3 Easy Fixes to These Common Mapmaking Mistakes

As dungeon masters, we make maps and create locations for our games all the time, but what makes a great D&D battlemap? Or what makes a great RPG location? And what mistakes are you making that keep your maps from being truly amazing? Well, today I talk all about the common map mistakes and give you three very easy fixes that will take your maps and locations from average to Tolkien level awesomeness!

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
01:47 Practical
04:26 Keep it real
07:46 Merge the two
09:27 Narrative structure

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[HowtobeaGreatGM]

*Thanks for watching!* What is one of the most interesting locations you've created for your game? Let us know in the comments below!


Find each chapter of the video easily by clicking on the timestamps in the description.

[Blubkopf]

I would also recommend thinking of cool actions for the players to do, during battle:

Build chandeliers, stacks of barrels, that can be pushed on the enemy, shards of glass, where sneaking over is extra hard or Traps where the group can push the enemy into, or a level to make the gate drop down on the enemy’s head. Especially for bossfights this creates more interesting possibilities!

But also let the players be creative with it…We all remember the bar brawl, where one character took a giant fish from the wall and startet slapping her enemys in the face…

[williammashtalier]

The Kraken map from Ghosts of Saltmarsh was awesome Guy! Great backdrop for the epic final confrontation between Flick and the diabolical Snickt.

[JeffsGameBox]

I built a beholder lair for multiple beholders. It was 3D with chambers at all 360°. It had switches that could only be activated with telekinesis. Pits that one had to float across. Traps for land-bound interlopers. My players loved it and hated it at the same time. Super challenging having to think in alien ways.

[tristenglover]

I created a dwarven mine tunnel connecting to a small mindflayer hive/colony. It started at the edges, with the minions and occasional mindflayer attempting to invade and feast, and worked through these winding tunnels to eventually stop this threat in it’s tracks

[beverleybee]

The map of my son's middle school was interesting. It's function was obviously for channeling foot traffic. I enlarged it to town size, turned the fire doors into portcullises, added some arrow slits and presto! Killing field.
It was kinda scary knowing that my child was going there. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought it would make the perfect death trap.

[MikeMike-guyu]

Horses and archers get snubbed by most maps I’ve ever worked with. Barbarian has HP and rage, Wizard has fireball, Ranger has arrows… and range…that doesn’t matter on 25x25 maps. I like huge maps that make the movement of the players more meaningful for placement. Having to move cover to cover while being shot at is an amusing challenge to overcome.

[henriquecamboim]

8:06 the Pelennor Fields send their regards.

[ajar]

Just as I start on a map this comes out perfect as always!

[Zeithri]

Tip that came to my mind listening to you, inspired by games I've played before. You can have a stone temple or the likes out in the middle of nowhere.
Thousands of years earlier, the place could had been populated with river and greenlands, then *Mystery* happens, and all of it is gone now, the river is gone so nothing will grow there.
But the temple remains because of it's sturdy construction.

Solve the mystery of the temple and what happened.
Perhaps the players can even figure out a way to return water to the area.

[RichtorLazlo]

Had a city/town/lodge that several players had input on that was our characters base of operations for a while. That was a Plateau in a canyon accessed by a drawbridge, we were building it in game and resources were scarce and as such it was taking a while and then our major enemy found us (a more powerful enemy)there and we left the town and moved on.

[Marcus-kien]

Not D&D but one of my favorite maps was using Cruise ship brochures for my Traveler Campaign. Love you reference to Analog Storage Devises (Books) to look at old maps. I even have several Atlases. National Geographic used to publish great ones. A trip to the local thrift store can grant amazing resources for little money.

[patholas]

I love collecting National Trust (or whatever organisation) guides when I visit castles and stately homes, then photocopy-enlarging the hell out of them and slapping a grid on them to use as locations. We play in a church youth club room when there aren't any youths there, so I can lay out my maps on the snooker tables... I had 3 floors of Wirksworth Castle at about a metre-square each standing in for a brigands' keep... some PCs broke in through the roof while others went in the front door... then later some explored the vandalised bedrooms while others rescued prisoners from the dungeons... Multi-level gaming, and with a (modelled on real-life) light well running down through each level so they could shout or climb to each other... Really enjoyed that session! :-)

[AKA_Kira]

My favorite map was a sewer designed by cultists to hide routes that only they could take. It had misdirection, but there were definitely holes in the perception, and it still had the function of a catacomb sewer

[arcticbanana]

Huge oversized maps _can_ make for interesting encounters; perhaps the enemy in the 400-foot megatemple has ranged attacks or spells and the party needs to use the columns, pews, and other scenery for cover as they close in, or perhaps it's an outdoor area like a rocky mountainside and they have to navigate some environmental phenomenon to get from one side to the other. Big encounters like these should be used sparingly as major or climactic events though, not the norm. Also, initiative is rolled when combat starts, so you can let the party cross half the temple while the villain monologues to get everyone into a smaller combat area.

[nathanrumm]

I created an ewok village style tavern in the treetops, which had multiple rooms and decks connected by bridges. The players needed to find a contact within this very popular location which created a lot of fun trying to navigate the various bridges and rooms.

[G.A.N.]

i had fun creating a cliffside battlemap, since a story reason was some Victim of bandit attack that fell off the cliff on lower elevation where few goblins were cooking themself food. When heroes comes out from around the corner they can see in the distance a person fighting goblins. Do heroes need few turns before being able to approch the Fallen Victim? yes, But this way layers are entertained with thinking How to interact with battle in distance. Will they run and try scare goblins off? Will someone cast some spell to shorten distance greatly before it will be tooo late? GM may only speculate and Since Victim was just robbed moment ago and threw to goblins for entertainemnt, the time is of the essence.

[hermes]

When I started D&D in the late 80s, I had four flip folders for that. 😁

[perrywmoore]

One of my decent locations was a city called Crucible. It was on a platform above a world of molten rock and minerals where they would extract lava/magma to harvest metals, and use the heat for their forges, and as it cooled they would pour the lava into molds to create fabricated basalt walls for the structures that formed the city's industrial district. There was no farmland, and the city would trade crafted good for food with other worlds/planes.

[Metrion]

My favorite battle map was my PCs starship, the Camellia. We have a scifi/fantasy DND setup with space battle rules, life support systems, cargo bays, weapons platforms, etc. They got their own starship and set up their own spaces in the starship. One of them was an artificer spider alien who chose to set up a web in the engine room rather than live in the crew quarters, the druid elf monitored the hydroponics and life support, the human wizard worked with the shipboard AI to navigate and fire weapons. We'd had a couple space battles where lasers and ballistics would damage rooms, they'd have to evacuate areas with hull breaches, but it all changed when the spider artificer who was in charge of shifting power supply from the shields to the weapons was interrupted by one of the space bug-humanoid pirates who had managed to sneak on board during their last rest-stop. I got to (digitally) roll out the big map of the ship alongside the external map which showed the space battle with the pirate ship.

Suddenly, the little tiny ship where everyone felt like they were in the same room became a lot more real as the distance between the druid in life support and the wizard in the bridge was suddenly quite dangerous. The spider artificer couldn't shift power anymore, which meant they were stuck with the energy going to the shields until the battle in the power station was finished.