Using pre-made maps is excellent, but sometimes you have something particular in mind for what you want for a specific scene, or a town, or you want to create your entire world map. In this case, using a map-making tool can provide you with the ability to make a map, even if you aren’t necessarily the best artist yourself.

There is a wide variety of map-making tools out there. Some create more aesthetically pleasing maps, others adhere to a more traditional style, and still others are designed to generate random maps, eliminating the need for manual creation.

Tools I’ve used

• Inkarnate — Browser-based battle, regional and world maps.
• Dungeondraft — Downloadable app for creating dungeon/battle maps.
• Wonderdraft — World maps by the same folks making Dungeondraft.
• Dungeon Scrawl — Old-school looking maps.
• Watabou — Generate random caves, dungeons, cities and more.
• Don Jon — A large number of random generation tools, including random maps, dungeons and adventures.
• Dungeon Fog
• RPG Map Editor 2
• Mythical Realms — 3D world-building.
• Campaign Cartographer — Powerful map-building with a steep learning curve.
• Fantasy Map Generator
• Other World Mapper
• Gridmapper
• Dungeon Builder
• Dungeon Map Doodler
• Mapgen4
• Hex Map Maker