How to make a good map for your roleplaying game

Adventure maps have changed quite a bit over the years, from the early days of non-reproductive blue diagrams on the inside covers of the classic “modules” to the masterful full-color renderings available for download from artists’ Patreon sites today.

Unfortunately, all gaming maps are not created equal. I’ve seen a lot of representations of fantasy locales that left much to be desired. I don’t point this out to make anyone feel bad . . . designing and drawing good maps is hard.

The good news is, there are numerous ways to get better at mapmaking. I’m going to share some tricks and tips I’ve developed over the years for making top-notch maps that hold their own and inspire imagination at the gaming table.

What the Heck Do I Know?

When I was a kid, I pored over atlases, USGS maps, even those cool cutaway diagrams of the Egyptian pyramids. I learned how to read and visualize what maps were trying to convey at a very young age. I seemed to “get it” when a lot of my classmates just didn’t.

I took drafting classes in high school and spent some summers working as a draftsman at an engineering firm. That was so long ago that CAD (computer-aided drafting) was not yet common, and we used T-squares and ink on velum to do the work. I’m no artist; my mapmaking skills focus on the technical representation of information. I let better mapmakers than me make them look lovely. But I do understand how a good map can make the difference.

I learned my gaming tropes in the early days of 1st Edition AD&D, looking at those aforementioned non-repro blue maps. I’ve spent nearly four decades working in this industry, which means I’ve had years to enjoy melding two very cool interests. I’ve seen a lot of gaming maps.

Since I began working at Kobold Press, I’ve been responsible for numerous maps for products, including much of the design of the Map Folios for the Campaign Builder series including Cities & Towns, Castles & Crowns, and Dungeons & Ruins, as well as the Tales of the Valiant Game Master’s Map Folio. As the creative director, I am also responsible for reviewing and asking for revisions for the maps that come to me from freelance designers.

Map Quality

What makes a good map? Start with the standard features maps need—a compass rose, a scale, and a key. People using the map must be able to determine where its locations are in relation to one another, how far apart they are, and what features can be encountered while traveling between them. Without that information, it can be difficult, maybe impossible, to use a map effectively. But that’s just the beginning.

A map of quality should mimic reality. Fantasy locations are almost always inspired by the real world. Whether you’re considering a subterranean chamber with a teleportation circle or a steep-sided canyon with the temple of an evil cult hidden within, most of the physical features that compose the place are rooted in realistic equivalents.

The stone floor, walls, and ceilings of the chamber, the dry riverbed and washes of the canyon—an effective map must convey those elements in a way the GM and players can visualize easily.

Where Things Go Wrong

All too often, adventure designers struggle to capture the essence of a cool place that feels real in a map. Particularly for green designers, the task of drawing maps of places to accompany their wonderful adventure prose is a daunting task. Some seasoned veterans still struggle, too! Not everyone comes by this process easily or naturally.

Sometimes this manifests as a map that feels shallow or just “off.” The structure of a location doesn’t come across as viable, the details seem forced, and in some cases, even the laws of physics have somehow been poorly interpreted. The most common of these flaws are dungeon walls with no thickness, castles that are simply four towers at the corners of a square on a flat plain, or natural features in the wilderness that don’t make sense next to one another. A forest can transition straight to a sandy desert, but a lot of things need to line up just right for that to happen. Does the rest of the map support that?

The other shortcoming many maps are saddled with is the lack of enough detail. Too often, I see maps as isolated objects floating in a void—dungeons that are just a series of square chambers, that castle I mentioned before on a flat, featureless plain, or a canyon that’s just a few squiggly lines meant to represent the riverbed, a trail, the canyon walls, and a box for a building or two, with almost no context around them.

Steps to Improve

You can learn the skills to get better at this process! Start with looking at maps of places in the real world to understand how people represent information in maps.

Here are some resources to start with:

• Examine maps of real castles. The internet has many RPG maps of fantasy castles, and you can learn from those too, but studying maps of actual castles helps you see how people actually lived in these things and the functional design choices they made that don’t always correspond to what gets drawn up for an adventure. Check out this map of Conwy Castle in Wales for a start.

• Study USGS maps. (This works even if you’re outside the US.) Look at the topography of your neighborhood first . . . how does the map represent what you know about the altitude and features of where you live?

• Learn how to read contour lines. It’s pretty simple, and it’ll help you understand what you’re looking at when you study other maps.

• Consider the kinds of information presented on a map of a city’s metro lines. Here’s the Atlanta Marta system as an example. And the London Underground is renowned for its utility, despite its complexity. Even as abstracted as these maps are, you can still learn a lot about relative positions of locations and how to show it.

In future installments, I’ll go into more detail on all these kinds of maps and how to mimic them for your own gaming maps.