I've been GMing games for years and over the last few transitioned to Online VTT, first Cypher System, then PF2e. My first online campaign was a little off the wall, magic versus technology,...
I've been GMing games for years and over the last few transitioned to Online VTT, first Cypher System, then PF2e. My first online campaign was a little off the wall, magic versus technology, barbarian party learning that guns and space battles were a thing, aliens and robotic overloads.
What's more my party tended to blow up stuff and wreck most maps in one session, so in the end I got into making maps or desperately looking for maps everywhere I could.
So, I thought maybe people could use some of what I've found in their own searches (disclaimer, I don't sell any of my maps, free to all, and I have no connection with any of the pay-for ones, but I've subscribed to most of them at one time or another!)
Map Tools
The idea in VTT RPG is to make a map image and import that into your game tool (Such as Roll20 or Foundry) then overlay tiles, tokens, walls etc onto it. The single map image is most, if not all of what you need.
This is just a short list of what I have tried, lots more than this out there.
- Dungeondraft One of the best mapping programs and the one I use the most. Offline and stand alone, also encompasses a good default art style of the base assets
- Inkarnate Online tool that requires a subscription, pretty good, I started out with it and sill occasionally use to make world maps rather than battle maps but can do both.
- Wonderdraft Dungeondraft but for world maps. I do not make enough of these to have warranted buying it so never tried it
- Dungeon Alchemist A "AI" driven map creator in Early Access. Can knock out stuff in seconds but I don't like the art style. Good if you need a dungeon in 5 minutes
Map styles
There are a couple of popular styles if you are picky about that sort of thing, though mostly important if you want to make your own maps and are looking for asset packs.
The asset styles you find seem to fall in roughly two forms:
- Dungeondraft default style. Flat. Line art, less detail
- Forgotten Adventures (short form FA) Still hand drawn (not rendered) but more detailed computer art style
Some people prefer the first style due to simplicity, others like the second but some may find it more gamey.
There is also the "rendered" style that Dungeon Alchemist uses, but that's REALLY gamey to my eyes. I believe there are third party libraries for it but never really looked.
Lastly, there is the unique art style of hard drawn art that lots of artist draw their battle maps in.
When I chose a style I went Forgotten Adventures. You can't really mix the two main ones when making your own map, looks horrible. I also found that of the various styles, FA could be matched with many hand drawn styles.
Maps
Ok the meat, and what I meant to post before I got side tracked!
Note most of the sites I am posting above can be used offline on a table top game by just printing the maps out, though I've never tried this.
My own maps tend heavily towards space and the magic/tech mix due to the campaign. They are in the Forgotten Adventures style. Free to use, including the ones on my Patreon (DON'T SUBSCRIBE TO IT! I started working on making more maps but then got too involved in GMing the game and ran out of time)
- My main free library ~35 maps, space, ground, some bunkers and others. All in WEBP for faster loading
- My Patreon, no subscribe! Only take! Only a few maps and then the campaign finished, space ships mostly and then it gets weird if you go back further and find it was a MMORPG Kit tutorial Patreon :/
Other peoples maps amazing I've found!
Science Fiction or Modern
These maps cover mostly futuristic themes such as cyberpunk, world war 2, space ships and so on
- Hyperdrive Fleet An AMAZING selection of space ships, engine rooms, and space shipy related stuff.
- Moonlight Maps Scifi A paired Patreon channel to the Moonlight below but for scifi maps. Building interiors, some assets (Vehicles for example), space forests, malls. Flatish style with few shadows?
- de-Zigner Um, steam punk art? Really cool hand drawn art style, I guess has a mix between modern punk and undead fantasy things.
- Cracked|Compass This is not the entire library for this mapper, but they do some AMAZING World War 2 maps and several are available on their Inkarnate page. More are available on Reddit in various posts
Fantasy
Basic fantasy maps, ruins, temples and the like. Useful for most games
- Forgotten Adventures A medium size collection of Fantasy maps with some great maps, and has some integration with Foundry complete with walls and actions to switch out parts of some maps on the fly (if you are into that sort of thing)
- Limithron Lots of pirate ships, islands, water and sea based maps, boats, whales.
- Cze and Peku Fantasy stuff, hand drawn so may not fit with your campaign style but a LOT of art, A little closer to the Dungeondraft style than FA, LOTS of fantasy stuff, temples, ruins, some ships.
- Moonlight Maps Again generic (good) fantasy stuff, temples, ruins, villages. Lot of art available, style is of the school of flat line art more than anything.
- Tom Cartos Has a large asset library which pairs well with FA assets but the maps are what we are here for. Has been expanding recently into 3D scene pictures to accompany the maps recently. Lots of temples, dungeons, inns, villages etc.
- Bearworks FA style? Lots of fantasy items, had a lot of desert maps which is what I was attracted to. Otherwise standard dungeons and ruins. They do come in very high PPI if required
- Seafoot games Lots of maps here in a flat DD style. Got some audio mixs. I used their shipwreck maps for a while.
- Stained Karbon Very stylistic cartoon hand drawn maps of the most bizarre stuff. I've grabbed a few of the free ones but never had the chance to use them. If you need a sword driven through 4 maps of various styles of terrain, then this is the map maker for you
- Ataraxian Bear VERY clean lined cartoon maps, lots of water and islands. Slightly different style from most but still very nice art so unless you are fussy there are some nice maps here!
- Borough Bound Some large scale project maps here, as in entire cities with all the moving parts, campaign information, stories, multiple parts of the city etc. You can grab a selection and have a entire city for your players to explore.
Speciality environments
These are specific mappers that may concentrate on one unique game theme
- Gamers Cortex Lots of battle maps of flying wooden sailing ships, all with wings, above and below decks images. They are also beginning to include Foundry VTT files with walls and lights.
Phased Battle Maps
Ok this is a niche thing, most of these mappers make various map types, scifi, modern or fantasy, but what sets them aside is the maps come in variants, phases, so you can change the map over time, say every combat round, as the environment changes. Water flowing in and flooding a village, a fire burning down a town hall, bridges breaking etc.
- Domille's Wondrous Works The main reason Phased battle maps exist! DWW has a lot of these but also has an addon for Foundry to help you use them. I've used a lot of their maps over the years and found the addon stable and works well. Drawn in their own hand drawn art style.
- Balatro A good alternative to DWW above, lots of maps, Nice style similar to FA in the later maps, more like Dungeondraft in earlier. Boat battles, buildings struck my lightening. List goes on
Asset Libraries
Collections of assets to be used when MAKING maps
- Forgotten Adventures the main alternative for most map makers to the default assets. This is an amazing selection of art,
- White Fox Works basically just an asset library all matching the FA assets nicely. They started I believe to fill the gaps of FA assets and have done some REALLY well... ALong with FA this is the single most important asset library in my toolkit.
- Tom Cartos Mentioned in maps but he has a asset library that pairs well with the FA style. Mostly Fantasy but a small section is scifi which I abused a lot in my maps.
- Hellscape Assets Mostly scifi assets, does not fit the FA style all that well but has a lot of art so may be worth trying. May work with DD style? Some maps, some modern stuff
- Captain Tom Asset Emporium Amazing Sci-Fi asset packs, many options but a little flatter than FA assets. Can be made to work with FA but more like the DD style
Tokens
Ok forgot about these, tokens for player and NPCS!
- Forgotten Adventures Again FA! Lots of tokens, monsters etc. Lots are free and variants cost money
- The League of Raconteur Explorers (LORE) A mixture of assets, scifi, maybe steampunk-ish. All really nice and varied. The assets are available FREE from their discord but the Patreon allows you to support the artist and download the assets in a better format and nicely catalogued
- de-Zigner Some amazing tokens, very stylistic so may not match other token you are using unless you use these for the entire campaign, and honestly you could. Plague zombies, cyber warriors and cyborgs. Lots to unpack here.
Animations
Animated movies/gifs etc that can be overlaid on your maps to provide some bling. Fire, explosions etc
- JB2A Animations If you want to animate spells etc in your game I've only tried JB2A. Free ones and endless updated every month! There may be others but I never needed to look!
There is more than this of course, but I just wanted to put down what I'd found. Hope it helps someone!