Marn wrote:
Hail and well met.
I am sure you have been asked a thousand times previously but I dare to ask again. How are you producing those maps? What arcane magister did you lock up in a tower somewhere and induce to compile said maps?
I would love to know how to do such feats if one was willing to share such forbidden knowledge!
Welcome to the forum!
I use Profantasy's
Campaign Cartographer 3 coupled with the add-on
City Designer 3. In actual fact I have most of the
CC3 products including additional symbol sets, so I don't just use these but that's 99% of it when it comes to my city maps.
It's a set of software packages specifically designed for drawing maps for RPGs.
Campaign Cartographer is at the core and works best for overland maps, but there are add ons specifically for dungeons (and other floorplans) and for cities. It has a fairly steep learning curve because it works on a different paradigm than the graphics programs most people are familiar with, but if you take the time to learn how to use it, you can produce very nice maps. I'm reasonably good with it - but there are people who are much, much better.
I also make use of an older version of Paint Shop Pro (V5) and of GIMP to make certain additions to the maps, but these are minor for the most part (basically the creation of textures for grass, water, and occasional additional symbols - CC3 sometimes doesn't have what I need for some less common objects, or they can only be used under certain circumstances and I want to do something a little different). And there are places online where people also share additional image for symbols (for the Brymstone map, for example, I've used an additional symbol for the Windmill and Watermill, and also to add a few ships to the port.)