How To Draw A Dnd Map

Tutorial: how to draw a fantasy village map

Update! This and many more tutorials on fantasy and D&D map making is availible too on my website, together with loads of free-to-download maps, cheque it out — click here!

Villages and towns are important places in well-nigh fantasy roleplaying games. Information technology's a place for the adventurers to stock-upwards on gear before taking off on wilderness or dungeon expeditions, interact with NPC'south, and sometimes the village itself is the main phase of the adventure.

Following upwardly on my tutoria l s on how to draw basic dungeons and isometric dungeons, I thought it might be useful with a guide on drawing maps of buildings and settlements.

This paradigm will exist the final outcome of the steps in the tutorial

The gear

As always, allow's have a expect at the tools I will be using for this tutorial:

Field Notes dot-graph Notebook
Micron markers (0.05, 0.1 and 0.3)
Ice Grey four Promarker
Mechanical pen and eraser

Step one: rough outline

Start by drawing the crude outlines of your village with a mechanical pencil. In this case, I'thou just drawing a small cluster of houses, but if you're going for a larger village or town, y'all might want to put some though into if there should be any main roads, hamlet squares or winding alleys you want to include.

Consider some variation of sizes and shapes, to brand information technology expect organic and non as well monotonous. A settlement grows over fourth dimension, and not all buildings volition be built the same manner and for the same purposes. I also similar to throw in some small details, like crates and barrels, foliage or trees.

Step one: describe the crude outline with a mechanical pencil

Step two: ink outline

I employ a 0.1 Micron marker to re-draw the outlines. I and then erase the lines fatigued with the mechanical pen. This volition damage the inked outlines slightly, only that's not a problem every bit we will get over them again in the next step.

Always when cartoon maps, you need to think nearly the remainder between making the map easy to understand, and making it realistic or pretty. The doors on my map are apparently exaggerated, but I want to make it clear to whoever is looking at the map where the doors are, since that'south critical information (and to be honest, I think it looks fine).

Footstep three: add weight

For this tutorial, I used a 0.3 Micron marker to add together weight to some of the outlines. This provide a skilful, articulate contrast when nosotros showtime calculation finer details in the next few steps.

Step iii: add together weight to some of the previously drawn outlines

Step four: add roof details

I use a 0.i marker to add some texture to the thatched roofs. Start by placing the tip of the pen on the ridge, and then depict a quick line towards the edge of the roof. Every bit you lot motility the pen towards the border of the roof, apply less pressure level to make the line thinner at the end. This might need a lilliputian bit of do, so do that on a separate newspaper. Alternatively, you tin can skip this technique and just depict normal lines of varying length — that will also await good.

Step five: more details

With a 0.05 marker, add together finer details, such as roof tiles, woods texture to porches, crates and barrels. Also, since this is a lakeside settlement, I add some wavy lines to the coastline.

Step five: calculation more fine details

Step six: texture and rubble

Before moving on to shadows, I add some texture to the basis by cartoon stones and dots. Since I want the settlement to look organic, I effort to make sure in that location are equally little white space every bit possible. In retrospect, I could probably have added more texture to this map, only information technology'll have to do for now — it's super easy to become back and work a bit more on information technology.

I add together some leaves to the trees/foliage to give them volume and texture.

For this step I utilize a 0.1 mark (and a 0.05 marker for the leaves).

Step six: adding texture to the ground and trees

Stride seven: shadows

In this step I use my grayness Promarker to add shadows to the map. I've decided that the light should come from the pinnacle left corner, pregnant that roof angles sloping towards the lower and right parts of the map should have shadows (as well as on the ground to the south and east of objects with height (such as buildings, crates and trees).

I also add a shadow to the coastline, to make it pop out more.

Pace 8: clean up

I use Photoshop to work with the levels, and getting the colors right, likewise removing some of the dots.

And that's it! You have just fatigued a map over a small settlement in your campaign world! I hope yous enjoyed this tutorial, and found it helpful.

More resource:

I post a lot of my work on my website, at https://world wide web.wistedt.net/. In that location you can find many maps and other RPG recources that are complimentary to download for personal use.

If yous like my maps, please also feel free to follow me on Instagram, where I mail service more of my work: https://www.instagram.com/paths.peculiar/