If you're stuck on how to design a map, give Bing image creator a try. I was pleasantly surprised with some results I got
I'm not a DM and I've never played DND so maybe this sucks but I thought I'd pass it on because I like browsing this community.
I was messing around with Bing Image Creator and thought I'd see what kind of map I could make. I think my immature prompt here was "The Ball Zone: Dungeons and Dragons battle map of a ball factory. Balls are used as obstacles throughout the map"
I'm not sure if I'd use anything Bing makes as-is but it might be cool for inspiration at least
Ball pit. Difficult terrain. Advantage to stealth checks.
Do not touch the balls. The balls are sentient.
Do not taunt happy fun ball.
Moopsy!
Can confirm it works, some results are better than others though. Here's two exterior maps that it came up with:
Definitely not as good as real maps, but passable for a quick game.
And most importantly, passable as inspiration for your own map!
Mind sharing the prompts for those, please?
Balls.
Look at the size of those balls in the upper right!
When you need to cross off "dungeon overrun with monster eggs" from your D&D bingo card?
If those balls are flammable, I know a certain character (totally not me) that would take the smallest opportunity they could to try to set the entire place ablaze.
Goodness gracious.... Are you playing Jerry Lee Lewis?
This is a really smart idea. I've struggled to find much in the way of scifi battlemaps, so maybe this might help with that.
I don't know what makes a DND map good or bad but I got some pretty cool-looking ones. Sometimes it would interpret my prompt weird and give me something cool I didn't expect at all, like this:
So I've been playing around with this some more, and this might genuinely be one of the best usage of AI image generation for ttrpg games I've come across. Previously I was using it to generate character portraits and splash screen backgrounds, but this looks like it's going to be a big practical help when it comes to planning fights etc. I'd never even considered using if for this so thanks, seriously. I can already see the possibilities for making my life easier, lol.
I have a LOT of reservations about using these generative models but if you're using it as a source of inspiration, to me it's the same as looking at thousands of maps....just wayyy faster.
Can I do this without a Microsoft account?
I don't think so, it's free but it makes you login
Bummer
You could maybe use Stable Diffusion? You can run that locally
I'd like to see some other people's prompt. I can't get it to generate actual top-down battle maps. They keep coming up with isometric views. I tried the exact prompt above, minus the title because it choked on it, and got nothing close.
3 of the 4 it gave me were heavily canted with that prompt so I'm not surprised
Did you try adding "top down" or anything like that? I just tried that and all the maps it gave are correct.
Top down dungeons and dragons map of a battlefield littered with dinosaur skeletons
that worked! thanks. i must have been wording it weirdly because I'm getting no more weird angles.
I've had mixed success but adding "top down" seems to help a lot
Post the pics!
This is neat! I've been using Midjourney, but it's looks like I need to diversify 🤯
Oh come on people, use your brains…
My brain doesn't visualize like that. I posted this as a way to get inspiration when you're designing a map, not to present some final product.
you can also you know look up what real buildings might look like
Thanks I didn't know that was an option