So in my eternal quest for mapping programs to supplement my not-so-great abilities I have found a few and these are those.
Stone Sword is a fun little mapper, problem is … it is little. The variety is lacking and the user interface takes a little to get used to. Still it is fun to play with and can help generate ideas.
Sample by me
Not free but has a bunch of free resources and allows you to transport and upload other digital tiles. Exporting to a jpg or other file format costs money, a single export is around $2.00 US but bundles bring the cost down considerably.
The program is really easy to use and if you have a variety of tiles sitting on your hard drive it really makes things fun. However, the cost does not justify use of as most digital tile sets come as pngs that can be easily manipulated in free programs like Gimp.
Sample by me
Pyromancers was my first and honestly I have a lover hate relationship with the program but I typically always end up going back to it for quick maps, my PbP game and the beginnings of five minute adventures. It is by far not the most complete program out there, but it offers more than Stone Sword in terms of objects and the lack but without the microtransaction nature of Tiamat. Unless there are more out there that I haven’t found (and there are) this is the best one by far.
Sample by me
Now it should be noted that all of these services are personal use only and if any one decided to use these for a published adventure they run the risk of some trouble. There are programs like Dungeon Designer 3 that are pay for use but do allow commercial use … however, the licensing is such that actually doing so may not be an option (however, I am no rights lawyer so if anyone knows better I am all ears and grubby little hands).
