Mapping Software

[InVinoVeritas]

For a person who knows next to nothing about software for making maps for combat, or for moving counters on a computer map, what would you recommend?

[Liz Courts]

If you want to make your own, I would recommend GIMP or Paint.NET, but be sure to check out a lot of freely available maps at RPGMapShare.

[Azure_Zero]

is it for local use (one computer) or networked (multiple computers) maps for playing?

[InVinoVeritas]

Azure_Zero wrote:

is it for local use (one computer) or networked (multiple computers) maps for playing?

Play by post, mainly, although I could imagine making a map for use with a tabletop game.

[Azure_Zero]

Paizo has some map software in there store
Mapping software Page

A more common program is using Photoshop,
I have made a few maps with it and you can images from PDFs.

[DeathQuaker]

If you're talking about online tracking of a battle map, the generally highly touted program is MapTool. Others can tell you more about it than I can. You can use it to move markers around a map, certainly.

For campaign maps and battle maps, I really enjoy Campaign Cartographer (its add on Dungeon Designer makes it better for battle maps, though they can be made without). IIRC, the demo is still free.

The main thing is that Campaign Cartographer is CAD based and powerful--and not very intuitive at first. Watching/reading/going through a tutorial is a MUST, even if you're the kind of person who generally prefers to learn software by fiddling with it (I know I am). Once you get the pointers, its internal logic makes sense and you can make nearly anything you can imagine with it. And you can move markers around on it fairly easily although it's not an online tool and for everyone at the table to see you'd ideally want a projector setup.