Creating an effective looking dungeon

So I don't have much in the way of money to buy material, nor am I very good at making a dungeon map (well I have concepts yeah but no way how to make them an effective map. Can anyone offer any advice on how to make a good dungeon. Right now I'm using a random gen for the layout but no idea how to make it come to life, and even then it's not perfect.

Google. Tons of dungeon maps out there.

Hi Cody. Make sure your dungeon maps have a purpose. Random dungeons are exactly that, random. If you were to build something, wouldn't it be designed with a purpose or function? Why have a dungeon at all? Does the story take place in the old abandon ruins of a long forgotten castle or perhaps an evil wizard's tower? Abandoned Dwarven mines? Just throwing rooms together is going to make it more difficult to legitimize the environment of your rpg and make it less believable to your players. Design with a purpose. Rely less on the map and more on your description to your players. I often just show various images on the screen to "set the scene" or backdrop and only open a map for a more strategic combats. That said, you can find lots of free maps with an image search and importing them. You can learn to use an external graphic editor (Gimp is free) and there are lot's of tutorials out there. Some roll20 wiki resources to check out. Creating a Map using Gimp , Useful links for mapping

If you decide to purchase something from the Market Place, I recommend Gabriel Pickard's Quick Encounter Maps, they are $4.99 and well worth it. They are made without a grid so you can scale them as you want, and they don't distort when you enlarge them. If you want dungeons just get one of his sets. You can also send me a Private Message and I will send you the Ajax Dungeon Tile Sets for free, you easily build a great dungeon in a few minutes... -Ajax

<a href="http://davesmapper.com/" rel="nofollow">http://davesmapper.com/</a> Choose your favorite tiles, export the image and upload it to Roll20 Bonus points: To create an isometric map, use Gimp to rotate the image 45 degrees, then scale it vertically 57.7% Extra bonus points: convert it to indexed-colour or greyscale mode to shrink the filesize.

plexsoup said: <a href="http://davesmapper.com/" rel="nofollow">http://davesmapper.com/</a> Choose your favorite tiles, export the image and upload it to Roll20 Bonus points: To create an isometric map, use Gimp to rotate the image 45 degrees, then scale it vertically 57.7% Extra bonus points: convert it to indexed-colour or greyscale mode to shrink the filesize. I am be believer in geomorhic design on Roll20 <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Geomorphic_Map_Tiles" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Geomorphic_Map_Tiles</a> Using geomorphs and API you can make a map 100 x 100 with a button click. If you know the pathing data.... you can get the Dynamic Lighting just as fast. Below is a 30 sec random map... (can be editted before applying paths) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCWcahbEk8g" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCWcahbEk8g</a>