The Land of Gapron – Playing with Wonderdraft

Over on Reddit I discovered that some people were experimenting with a new map-making software called Wonderdraft.  I decided to take the plunge and test it out myself.

This will be a two-fold post.  First I will show off the map of Gapron, my first creation in Wonderdraft and regional map that you could use to start off a fantasy campaign of your own.  The second part of the post will be my initial thoughts of the Wonderdraft software.

How to Use this Map

I decided to go with a regional map to start off with so you could use this to kick-start a campaign and finish fleshing out the rest of the world during your own GM fun time or in-game with your group.

Here are the steps to you can use to finish the map with your players:

1. Download the above map (right click, Save Image as..)
2. Upload it to Google Drawings
3. Invite your players to be contributors on Google Drawings
4. Go around the “table” and have each player place a town, village, hamlet, keep, city. etc. in any location on the map
   1. A one or two sentence description of the location will suffice
5. Next round, each player will add a connector between any location on the map.  This could be a road, trail, sea route, etc.
6. On the next round, each player will state a fact about one of the regions
   1. “The Regret Cliffs are home to giants”
   2. “Wild horses roam the Black Heath”
   3. Etc.
7. Go around again and have each player add a rumor about a location on the map (including any settlements the players established)
   1. “The Red Devil earned it’s name from a horror that lies in its depths”
   2. “The Crypt of the Priest houses the secrets of The Queen”
   3. Etc.
   4. If you want more rumors, do another round of rumors
8. Determine where the party is at right now
9. Play the Game!

My Initial Thoughts on Wonderdraft

I will now touch on some of the pros and cons of Wonderdraft.

Pros

• Cost – At only $20 I believe this is a reasonable price for the software considering it is still in its infancy of development.  While the quality may not be at the level of Inkarnate yet, Inkarnate charges a yearly fee for its content.
• Ease of Use – Wonderdraft has a very simple UI that is great for beginners, one of the best I have seen for mapping software.  A lot of mapping software is complex, I am looking at you Campaign Cartographer, and one must look up tutorials on how to navigate the program and learn all of the settings.
• Placement of Rivers – I really liked how you can choose to have rivers taper at their source
• Great for clickers – Wonderdraft makes it really easy to use a mouse to create maps.  While it does support the use of drawing tablets, Wonderdraft is solid when it comes to using a mouse.

Cons

• Color blending – Painting the landscape is pretty simple in Wonderdraft as you choose a color and paint away.  However I find the borders of the different colored regions pretty jarring when you are using colors that contrast.  I would like to see a tool to allow easier blending of colors.
• Lack of Symbols – Wonderdraft has very little variety when it comes to symbols to place on the map.  There are only a few trees, mountains, and town symbols available to place on your map.  However, Wonderdraft does have the ability to import your own symbols as well.
• Bugs – Wonderdraft has a few bugs.  Users have reported some crashes (although I have yet to experience any).  I noticed sometimes the labels would shift ever so slightly upon opening the project.  Also, some labels would stop allowing me to edit them and I would have to save and reload to edit the label.

Update (12-20-18)

Wonderdraft now offers an opacity slider that makes the blending of colors much easier.  They also added some more tokens and symbols to use with your maps.  The programs just keeps getting better!

Final Thoughts

If you are planning on creating maps that have a truly professional appearance, I imagine an image editing program would be the way to go.  Photoshop or Gimp can create breathtaking maps but the learning curve and time investment are great.  Wonderdraft excels in being able create suitable maps quickly and easily.

Overall I am very pleased I gave Wonderdraft a go.  I like how transparent the developer is on working out the bugs and adding in functionality.  I believe Wonderdraft could be a great addition to your game mastering tool set.