Blackmoor Vituperative

I recently encountered a mapping program intended for role-playing games, called Hexographer. It is an easy to use application that makes colorful game maps. There is a “free” version (not free as in speech — free as in beer), and a pay version. The free version is pretty nifty. However, if you use Hexographer, I do not recommend that you rely on the “free” version.

The online (free) version is a Java app. Under ordinary circumstances, you can simply download a Java app like this, and run it on your own computer. Why would you want to do this? Because web sites go down. They go away. (Remember Ar-Kelaan Hexmapper? Their Hexmapper software is available elsewhere, but the Ar-Kelaan site itself is no more.) It is a fact of life. If you want to be able to open your maps a few months from now, it is important that you be able to run the app locally. Unfortunately, the author of Hexographer has written the “free” app so that it can only be run on his server.

Do not rely on the “free” version. The paid license version does not have this problem, and that’s what I would recommend. (I bought it myself.)

However, if Hexographer does not suit your needs, here are some viable alternatives, which may or may not fit your own particular situation:

• Arr-Kelaan Hexmapper (download, additional tiles)
• DampfKarte
• HexMapper
• HexReMapper
• Inkscape with the boardgame extensions
• Maptool
• Tiled

P.S. The Welsh Piper has a nifty article on using hex maps to facilitate world building. Check it out.