Making maps?

The castle my PCs have in our Eberron game is about to come under siege, so I've had to be drawing maps of the town and general area so they can make preparations...

http://theanteheroes.com/Ashbane/AreaMap.png
http://theanteheroes.com/Ashbane/StrahlTownMap.png

It took me half a day to make these two things put together, and they look HORRIBLE. I don't suppose anyone has any tips on making maps, or better yet, an app that can make nice ones?

Hand draw them and use a scanner?

Seriously, though, there's a lot of mapware out there. Try this one: Map Tool

Well, since my default is pencil/pen on graph paper (or oversized ones on old paper bags), those look probably better than what I'm working with...

Actually, working by hand can get a little bit more of an artistic touch, if you feel you have talent in that field...

The only thing I've found that's both free and provides adequate results is AutoRealm: http://www.gryc.ws/autorealm.htm . It's still far from perfect, but it works. It's getting more handy the more I work with it, I can't say it's the solution to your problems but it's worth a look.

I use photoshop. It works well once you're comfortable with it and its quick to learn.

I personally like to draw my maps on graph paper. I'm a terrible artist, but when you're drawing your own countries and cities, who's going to say something's wrong? Perhaps that peninsula doesn't look quite the way you wanted it to, but no one else is going to know.

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I personally like to draw my maps on graph paper. I'm a terrible artist, but when you're drawing your own countries and cities, who's going to say something's wrong? Perhaps that peninsula doesn't look quite the way you wanted it to, but no one else is going to know.

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Originally Posted by Matthew

Hand draw them and use a scanner?

Seriously, though, there's a lot of mapware out there. Try this one: Map Tool

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It's an online game and I don't have a scanner, unfortunately. That map tool looks friggin' amazing though, we can definitely make use of that for combat. I love you.

[quote]The only thing I've found that's both free and provides adequate results is AutoRealm: http://www.gryc.ws/autorealm.htm . It's still far from perfect, but it works. It's getting more handy the more I work with it, I can't say it's the solution to your problems but it's worth a look.[/quote[

And that looks just like what I wanted. I will report back after I've tried both, thanks. :D