Building battle maps and running the fights on them
Twenty-odd articles on map design, grid rules, running combat online and what goes on inside a 3D virtual tabletop. Written for the DM with three hours of prep and a session on Tuesday.
How to make a D&D battle map without losing a weekend
Most battle maps die in the dressing stage. A DM opens an editor on Thursday, spends two hours placing barrels, and arrives at Sunday with a beautiful room the party walks through in ninety seconds. The fix is an order of operations: decide the fight first, build the shape that makes that fight interesting, and only then put anything on a table.
· 8 min read
Battle maps
3D vs 2D battle maps: what actually changes at the table
Where a 3D battle map earns its keep (height, cover, reading a room at a glance) and where a flat map is still the right answer. A practical comparison, not a graphics argument.
· 7 min read
Twelve dungeon map ideas that are not just corridors and boxes
Flooded vaults, collapsed floors, a chapel with a balcony, a mine cart line, a room that changes between rounds — dungeon shapes that create decisions instead of hallways.
· 8 min read
Tavern battle maps, and the bar fight everyone remembers
The layout that makes a tavern brawl work: sightlines, a bar to vault, tables to flip, a hearth that hurts, and stairs. Plus how to reuse one tavern for a whole campaign.
· 6 min read
Forest ambush encounters that are not a coin flip
Building the road-through-the-woods ambush so it is tense rather than a surprise-round execution: sightlines, cover, escape routes, and giving the party something to do on round one.
· 6 min read
Castle and siege battle maps: gates, walls and the courtyard fight
How to build a castle map that plays well — the gatehouse, the parapet, the killing ground, the postern — and how to run a siege without tracking a hundred soldiers.
· 7 min read
Running the game
The 5-foot square, and why every grid rule comes back to it
Squares, creature sizes, reach, squeezing and difficult terrain, explained as one system built on the 5-foot cell — and what breaks when a map is not authored to it.
· 6 min read
Diagonal movement in 5e: three rules, and when to use each
Every diagonal as 5 ft, the 5/10/5 variant, and true distance — how each one plays, which one your table probably wants, and how to stop arguing about it mid-fight.
· 5 min read
Running combat online without slowing the game to a crawl
Why online fights take twice as long as table fights, and eight concrete changes — turn order, telegraphing, pre-rolled initiative, a shared timer — that get the pace back.
· 7 min read
Initiative tracking that stays out of the way
What an initiative tracker has to do (order, current turn, round count, HP) and everything it should refuse to do. Plus how to handle surprise, lair actions and mid-fight arrivals.
· 6 min read
Lighting and vision: making darkness do tactical work
Bright, dim and darkness as game mechanics rather than mood — plus darkvision, light sources with real range, and how to light a map so players walk where you want them to.
· 6 min read
Theatre of the mind vs battle maps: the answer is both, on purpose
When narration beats a grid, when a grid beats narration, and a simple rule for switching between them mid-session without anyone losing the thread.
· 6 min read
Height and verticality: using the third dimension in combat
Climbing, flying, falling, ranged attacks from above and the rules that govern them — and how to build maps with height that players actually use instead of ignore.
· 7 min read
Session prep in thirty minutes: what to do and what to skip
A repeatable half-hour prep: the five beats, two maps, three names, one secret and a monster list. Everything else is optional, and most of it is procrastination in a nice hat.
· 6 min read
Virtual tabletops
The best free virtual tabletops in 2026
What each free VTT is actually good at — Roll20, Foundry, Owlbear Rodeo, Alchemy, TerrainTale — and how to pick by what your table does on a Tuesday night rather than by feature count.
· 9 min read
Using a virtual tabletop on a TV at an in-person game
A flat TV, a laptop and one HDMI cable gets you a digital battle map for a table that meets in person. Screen size, viewing angle, scale, glare and the settings that make it readable.
· 6 min read
Your first online D&D session: a checklist that actually works
Everything to settle before session one online — voice, the map, dice, safety tools, a fifteen-minute tech rehearsal — so the first hour is play rather than troubleshooting.
· 6 min read
Under the hood
AI-generated battle maps: what works, what does not, and why
Image models make pretty maps you cannot play on. A structured scene recipe an assistant writes — rooms, walls, props on a real grid — is the version that survives contact with a table.
· 7 min read
Self-hosting a virtual tabletop: what it really takes
A realistic account of running your own VTT — the box, the bandwidth, TLS, accounts, backups — and when self-hosting is worth it versus using a hosted table.
· 7 min read
Stop reading, start building
Every article here was written while using TerrainTale. Sign up free and open a starter scene.