Making fun, interesting dungeons from scratch can be difficult.  Bringing them to life at the game table can be really tough unless you are spend a lot of money buying pre-printed dungeon tiles on a 1″ grid.  So how do you get your newly created dungeon onto a 1″ battle grid?

 

Enter Microsoft Excel.

 

Ok, Microsoft has a lot of bad press, but this is a trick that will save you time.

 

Convert your map to an electronic image.  If you don’t have a scanner, visit a friend who does.  If you are downloading free maps from Wizards of the Coast or another site then you will already have an image to use.  The sweet thing here is that it doesn’t matter the format or size of the image, though I recommend using jpg because the file size is smallest, which works well if you plan to email the finished product around.

 

Now open a blank workbook in Excel. 

• Change your print margins to .5″ all around (1/2″ border all around).  You can go smaller if you like.
• Click Insert | Picture | From File. 
• Browse to the image that you saved on your computer.  Select it an click insert.
• The picture should appear in your workbook.
• Move the picture to the top leftmost area of your workbook, so that the top left corner of the map is covering cell A1.
• Click on your zoom, and change it to approximately 40%.  This will show you how many pages the map will cover when printed.
• If you don’t get the dotted lines for the pages click print preview and then go back.
• However, you’ll want to go into print preview anyway, so open it now and count the number of squares of your dungeon that appear on the page.  Assuming that you are using standard 8 ½” x 11″ paper and printed portrait then you will want 7 squares to appear on the page so that you get nice 1″ squares when you print.
• If there are more than 7 then cancel print preview and adjust your image size by dragging the bottom right corner diagonally down and to the right.
• Go back to print preview and count the squares.  If the squares are too big, then go back and make the image smaller.
• When you have the right size of squares, print the pages.
• Generally speaking you will end up with several pages.  After they print, lay them all out on the table, or the floor if you have a very large map.
• Cut the bottom ½” border off the top row of pages.  This will allow you to tape or glue (I prefer clear tape applied to both sides) the second row to the top row.
• Cut the right ½” border off the left most pages.  This will allow you to glue or tape the next row of pages together.
• The idea here is to end up with a ½” border all around your nice map but still have plenty of room for assembly.

 You can do up an entire dungeon level in one evening and save yourself a ton of time explaining and drawing maps for players.  Personally I like to let my players keep the maps of the areas they have cleared.

 

Hope this helps and have fun!

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