How to Craft EPIC D&D Maps in Minutes! 

"Wait, so EXACTLY how much soy sauce do I use??" Recipe here! ▶ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1C89mIB11B0.html 💥 Borough Bound: www.patreon.com/boroughbound

You don't even need to use soy sauce, the effect comes not from the stain in the liquid, but rather the sugar in the sauce burning off. I dissolve a teaspoon of sugar in hot water, paint that on and then pop it under the grill until it just starts to brown. Lovely results!

I think the biggest pro tip here was "throw some dice". I've many times felt the overwhelming weight of my lack of creativity as I've stared at a blank page wondering where to start. The idea to just throw dice and let them decide much in the way that they "tell a story" when we play is an excellent idea! This is the core of D&D and I love it!

A note on incomplete maps: if you've ever played the old Thief games, you'll remember that although the levels are sprawling and complex, the maps you get aforehand are simply a few scrawled lines outlining only the most basic information (if you get a map at all). So, to keep things fresh, supply your players with an inaccurate, incomplete map and only reveal the actual dungeon layout bit by bit when they reach something they weren't expecting!

I remember for a school project back in middle school I wanted to make a thing on really old looking paper. My mom just took the paper, squirted lemon juice on it, and put it in the oven. It actually looked great and this reminded me of that project. This makes me want to experiment with other kinds of staining.

Woo! Thanks Bob! Love the encouragement. Everyone can draw maps!!!!

INSTANT coffee grounds + hot water in a tub. You can "yellow" it more w/ turmeric.

For a dungeon I recently designed, I had chatgpt generate three riddles and a prophesy. I told it the answers to the riddles and how many words to use. It generated nice little rhyming riddles that were correct and close to the word count. For the prophecy, I told it what the prophesy was about. The result was suitably vague and obscure. It did add an upbeat twist to what was supposed to be prophesy of doom. Overall not bad.

I have 0 art ability (or interest) but Bob's brief summary make me think I could almost make a small world map. But whole vid was great stuff.

Fantastic video! Dungeonscrawl is awesome. I whipped a map up really fast using your method but for some mysterious reason the whole table wanted to order Chinese after getting the map.

Good video, and remember if your maps suck don't worry about it and just keep improving your art overtime. One mapping method I like to use, is to simulate how people used to draw old timey maps and note things like "here be dragons!" or "wolves lie here." So like a world map as an example, and you draw towns with plenty of space in between and you add landmarks and 1-2 things that you might find in that area, like drawing a grove of trees and maybe putting a picture of a wolf and a silly bandit. This way you can foreshadow to the players what kinds of encounters you could find there based on maybe stories they've heard "off screen."

Bob: world builder, brewer (as in dnd home*brewer*), rpg parody musician, dice artificer and now cartographer. Is there anything he can't do?

Literally right after watching this, I wrote out a note from the wizard NPC that my group is trying to save in this dungeon. Went with fish sauce which was slightly stinky lol, but they came out nicely colored! Thanks for the tip Bob! This was super fun and easy!

I am actually a huge fan of tea staining. I love the different colours you can get (just haven't figured out how to acchieve red, since fruit teas turn blue) and I love that the stains don't come out so dark. I also really enjoy the process, but I have to admit I am patience personified, so I get that that's probably not everyones cup of tea.

Nice work! Btw, let me know if you need any props 3D printed. I’ve got ya covered, brother.

Love this “how to”! Thank you as always for the fun and useful content Bob. 😸

That's actually a really awesome idea.

I've followed JP's tutorial in order to make a world map. It worked great!

Does the map smell savory after using soy sauce? 😄 Also a tip for would-be map makers: If you're using an *inkjet printer* adding the coloring after printing will blur and smear the ink (I know from experience, but you might be able to pull it off by slowly and carefully tapping the coloring onto the paper instead of brushing). When I was making maps and coloring them with tea (didn't take that long for me to get a darker color by brewing some really concentrated black tea) I baked the paper, and after it was dry I placed it under a stack of books for a day. After that it was flat enough to fit into the printer and to print on top of the already colored paper. If you have a laser printer you can easily do what Bob did in the video 🙂

Believe it or not i just tried this last week! I made coffee in my French press, drank it lol, then used the grounds to make a second batch (whereas normally I would toss it), and used that 'bad' coffee for the stain. I use equipment cards for inventory management. I took a stack of index cards, cut them in half, and soaked them in a bowl of coffee for 8 hours. Stacked them on a plate with paper towels between each later and let them dry a day, then wiped the excess particles of with a rag to massage out the paper. Love the result!

I recently used chat GPT for D&D for the first time. My players looked for a bunch of books/essays in a library, some of them found some things, and I had Chat GPT make me drafts that I could edit with appropriate names, etc. One of the things I had it write me is a kind of recruitment letter for a cult of Lolth and it did a surprisingly good job, with lots of spooky spider references. I also gave it a draft of a couple paragraphs I wrote it and asked it to make it sound like a hoity toity narcissist wrote it, again to pretty good effect. Definitely saved me at least a couple hours writing stuff for that one session.

Love the soy sauce idea. I hardly use props anymore and this was a big encouragement to get back to it. Thanks.

Great video! I never would have thought about the soy sauce. (unless there was Dim Sum to go with it). Thanks as always for your positive channel.

This sounds awesome. I'll definitely give this a try !

I'm a big fan of the Bob Worldbuilder renaissance swordsman facial hair

Ah! The cutest little forest! Look at that smiling canopy!

I've been using Google Bard for quick little intros of a place or NPC in my DnD campaign. It's good for the little throwaway stuff that I probably wouldn't bother with if I didn't have the AI chatbot.

I've been using ChatGPT heavily for descriptions, both location and characters. It has a good understanding of what is in 5e and can spit out a few paragraphs based on a few words. I always end up finessing the description a bit, but it makes some of the more mundane description parts easy. Controversial, but maybe time for a video on AI in the TTRPG space?

First?? And map making collab in the future? I'd like to kick it up a notch to make it like the goodies pirate map ❤

awesome video! thank you!!

I was running a call of Cthulhu session and wanted a cheesy info-mercial style ad to introduce the BBEG who was using kitty litter to disperse an eldritch substance. I asked Chat GPT to "write me a pun-filled tv ad that focuses on selling kitty litter" and it got my 99% there. Very helpful for something that I wasn't good at

I love hand outs!! It never fails to add excitement all around the table to hand physical items out! Maps, money, and magic items are the top favorites at my table 😆

Dyson Logos' map collection is an absolute treasure trove. Toss a coin to your cartographer!

I wrote my first campaign ever using a lot of help from ChatGPT. some example uses -suggest some characters the party could meet while in town, with names, occupations and possible side quests -the party just accomplished X, how would Y react to finding out about it? -the part is now at this stage of the adventure, but i need to hook them into lookin in the mines, what would be possible trails leading there? very useful

Bob, you beautiful man. You have had such a positive impact on my campaign and DM ability. Appreciate your content bud, but this one is especially right up my alley.

Great video Bob. Definitely going to give this a try. I've been doing the tea staining but i like the darker look. One tip is that you can use a big eraser on the printed parts of the map to fade or rub-through areas you want more obscured or extra brittle.

If you're making digital maps for a game, I can't recommend inkarnate enough. You can make gorgeous maps without too much effort, and their community is super helpful if you want to improve your maps.

I just chat GPT to generate custom monster stats for encounters. Still have to do some tweaking here and there, but it saved me a lot of time in getting all of the abilities written down cohesively, especially when I add player classes and subclasses to already establish stat blocks

This is a super fun tut, Bob! You're a natural on camera :)

Maps! Maps! Maps! - The greatest tool to immerse my brain in a world.

Props for making an entertaining and informative video!

I'm so excited to try this!

Two amazing results I've had with ChatGPT: 1. Knew what I wanted for elements in the session starting in 30 minutes, but didn't have a "strong start". ChatGPT got me a pretty great start, a minor NPC to help deliver some info, and more descriptive language than I tend to come up with on my own. 2. My players were entering the lair of a grey villain they knew almost nothing about. Part of what I wanted them to see on their way in was rooms with old, failed experiments the "villain" had abandoned. All with the same goal. I asked ChatGPT for snippets from the notes players could find, left in some of the rooms/labs. Then asked GPT to come up with additional research avenues the "villain" may've tried and abandoned, in addition to more note snippets. Took a little back-and-forth and editing, but my goodness, the results were _so_ much better than I would have done on my own. The players were really into them, too. They were torn between the danger of the place, and wanting to visit all the rooms to check them out.

You are the Bob Ross of RPGS. :)

Bob...You have such a chill and calming voice, and you seem very enthusiastic. Betting your table top has a excellent vibe and your players really have some great interactions.

Another neat thing I've used: cotton paper. It looks and feels fantastic and really fantasy-like from the get go, especially if you get a color similar to this aged one. I have no experience with aging it because it looked fine as it was for my purposes, but I'm sure you can make it look even better. I haven't tried putting it into my printer because that seemed weird, but allegedly you kan do that according to the product description. I've written letters by hand on it and it looked great, as well as putting some secret stuff in uv color on it.

Nice, I gotta try this out. I've tried tea and coffe before, but like you say: it took for ever! A tip is you can add some spieces (like paprika or that yellow stuff I don't know the english name for) to add interesting splotches in different colors. But be warned; if you do too good a job the players wont want to touch the nasty map =D

That draw around the dice trick is insane

Who knew Soy Sause, could dye paper so well. Tried this on a few of my maps and that step of baking them really takes it to another level. Thanks for sharing.

I had Chat GPT write four letters back and forth between two NPCs. I was then able to touch them up, throw away two of them, and had the players find the other two in separate locations. It really felt like they found some mid-discussion letters and they had questions on what might have been said to elicit the response written. Not giving them the answers allowed them to make up better ones, and I didn't have to ret-con anything to do it. It's also super helpful in populating dungeons. I've asked for random encounter tables for caves, forests, and city scenarios and usually those are good too. Just be sure to mention the average player level and number of players. That has a huge impact!

very cool video, definitely inspires me to get back to world making again! thank you, Bob!

3 cheers for Aldi! 😂 Thanks for these tips, they're giving me so many ideas for both adding to, and simplifying, my current campaign! I don't think of using letters, maps, and other tangible clues/props nearly enough. Have a blessed day! 🙏🏻

dungeon scrawl is awesome, i tend ot hand draw my dungeons at first then re-do them in DS

I am legitimately trying this! You make it look so simple!

ChatGPT is amazing for "I need a dozen village residents" or "I need 5 spooky places" or "I need a fighter subclass for halfling commandos." Rewriting what it gives you is actually fun enough that the problem becomes forcing yourself to stop asking it to make things.

Player handouts really do enhance the game. Even without aging the paper with stains. I had a quest board with a mix of handwritten or printed quest hooks. My players loved gathering the papers to see what quests they could go on.

Thanks for the shout-out!

Powdered coffee is also a really great ingredient. It's cheap, you can change how much of it you put in water to change how dark the map will be and you can make it pool to make the result more or less even. Ground coffee is also a good lead. At the end, you can add a finishing touch to the prop by painting watered down white glue on it. A few thin coats allow your map to shine like leather and the ink really pops out. After you let it dry and massage it a bit, the prop even gain a cloth like softness to the way it moves when you handle it.

thank you so much for this, I recently started a pirate themed campaign and as such I'm 100% certain that I will have to hand out a treasuremap at some point and my players will be thrilled when they are told about some ancient treasuremap and it won't be just an a4 piece of paper fresh of the printer!

Even faster aging: instant coffee and then in the microwave. I do recommend not to dry at once though but remove from the microwave, and move the paper so the contact point with the plate is not the same, gives better effect... And you get a summer nice coffee smell on your paper afterwards ;)

So I did this with my kids today. They loved it and it came out so cool. Thanks for making this DIY dude

Good idea on aging the maps. I cut up paper grocery bags in 8.5 x 11 sheets and print on those. It gives it kind of a leathery feel after you crinkle it up.

The idea with the dices is neat. Thanks

04:59 I really like how happy the forest is! :)

Man this is cool. Shame my first in-person d&d group collapsed after one day. Oh well, can't have em all.

That was really good!!! I'm going to give that artifact prop a try! Thanks!!

Great idea for spicing up the game! Thanks

Tea bags!!! I used to do this in primary school. Boil the water, dip the tea bag a few times then brush it over the paper. Far better effect 👍🏻 once your happy with coat you can then split the bag and sprinkle the wet leaves over the paper. Once it's all dried brush them off and you get these really cool darker spots. Don't forget to burn a few edges or corners with a lighter too!!

I'm absolutely using ChatGPT for my game. From just about everything from worldbuilding to NPCs -- Sometimes it spits out hot garbage, but more often than not it gives me some solid ideas for how to tie things together and only requires a little bit of modification to fit it all in place.

I found fancy, rough looking paper at a craft shop and used that. I hand drew it, but you could tear it down to size for a printer for convenience and rough edges. Makes it look more historical than old, I think.

The soy sauce tip is such a perfect last minute solution! No extra sauce pans, boiling water or messy teabags and coffee grounds. Just put some soy sauce on a sponge and in the oven and my last min spell scroll was ready in sub five minutes!

Since I first saw it in the late 80s, I always loved that Keith Parkinson “North Watch” art that is on the poster on the wall.

In return for the awesome info, here's an idea I had to bring out a player's choice in picking the cartographer tool proficiency: 1. Have a dungeon layout map seperately rendered on a printer/A4 sheet of paper. If your player would like to try their hand at the artwork, trace the main elements of the rendering in pencil as if the character made a "quick sketch" that they will refine later. 2. Cut the dungeon layout map by room/area as you would have revealed it using Fog of War. If you want to keep this jigsaw organized at this point, you can stick it down to another sheet with a repositionable glue stick (which will also be useful to keep the flow at the table). 3. Now during game night the party can use room/area specific battle maps to interract with, but each time the cartographer enters a new area, hand them the corresponding piece to stick onto a blank "parchment". This way the dungeon recall is delegated more towards the cartographer who, in turn, is more incentivized to explore the whole area for a completed map.

This worked excellently! My players loved the look of my map when I did this. The only thing they didn’t like was how much it smelled of soy sauce. Maybe I used too much, or maybe I didn’t give it enough time to air out. Also make sure you don’t leave it in the oven too long. I didn’t but it came close. Got pretty brittle in spots. Only needed a couple minutes. Also the massaging really does help loosen the paper fibers. Overall, this was awesome and I’ll be using this method again! Thank you!!!

I did a stack of stained pages using almost the same technique. Instead of tea or soy sauce, I used coffee. If you soak the paper in super strong coffee, the pages turn out evenly colored, which is fine for some things, but I wanted splotches of stain. I got that effect by stacking pages in the soak and sprinkling some instant coffee granules between each page. I cooked some of them in the oven at about 200 degrees for 10 minutes and left some out in the sun (I live in AZ) and both turned out amazing.

I like you Bob. You have a likable face and you sound very kind.

I have a few handouts on standby - four journal entries, ripped/carefully cut apart from one piece of paper. Used a short thread and needle to rip pieces of it away as if it was ripped from book bindings. Then I tore some more pieces off, burnt it a little, used one of those electric lighters that have the plasma arc to make some VERY interesting wear details straight through the paper, and then threw it on a tray, soaked it in barely-brewed tea, and I got a nice off-white parchment effect.

Bob great video. Can u share an example of some of ur drawn maps? I like ur style.

Thanks ! I wasnt sure how to cook a map but now i know !

Can you still smell the soy sauce?

Cool!

This is incredibly useful info!

I've played around with Chat GPT a bit. I had it make some adventures, traps, characters, and a campaign world, plus a campaign outline for the world. It's a good way to get a start if you have a couple rough ideas about what you want to do. Just bear in mind that it's probably plagiarized to some degree, so be careful if you're using it to make something to publish.

Everybody loves props. One of them ones I like is a bunch of old keys on a big old keyring. Yard sales are your friend.

I recently did this for a special one-shot adventure I ran for my group. I made a map of the region in which the adventure was taking place. I used strong coffee as my staining liquid, and added to the staining by smudging with a bit of actual dirt. I finished it by coating the map with diluted matte Mod Podge; that had several beneficial effects. It sealed in the staining and smudging effects, it strengthened the paper so it was less prone to tearing, and it gave the paper a vellum-like feel and flexibility. It turned out really nice.

I can recommend DungeonScrawl highly. It's very versatile, though you will want to creatively repurpose several of the tools to create other things, as otherwise the things you can draw with it is quite limited. But since each tool is customisable, that's doable.

Ive used Toolbaz to first draft some things for my RPG sessions. It works with mixed results. My favorite mishap was asking for a quest hook in a town, and toolbaz spat out a recursive loop of visiting houses, asking peasants for quests, and the peasants not having any quests.

Awesome content! Love the how to. Gave me some cool ideas! 😊 I've been using a chat gpt client for a few months now. I usually have it confirm the context (a dnd game /setting). Then one Im sure it knows what I'm talking about I feed it the information I want and I the context I'd like it in. You can even ask questions and ask it to elaborate more on certain things.

I just gave this a shot and I can say that the effect is amazing! I’m definitely going to be doing this multiple times and I can’t wait to see what my players will think of it! One thing I also kinda recommend is to lightly go around the edges with a lighter to give the edge some more depth (and also to cover any patchy tearing). Overall, awesome vid, definitely earned a sub here.

Lemon Juice brushed on paper and put in the oven on a low temp (like 350) for a few minutes does an amazing job of aging the paper, canvas, or cloth.

On Chat GPT, I've given it prompts like "describe a haunted dungeon" or "describe a lord's banquet hall" and told it to use lots of sensory details. I sometimes generate a couple of answers, and then pull out any details I like. I could come up with it on my own, but it can help get me started or save time to work on more interesting things.

To answer your question re ChatGPT. I have used it and it’s fantastic at spitting out words for props. Given most props are more fluff than substance you just need words on a page to make it feel right and only a couple of lines of helpful information for the players. So it’s super easy to get a first draft from the Chat and tweak it to make more sense and ensure your actual plot points are presented correctly. What I adore most is if I have some text already, asking the Chat to remake the paragraph but either increasing or decreasing the word count to match the space I had available on the page.

I’ve tried the tea staining method before but I’ll have to give this a go! Thanks for the idea 💡

Real life sepia filter = soy sauce 😮

Thank you so much! You inspired me to do a real life prop for the Tome of Strahd!

I remember going through a dungeon ( from the old Dragon Magazine ) that a friend ran. Our party decided the best way in was to sneak onto the roof of the place and go in through the highest window we could reach. Ironically, this took us directly to the apex treasure room, which just happened to include a complete map of the place... ...which my halfling thief quietly stashed away and used to surreptitiously guide the party literally everywhere else in the dungeon, solely out of the sake of curiosity. We didn't need to - we'd already started in literally the winner's circle coming in the way we did, but he wasn't about to let on about that. That would be boring. The reaction of the rest of the party when they found out was just too precious. Worth all the dice I was pelted with.

You save me so much!

I just tried that out literally 10 mins ago and it worked GREAT!!! The paper feels allmost like papyrus which is exactly the result I was hoping for. The only issue was that I drew my map instead of printing so while staining it with soy sauce it washed away a bit and became somewhat blurry and greenish but that's totally ok since it's supposed to be old and through some stuff, bad weather and not stored properly. Plus the map smells great!!! XD

Nice patina on the maps.

Great video thank you