9 ms·
Dungeon Scrawl: Old school maps in minutes
- nickthegreek 6y agoGave it a spin. UI is pretty clean, good landing page and neat that it can do isometric as well. Love the path tool. Wish there were dedicated Undo/Redo buttons in the top bar. Only bug I found was that if you use the menu item to 'rough it up', ctrl+z undoes the rough up and the last item you created.
- richard_mcp 6y agoThe "old school" style they're advertising is mostly based off of Dyson Logo's maps. I think it's interesting that this seem to come out after Dyson started teasing a similar program for his Patreon subscribers. On one hand, it's a great looking piece of software, but it feels a little scummy to write software that heavily leans on Dyson's style and then directly compete with him.
- e12e 6y agoIs this somehow distinctive from Dragon Magazine / Dungeon Magazine from the late 80s in a way I'm not seeing? Or eg. the various TSR boxed settings with dungeons?
- kemayo 6y agoThat cross-hatching-in-the-walls thing is fairly distinct, and I saw it immediately on Dyson's blog but not on a quick survey of old Dragon/Dungeon maps. That said, Dyson is clearly going for that aesthetic mostly, so it could be convergent evolution, and I'm hardly up to date on current styles for maps in other places.
- lakkal 6y agoThe style really reminds me of old Chaosium maps, from the 1980s.
- pharke 6y agoJust taking a look at Dungeon Magazine on archive.org and it seems that crosshatching in walls is pretty common, at least in the early editions. https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_002/page/n25/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_002/page/n25/mo... https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_002/page/n45/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_002/page/n45/mo... https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_002/page/n51/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_002/page/n51/mo... https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_003/page/n31/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_003/page/n31/mo... https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_003/page/n41/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/Dungeon_Magazine_003/page/n41/mo...
- richard_mcp 6y agoI never read those magazines and I can't say I'm an expert on dungeon map styles, but it's the hatching done in the dungeon walls that Dyson is known for (e.g., https://dysonlogos.blog/2011/09/03/dungeon-doodles-a-crosshatching-tutorial/ https://dysonlogos.blog/2011/09/03/dungeon-doodles-a-crossha...). It looks like the person that made this program started playing around with the idea May 9 (https://twitter.com/probabletrain/status/1259172635776294912 https://twitter.com/probabletrain/status/1259172635776294912) a day after Dyson started tweeting about his program (https://twitter.com/DysonLogos/status/1258797586464542723 https://twitter.com/DysonLogos/status/1258797586464542723). I think Dyson's program is just a Photoshop extension and Dungeon Scrawl looks way more powerful, but it's worth pointing out the very similar timelines and styles.
- BorisTheBrave 6y agoHere's someone playing with the concept even earlier though. It did the rounds on reddit at the time, so I'd assumed it was the inspiration. https://twitter.com/watawatabou/status/1197194111171940352 https://twitter.com/watawatabou/status/1197194111171940352 (in aother tweet, @watawatabou attributes the style to Dyson, though the idea of doing it programatically).
- nickthegreek 6y agoDungeonscrawl is definitely inspired by Dyson. Here are some tweets by the maker: https://twitter.com/probabletrain/status/1259172635776294912?s=20 https://twitter.com/probabletrain/status/1259172635776294912... https://twitter.com/probabletrain/status/1258821040937013248?s=20 https://twitter.com/probabletrain/status/1258821040937013248...
- probabletrain 6y agoActually, development started before Dyson's Photoshop product, and sure it leans on his style, but the hatching existed before and was popularised by him. It's a common style across many existing dungeon mapping tools, and just one of the styles offered by the tool.
- richard_mcp 6y agoI'm glad to hear that! The style is very popular in the drawn maps I've seen. I haven't been interested in maps for long and don't pay too much attention to digital map programs. I associate the style with Dyson, as that what I've heard other people do. I first saw you tweeting about the program after I saw Dyson's tweet and the Dungeon Scrawl site says the development began on May 8th, which is why I thought the timeline looked a little suspect. I'm happy to hear that's not the case.
- sbarre 6y agoI was hand-drawing cross-hatched style maps on graph paper in the early 90s when I was a teenager running my own campaigns, and I certainly don't claim to have invented it either.. Mine didn't look quite so good though. ;-)
- e12e 6y agoYeah, this was kind of my mindset, too. Hatching is certainly an old trick, and I see the "Dyson hatch" is somewhat distinctive - but for me, knowing "old school" maps, it didn't stand out from the other offered styles - and certainly lived up to the promise of "old school" look and feel :)
- aidenn0 6y agoFWIW, I just pulled open my red-box era OD&D books and the maps are all hatched in various styles when underground, but stippled (kind of a grassy texture) to indicate exterior; so e.g. a for a keep in the side of a mountain it would be clear which walls abut solid matter and which are stone. The maps in the basic set use circles rather than lines for the hatching though.
- wishinghand 6y agoDyson's tool (which is more like an art asset) is pretty much Photoshop only, which is prohibitive to some. I signed up for their Patreon when they first previewed it, thinking I could use it with Affinity Photo. There's some layer combination features missing that means it's PS only.
- woah 6y agoThis is a very common hatching style that I have seen countless times.
- ArtDev 6y agoThis tool is awesome and perfect timing because I am writing an adventure for my daughter and her friend to play :)
- grawprog 6y agoIt looks pretty awesome from the bit I could play with it. It would be nice if it worked properly on mobile also. Just being able to hide the tool bars and pan without the keyboard would help a lot.
- jjice 6y agoMy dad has always talked about how much he loved having to draw his own maps for games like Labyrinth [0] and Asylum [1]. He just recently played Breath of the Wild and while he loved it, he mentioned how cool it would be to have to draw the map there. I love the spirit in this, great job! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_(1980_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth_(1980_video_game) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_(1981_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asylum_(1981_video_game)
- scott_s 6y agoYour dad may enjoy the Etrian Odyssey series (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etrian_Odyssey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etrian_Odyssey) for the DS and 3DS where a big part of the game is you drawing the map on the bottom screen as you explore the dungeon. Review of the latest game for 3DS: https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/17/16492092/etrian-odyssey-5-v-beyond-the-myth-review https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/17/16492092/etrian-odyssey-5...
- aidenn0 6y agoIf your dad hasn't played them yet, check out these games; aside from the lack of feelies, it's as close as you'll get to old-school games: http://excelsior-rpg.com/default.htm http://excelsior-rpg.com/default.htm
- e12e 6y agoI always liked Richard Bartle's take on this from a game design perspective, in his: "HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT Muds" http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm http://mud.co.uk/richard/hcds.htm Essentially: exploring is one dimension of fun, and some people enjoy it even more when it's hard (ie:no automap). I remember playing Eye of the Beholder with a friend, one of us on map duty, the other controlling the game...
- greenhatglack 6y agoAny chance of splicing each grid as a unique PNG and building it up in JSON like Tiled when exporting?
- vertexmachina 6y agoI'm currently playing through the old Zelda games that don't provide an in-game map. This looks like it could be useful.
- scott_s 6y agoIs the Escher-esque image under "Isometric Edit Mode" (https://dungeonscrawl.com/images/pic10.png https://dungeonscrawl.com/images/pic10.png) a joke, or does the tool allow for physically impossible layouts? Or am I reading the image wrong and it's a physical layout?
- cthalupa 6y ago> does the tool allow for physically impossible layouts? I hope so! I've definitely run some dungeons that had Escher-esque layouts. It's for D&D dungeons, not real life architecture :)
- aidenn0 6y agoAFACT it's just a line drawing tool that supports isometric drawing. One of the defining features of isometric is that such layouts are possible because the X/Y axes are identically sized (iso = same; metric= measurement) regardless of the position on the Z axis.
- probabletrain 6y agoThe tool allows for that, but it takes some effort and familiarity to actually do - the isometric mode just does a rotate and squeeze scale
- drdeadringer 6y agoThis reminds me of the Dr Who episode "Castrovalva"; the Doctor and his companions do spend some time running around trying to figure out the layout until they realize what's going on. I've entertained the idea of DMing that type of thing for a while now.
- at_a_remove 6y agoQ1, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, had something similar if I recall.
- simonh 6y agoThere was an article in Dragon magazine back on the 80s about hypercube dungeon layouts.
- rgovostes 6y agoI've been kicking around an idea that would also require a similar sort of browser-based drawing tool. Is there a good library for building these, or do I start with a blank <canvas>?
- azhenley 6y agoThere are a lot of graphics libraries out there, but I’ve been using PixiJS. https://www.pixijs.com/ https://www.pixijs.com/
- gentleman11 6y agoThreesj with socket.io for collaboration
- woah 6y agoPanning does not work in safari
- gentleman11 6y agoI can’t really tell what this is. Is it just a drawing tool that applies styles, or does it procedurally generate dungeons for you? If it doesn’t procedurally generate, it would probably still be more fun to just use graph paper and some coloured pens
- citizenkeen 6y agoFun? Maybe. But this is so much faster. And as a GM, sometimes I'm just coming up with maps fifteen minutes before I sit down to play. This is a really solid tool for when I don't have time for Dungeondraft, and I find Dungeondraft to be even more fun than graph paper.
- BorisTheBrave 6y agoIt just draws things. This one generates dungeons: https://watabou.itch.io/one-page-dungeon https://watabou.itch.io/one-page-dungeon
- mhd 6y agoI've played around it a bit since someone recommended it a few days ago. Great for coarse dungeon layouts, but would probably need some more detail-oriented "finishing" if I'd want to use it for VTT play. Once we're going back to real dice, this might come in handy, if I'm ever doing a dungeon-heavy campaign. Until then, I have to cope with the oddities of running DungeonDraft with Wine.
- mey 6y agoYeah once we go back to an actual table (2021?) this will be amazing. I can see using this to sketch out a dungeon before breaking down into smaller maps in DungeonDraft for VTT.
- taormina 6y agoAs someone who has been moved his DnD sessions to Discord with COVID going on, and has made a "shareable map" out of Google Sheets, this looks fantastic!
- SweetLlamaMyth 6y agoMy table has made great use of https://shmeppy.com https://shmeppy.com for remote-play maps. The maps it makes are much less sophisticated (just painting color on the squares and lines of a grid). What it gives you instead are player/monster tokens that everyone can see, measuring tools, and "laser pointers" to allow participants to draw attention to a region of the map while speaking. EDIT: also an awesome fog of war feature; how could I forget?
- cerberusss 6y agoActually having used these kinds of 2D maps, I find they're not fun enough for me. If you're really into old-school original D&D dungeoneering-with-a-ten-foot-pole stuff, it's nice. But I want more for my players. The best maps have very nice multi-level dungeons, with strange stuff like underground rivers or a dangerous precipice connecting parts of the dungeon.
- ajuc 6y agoLooks great. Making maps is the worst part of being DM for me and playing on computer sets high standards for map quality so I end up spending 90% of prep time drawing maps :/ I've made a quick and dirty generator of outdoors maps for my hex crawler campaign, maybe someone will find it useful: https://ajuc.github.io/outdoorsBattlemapGenerator/ https://ajuc.github.io/outdoorsBattlemapGenerator/ It has export to FoundryVTT (.dd2vtt format), I find it so much better than roll20.
- scottoreily 6y agohttps://dungeondraft.net/ https://dungeondraft.net/
- mosselman 6y agoWow this is very impressive. I wasn't expecting the lighting stuff and was amazed.
- kleiba 6y agoAmazing! Windows only, though :(
- mhd 6y agoTheir big feature for the next major release is a Mac version, and until then it works quite okay in wine. Probably better in Linux/Wine, as that tends to have fewer graphics bugs. My enjoyment factor of both DungeonScrawl and DungeonDraft is a bit different, as with 'Scrawl it's awesome sketching a big event location, whereas with 'Draft I get a Bob-Ross-ian spark when adding minor details. A candle here, a floating corpse there, some cobwebs and fungi… I can pair DungeonDraft with FoundryVTT, where you can get virtual lighting support imported from the maps. So you don't have to "paint" your walls twice, once for the pure visuals and once to see where vision and movement is blocked.
- andretti1977 6y agoI started using inkarnate [0] a few weeks ago. You can use the parchment style to have maps with old looking style. People use it both for world/regional maps and for town but also scene maps [1] [0] https://inkarnate.com/ https://inkarnate.com/ [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/inkarnate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/inkarnate/
- bdefore 6y agoCould use a link to jump into an existing example map.
- xwdv 6y agoI would like to see a randomize button that creates something random and then lets me edit it to my tastes. It's just so exhausting to plan an entire dungeon from scratch.
- johnzim 6y agoOne thing I found fun was to start by blocking out one room, then another and another and basically switching between tools - the geometric shape too for a tower or two, and then start linking them up. After a little bit of noodling you start to feel the outline of a building and then you can be a little more deliberative. In my experience, the hard part about planning out a dungeon is filling it with encounters. There's another creator (Donjon) which doesn't make maps as prettily or easily as this one but it does allow you to basically do what you're looking for: https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/ https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/
- probabletrain 6y agoYou can actually import generated Donjon dungeons into Dungeon Scrawl using the TSV file
- hunterloftis 6y agoI love the style of this and tried something similar before changing direction with Table of Sending. After lots of testing, I settled on 2.5D tiles for the DMs who wanted to sketch their maps 15 minutes before playtime: - https://tableofsending.com/ https://tableofsending.com/ The shadowcasting fog-of-war has also been awesome since the map is semantically understandable: - https://twitter.com/HunterLoftis/status/1269396682233581568 https://twitter.com/HunterLoftis/status/1269396682233581568
- prawn 6y agoHopefully this catches the eye of someone in the thread who'd know: I have a 5yo and 7yo who have loved playing some version of ad-hoc D&D I invent on the fly but it inevitably breaks down at some point because I haven't accounted for something along the way. What's the most basic setup I could use in terms of character attributes, dice, calculations, etc. They love even the most basic imaginative adventure so I'd rather something be easier to play quickly than take a lot of time learning. 20+ years ago I played some basic D&D and then some other rip-off (Rolemaster?! Swear it started with J though.) I have an old Heroquest set somewhere but haven't been able to find it in my parents' attic.
- sronors 6y agoNot sure if it fits your requirements but there are games like No Thank You, Evil from Monte Cook Games. It is geared specifically toward kids.
- prawn 6y agoThat looks vaguely like it could work, if there was a system to borrow from it. My kids responded really well to a very literal "exploring a cave" scenario so don't necessarily need the less-D&D style of those stories. We also have a house full of toys so I'm trying to avoid buying more gear. We already have paper, pencils and dice.
- whisps 6y agoI haven't played it yet, but Quest is designed to be simple for all ages https://www.adventure.game/ https://www.adventure.game/
- kleiba 6y agobut it inevitably breaks down at some point because I haven't accounted for something along the way Could you give more details? That might be helpful in providing some ideas.
- prawn 6y agoFor example, I might have instructed them to roll for three character attributes. And then they encounter an enemy which has hit points of some sort and maybe attack and defend numbers. And then I realise that something about their character attributes doesn't really gel with how I'm trying to get them to roll dice against that enemy. Or, wait, they need to jump across a pit but did one of their attributes apply (strength, dexterity) and how would it modify their rolling target. My memory of childhood D&D stuff is very foggy which probably hinders more than it helps. I think I need to know what the simplest set of character attributes and enemy values might be that can withstand some basic sketch-map-as-you-go exploration and fighting. Is it strength, dexterity and wisdom, out of 20? Or two or five attributes?
- macca321 6y agoI haven't really done role-playing about 20-years but aren't dungeon crawls a bit simplistic compared to freeform adventure story telling?
- jeremyleach 6y agoThis is really great, I love the clean UI and ease of use. This must have been a huge amount of work!