the game board in my older brother's long lost battletech set. definitely a plus to me.

[SethDrebitko]

Ha, ha I am actually planning an article or two on on map making. I strongly suggest the above mentioned map creator and good old graph paper dungeons. I personally find the hex map to be the superior map choice if your going to do anything but look at it. My wife is almost done working up some java script for determining the area of a hex to help determine internal square miles.

[Crose87420]

Maptool by RPTools, it's for running RPG's but just use the map feature. There's tutorials and more tokens (which can be anything from characters to terrain) than you can count. I have, I donno, hundreds or thousands of them and can make anything.

It does have a sharp learning curve considering all it's features, but if you hate it you can always run away.

[weeot]

It's not very fancy, and you have to draw a little, but i use 1" gid easel pad. I get a yard stick and a magic marker and get to it!

you can draw them ahead of time, or just sketch out something quick as you go.

[Crose87420]

Just checked the free version of Hexographer, easy to use, and pretty neat.

[The Bane]

Just noticed, and have been playing with, the dungeon version over at hexgrapher (see link above)... it is in beta, but seems promising. If it turns out anywhere near as nice as the map editor, it should be awesome.

TB

[dymond]

Snake.. no problems at ALL using my adventures! Its what I put them up for! As for Hexographer I love it! I put up some maps I made of my campaign created in Hexographer just to show what its capable of.  I did some research on dungeon makers and my favorite so far is Dunjinni, unfortunately its not free but at the same time its not 100s of dollars like Campaign Cartographer is either.

[Snake_Storm]

well it'd have to be economical, yet i hear campaign cartographer has a steep learning curve anyhow so that's a strike against it in my book, and another one for the price. ouch.

Overall i'm liking the look of hexographer, yet it DOES provide a problem. It can do one inch hexes, yet my miniatures are 1.5 inch, which is nowhere NEAR being the hobby standard. I Have a few Mageknight miniatures from wizkids back before they were sold. I'm not a do-it-yourself-er so they were perfect for my needs. i could never take the time necessary to prep and paint a reaper miniature, plus the price...

$4 for one versus $1.98 for five. too bad the craze is over and they're out of production. finding more is tricky.