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Ask HN: Best free / paid cartography program for tabletop gaming?

3 points by myu701 ↗ HN
So I've been asked to do some game mastering for a tabletop game campaign.

Back in the day I used AutoREALM and it worked a treat, but it doesn't do much automatic generation and is increasingly unable to produce high-enough resolution images to print.

What are the best programs (preferably offline / perpetual license) for the use case of 'generate me a map, let me customize some tiles, then let me label points of interest before exporting to a big image'?

I am willing to pay for good results, but I can't pay $200 (just a hobby after all).

FWIW the current campaign is sci-fi but I'd like to future-proof if possible so fantasy tilesets etc. would not go amiss.

2 comments

[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 13.5 ms ] thread
Mattc007
It may not be an exact fit for your needs, but Legend Keeper (https://www.patreon.com/legendkeeper) may work.

The ultimate writing and organization tool for game masters, writers, and worldbuilders. LegendKeeper is a cloud-based application for building and organizing fictional worlds for authors and RPG enthusiasts. Write articles, upload maps, drop pins, create secrets, and invite your friends to explore it all with a powerful access control system.

I haven't used it but did stumble upon it on Reddit some time ago. It seems to have a great community.

myu701
Thanks for sending this my way, I hadn't seen this before. This program appears to support some of the ephemera for tabletop game worlds, which is quite useful, but not directly what I'm after (creating the maps themselves).

This one appears to support uploading your own maps, but unless someone has a hookup on crazily cheap on-demand RPG map generation, I will still need to make the maps myself, at least based on the patreon page provided.