Gnome Stew’s How to Make a Drop Map

A couple of days ago Martin Rayla at the wonderful Gnome Stew Site posted “How to Make a Drop Map.”  The process uses Hexographer, so of course I need to mention it.

In short, you make an 8×11 hex grid in Hexographer and drop dice that represent terrain, settlements and adventure locations into an approximately 8×11 box.  Martin details it step by step and includes photos.  My two suggestions are:

1. Print a blank version of the map to make it easier to see which hex gets which feature.
2. Add some twist ties or strings to drop for rivers.

Hexographer has similar functionality built-in with its random terrain generation as well as the “Add Random Features” on the “Tools” menu (for things like cities, towns, dungeons, battle sites or anything else.)  There’s even the terrain wizard (also on the tools menu) that after you add terrain for bits of the map it does a nearest-neighbor fill.