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GameMastery Guide / Adventures / Dungeons / Drawing a Dungeon Map

Inking the Map

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 175
Once you’re happy with your map sketch, grab your pens and start inking it. You can use different pens to denote different features on your map; a wide felt-tip pen works well for thick walls, for example, while a fine-tipped pen works better for details like doors and map symbols. Once you’ve inked the map, erase extraneous pencil lines (keeping any notes you want to save, of course). Next, get your coloring supplies and add color as necessary—blue for water, green for vegetation, or whatever works best. If you color in nothing else, use black to fill in areas of solid stone to help define the actual parts of the map your players can explore.

You can scan your map at this stage as well and use a paint program to color larger areas. Scanning a map and using image manipulation software is also a great way to correct errors you made during the inking process.

Archives of Nethys

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Inking the Map