Last updated on August 20, 2023
I love creating battle maps. I put a lot of time and energy into each map and I love every minute of it. It is especially true if the map is for an upcoming session and I can’t wait to spring it on my players. Unfortunately, I find myself struggling to stay ahead of the party and anticipating what they’re going to do.
Spending 4 to 8 hours over three days on a map is time well spent, but what if I made the wrong map? What if instead of facing the bad guy on the docks, the stowaway and confront him at sea? Which one should I make? Not only might I have the wrong map, I
Unfortunately, I run into this dilemma often and I’ve been on a quest to find new ways to speed up my process. I reorganized my asset library, optimized the PPI of tokens, and created a number of templates. It has helped a little, but the improvements have shaved off minutes, not hours. I didn’t need to improve my process for the big boss battle maps, I needed a process to create
Wonderdraft to the Rescue!
I discovered Wonderdraft right before its 1.0 release and I love it. It creates gorgeous overworld maps and is quite adept at city maps too. I hadn’t thought about it for battle
Now, Wonderdraft is not going to replace Photoshop for most of my battle maps, but it will help. With 15 minute battle maps, I could literally create 32 maps like this in the time it took me to create the Castle Donan map. They will not be as advanced, but they don’t have to be.
I video captured the creation of this map. I’ll try and get it edited and posted in the next day or two. In that post I’ll also include some helpful tips and tricks for getting good results. Also keep an eye for more of these kinds of maps.
