So, I'm prepping to run my first game here on RPOL.  Story ideas?  Check.  Character generation rules?  Check.  World information?  In progress.  Maps?  Uh....

Normally or IRL, I'm a hand drawn map kind of guy.  While I could just hand draw and then upload scans of said maps, I think it would be useful to ask about alternatives.  I've seen several games with various methods for making world and battle maps.  Some were imgur links, some were really basic excel spreadsheets, others were very professional, and some were even interact-able by the players!  So, I turn to my fellow GMs and ask:  what are some good resources for generating, maintaining, and making available a set of maps for my players?

I like to use Maptools. It's free and can be learned in just a couple hours of watching tutorials and practice. I take screenshots of the maps and upload them to Photobucket and paste a direct link into the game post.

Another freebie that I've started using is:

http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/

It's a little tricky to figure out at first, but it's a solid map tool

I also use BattleChronicler.  It's also free and geared more towards tabletop-type terrain, but I've used it successfully many times.  Make sure to get the expansion/updates if you plan on using it.  BC can be found here:  http://battlechronicler.com/download/

For modern games, I tend to use Google Maps and draw in stuff as necessary. With a suitable software (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro or Gimp, for an example) you can edit the maps and pick out shapes of buildings, you simply draw as line drawings in the software or some basic linear graphics editor. Tales a bit of work, but...

I agree about Maptools.  I likewise take screen shots, though I edit them through just the simple Paint program, and then post them using Photobucket links.

Maptools is especially good because (1) there is a ton of user generated content that can be used, (2) any picture can be copied and pasted (and layered) into the map, and (3) of the user generated content, there are markers for pretty much every monster ever created for any D&D game, not to mention NPC avatars (assuming medieval fantasy is your style of choice).

There are also pregenerated maps that can modified.  Sometimes I will even throw in a map from an unrelated source or published adventure (in JPEG or similar format).  I put it as the first level layer.  Then I can expand or contract its sizing to fit the graphing markers and other tools on Maptools, and overlay them to personalize the map.

Tokentool (from the same site as Maptool) is an indispensable little token maker.  I use it all the time.  Otherwise, I tend to just throw things into GiMP and make it work.  I think I'm growing out of my "everything has to be tactical" phase.

Throwing in another voice of agreement for the coolness of RPGTools (MapTool/TokenTool) :).

Hmm, Maptools seems really amazing for generating maps.  I also really like the big database of user-generated stuff.

Pyromancers has a unique aspect in that it allows players to make adjustments to the maps, save it, and then easily create a link to the update map.  I also notice that I can import maps into this quite easily.

I'll have to play with both to see which feels better to me, but I appreciate the advice guys!  That was very helpful.

This is an awesome feature of Pyromancers, because it makes it easier to understand where that and that character actually moved to. Descriptions of movement and position changes are not always written very clear.

Nice. That must be a (relatively) new feature. The tool was still in development back when I was using it. At any rate, that's good to know. Thanks for the information.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:30, Thu 14 Aug 2014.

Google Docs Images allows everything that Pyromancers does, and more.  It's far more easily customized and set up than Ditzie is.  I really like it.  If anyone wants some help with it, send me an rMail as I might not see a response in this thread.

I've enjoyed using ViewingDale. It's been a long time since I've found the time and inclination for mapping - these days I'm more into seat of pants playing - but ViewingDale is particularly good for world-building, as all your maps can be linked together into a single auto-scaled map that you can zoom and pan pretty much infinitely, detailing particular parts of your world over time.
I believe several players with the software can Skype together, or you can just host and post images.