I new to making dnd maps and I want to know a good scale for my map I used a grid and the area of the land is about 30x30 grid squares large so I was wondering what is a good size to make each grid square.
That is going to be entirely dependent on how big you want your world to be. Think about how much time you want it to take to travel between cities (on roads or non difficult terrain, assume the party moves the move speed for their slowest character in miles per day), and use that as a starting point.
You could also use different real world map sizes for scale. Great Britain from north to south is a little over 600 miles long—20 days of travel for most parties. That is a pretty good scale if you want a smaller fantasy world. If you want something bigger, you could do a larger country like France as your reference point. Or an entire real-world continent for your reference size.
Entirely up to you - once you figure out how large the world is, it is easy enough to calculate what your map’s scale is.
Your map should be scaled according to its application with sufficient resolution to interact with.
Battle maps are obviously 5ft scales representing the minimum movement distances.
Town maps tend to be scaled to the buildings, rather than distance, because the players are interacting with structures, rather than creatures.
Regional maps, like the Barovia Map, uses 1/4 mile hexes and takes about 1 day (8 hours) to cross, as the crow flies.
Area maps will be whatever scale they are, but I'd suggest making the hexes based on travel time, e.g. 6 miles (~1/4 day), 25 miles (1 day), 175 miles (1 week).
Consider how you want the map to be used. If the map is purely for reference, as most Town and Area maps are, then the grid isn't really important. However, if you are planning for something like a chase or time-based challenge, then the grid should correspond to the players ability to act. (e.g. 30ft hexes to represent a round spent walking)
There's a great section in the DMG about creating maps with scale in mind but I'm currently at work and am unable to look that up. I think it's pretty early in the book, though.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
I've never tried to type out what I do, but here we go.
I keep all my overland maps on the grid. No hex maps.
The standard battlemap grid is 5' per square just as default D&D says.
When I zoom out to one mile per square I make one change for the sake of simple math: One mile (in the game world) is 5,000 feet. Meaning there are 1,000 5' squares in every 5,000' square on the overland math. Maybe I want to make it 100' per grid? That's 50 100' squares per mile.
tl;dr: By accepting a non-accurate mile that's 5,000' I can make all my maps scale accurately in relation to each other so long as my grids maintain a factor of 5 that divides 5,000 cleanly they can be at any relative scale.
This lets me, with great precision, note where a battle took place even on a larger scale. That lets me have people revisit the battlegrounds, sometimes campaigns later, and see the results of their battle that took place (charred ground, etc.).
Hopefully that makes sense. I've never tried to communicate it to others. It's just something I do.
Do you mean the size each square is on the map or the size each square represents in the game? Because in the game, each square usually represents 5ft.
There are a lot of good resources out in the world, but getting started with the basics definitely helps.
The responses above are good and some of them even included info from the following DMG section, which I would suggest will answer most of what you are inquiring about: Mapping Your Campaign
If you have any questions after going through that, let us know.
Cheers!
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I new to making dnd maps and I want to know a good scale for my map I used a grid and the area of the land is about 30x30 grid squares large so I was wondering what is a good size to make each grid square.
That is going to be entirely dependent on how big you want your world to be. Think about how much time you want it to take to travel between cities (on roads or non difficult terrain, assume the party moves the move speed for their slowest character in miles per day), and use that as a starting point.
You could also use different real world map sizes for scale. Great Britain from north to south is a little over 600 miles long—20 days of travel for most parties. That is a pretty good scale if you want a smaller fantasy world. If you want something bigger, you could do a larger country like France as your reference point. Or an entire real-world continent for your reference size.
Entirely up to you - once you figure out how large the world is, it is easy enough to calculate what your map’s scale is.
Might also want to reference the travel time table in the PHB to get a sense of how much ground a party can cover in a day.
Your map should be scaled according to its application with sufficient resolution to interact with.
Battle maps are obviously 5ft scales representing the minimum movement distances.
Town maps tend to be scaled to the buildings, rather than distance, because the players are interacting with structures, rather than creatures.
Regional maps, like the Barovia Map, uses 1/4 mile hexes and takes about 1 day (8 hours) to cross, as the crow flies.
Area maps will be whatever scale they are, but I'd suggest making the hexes based on travel time, e.g. 6 miles (~1/4 day), 25 miles (1 day), 175 miles (1 week).
Consider how you want the map to be used. If the map is purely for reference, as most Town and Area maps are, then the grid isn't really important. However, if you are planning for something like a chase or time-based challenge, then the grid should correspond to the players ability to act. (e.g. 30ft hexes to represent a round spent walking)
There's a great section in the DMG about creating maps with scale in mind but I'm currently at work and am unable to look that up. I think it's pretty early in the book, though.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
I've never tried to type out what I do, but here we go.
I keep all my overland maps on the grid. No hex maps.
The standard battlemap grid is 5' per square just as default D&D says.
When I zoom out to one mile per square I make one change for the sake of simple math: One mile (in the game world) is 5,000 feet. Meaning there are 1,000 5' squares in every 5,000' square on the overland math. Maybe I want to make it 100' per grid? That's 50 100' squares per mile.
tl;dr: By accepting a non-accurate mile that's 5,000' I can make all my maps scale accurately in relation to each other so long as my grids maintain a factor of 5 that divides 5,000 cleanly they can be at any relative scale.
This lets me, with great precision, note where a battle took place even on a larger scale. That lets me have people revisit the battlegrounds, sometimes campaigns later, and see the results of their battle that took place (charred ground, etc.).
Hopefully that makes sense. I've never tried to communicate it to others. It's just something I do.
Do you mean the size each square is on the map or the size each square represents in the game? Because in the game, each square usually represents 5ft.
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I've seen that there's a frequent departure from that scale - often a square fan be 10' or even 20'. Annoying, but it happens.
Want to play D&D? Try the following resources first (each section withing vertical bars is a clickable link to find the resource).
|The free Basic Rules.|
|Some free short adventures| and |some more here too.| |Here is a series of encounters, some of which link together form a mini-adventure|.
You've played a few games and now want to buy materials? |Here's my guide on what to buy next|.
Greetings Elipazmino1,
There are a lot of good resources out in the world, but getting started with the basics definitely helps.
The responses above are good and some of them even included info from the following DMG section, which I would suggest will answer most of what you are inquiring about:
Mapping Your Campaign
If you have any questions after going through that, let us know.
Cheers!