Hello everyone!
If this is covered in another thread, please point me toward that thread 
I am just starting to DM for the firs time in 8 years. I would like to make my own simple dungeon tiles. There is a UPS store across the street from me that prints onto card stock. What I wanted to do was to make the tiles on my computer, load them onto a file, and have the UPS guy print them out so I can cut them out later.
The only problem is that I can't find a simple program that will let me draw my own tiles. I though that I could just make a grid from Excel 2007, but that proved far more difficult than I imagined (it's just not made for that sort of thing). I am looking for a program with a grid that I can draw on (even circles and curves) and save in different formats just in case the UPS store does not like what format i bring it in. Even if I have to pay for the program, it's all good.
I have pop out dungeon tiles that I use for simple rooms and hallways. I would like to draw out the more complex rooms that I can't properly make with store bought dungeon tiles.
Any advice would be helpful.
Thanks for your time.
-MP-
I don't know of any programs to use for this purpose, but you might find some good maps to put on tiles here: The Crooked Staff Blog.
VindicatorPrime00 wrote:
I use Campaign Cartographer/Dungeon Designer and print onto card stock. Sometimes I'll do a poor man's lamination with Avery lamination sheets. That's definitely not a cheap solution, if that's a concern. There are other programs, but I don't use them so perhaps someone else could point you in their direction.
The Gimp has already been mentioned, and although it is a general-purpose program with many features you won't immediately need, it's free and it can certainly be used to make, modify and combine dungeon tiles. It can export the images as pdf, if you are worried about formats for printing.
I made a bunch in paint one time. Only printed on normal paper though, so it wasn't worth it.
Just turn the grids on, and then use a thick black line over the 1 inch grids. You can turn any image you have into a map/tile.
In a similar vein, if you use InkScape (also free), you can go to Extensions => Render => Grids => Grid and add a grid to any image. You can choose the line width, spacing, and offset as well, so you can do it before or after scaling the picture.
Adobe Photoshop? Snapping a 1-inch grid over any resized image is cake.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dungeontilesmapper/default.htm
Here's a possiblity.
You can also download the program here: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dungeontilesmapper/DungeonTilesMapper120.zip
Thanks so much for all the great feedback
I have used http://pyromancers.com/ with great success. WhenI just want a simple layout that the players will never see, I use InkScape as mentioned above. Dungeon Designer is super awesome, but it's a heavy investment. A friend makes absolutely incredible maps of anything he wants between that and Campaign Cartographer.