mapping my campaign

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I am preparing to DM my first campaign, but I find myself dwelling on maps. My friend, our current DM, is artistically inclined and can draw great maps. I, however, cannot, and in my searches for maps online, I often find conflicts between what I want to find and what I get. Currently, I am working on castles. I would kill for a floor plan of the Chateau de Chambord in France, but so far I am coming up empty-handed.
Any tips or links would be helpful.

 

I think that you shouldn't focus on fancy maps. The players aren't going to see them etc. Just make something that you can understand and is funtional and all should be fine . Also, don't spend the whole time making big maps, just make the first adventure and its area before you do anything else.

Alternatively, you could just use a ready-made campaign setting (forgotten realms etc.) which I use and find very good, though you do have to modify them to your taste. They all come with large, lavishly decorated maps.

 

After a very quick search, I found this site that might help you out: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Chateau_de_Chambord.html

There are some images there you could use to 'guesstimate' the floor plan. And there's a 3D model you can download (didn't look at it, but it looked promising).

But, as Void said, I wouldn't worry too much about making overly fancy maps. You just need something that you can refer to, that gives you, as the DM, a birds eye view of what's going on. Although, I know how much fun it is to develope a map that you're really proud of Still, it's much better to have a poor-quality map that provides a great adventure (or campaign), then to spend hours and hours on a map and have a poor-quality adventure. Have fun!

 

You are right, thanks. Oh, Gnolyn Lochbreaker, the 3d model, I had seen it before--It is definitly not what what you might think. It isn't even the same shape as the real building.

 

I get stumped too when it comes to map making to fit a story. Here's what I find help fun when running a campain. Just write down a small line plot of what you want your players to do and other things that can happen if they dont do it or do it wrong. Then just make the story up as you go. You might be surprised as to how much more fun it is(the more you try to get them to stay on one path the harder it is to keep every thing going how you want it and keeping the players happy).

 

At the moment I have a whole bunch of maps in my binder that I draw when I can in class. They're not very good but I can understand them well enough

 

If your willing to drop the money Campaign Cartographer 2 is the best thing on the market right now. As for free stuff I have a few mapping programs off the net. Just search under DM tools and resources. Good luck.

 

I find CC2 very powerful but so hard to use and user unfriendly I usually end up blocking things out in excell.

 

Does CC2 do castles? and how do you map out something using excel?

 

I play in a few campaigns and in all of them the maps are nothing but pieces of paper that tells us where our characters have been and where we still have left to loot

One of my DM's draws single lines on a page for a corridor, if he goes over it again with his pencil then we know it's at least two-fighting wide Another one of my DM's draws maps perfectly, even when he isn't concentrating on what he's doing. His true masterpiece was an Orcen stronghold he made up on the spot with a secret entrance through a well in a nearby village, and he produced it all whilst drunk Another DM draws his maps very scrappily and many times the players have escaped through the gaps in the walls

So you see, the maps mean nothing, it's the DM that draws them that counts. Also, when filling in the map for your players, never remove it from the table and fill it out behind your screen, let your players see it as your fill it in. For some reason it makes all the difference, it lets the players see it as though they were looking around the room.

Of course, my maps are perfectly drawn...