A map for every story, and every world you dream up
Hand-drawn castles, taverns and temples. Dragons over the mountains and sea serpents off the coast. Realms with colored borders, and cities built on real streets. Pull the map from a story you have written, start from a ready-made layout, or draw every coastline yourself, then name every place and keep it beside your draft.
Pick a stamp, tap the realm to drop it, drag it into place, then tap it to give it a name.
Try it right here, no account
- Pick a stamp: castle, walled city, tavern, temple, or dragon.
- Tap anywhere on the realm to drop it.
- Drag the marker until it sits where it belongs.
- Tap it (or double-click on a computer) to give the place its name.
- Add more places until the realm reads like your world.
- Not the right coastline? Roll a new map. In the full map maker you can describe the realm you want or draw every coast yourself.
- Start free in this browser and the map you made here is waiting in My maps. The free trial keeps two maps and downloads two. A Map Pass keeps every map, takes off the small "Made with Inkling" label, and opens Gilded Night and all twelve real-street cities.
When it feels like yours, start free to save it. 14 days to experience the full writing desk, build worlds, and be creative. No card to start.
What your map can look like
Both of these were made in the map maker, with the same stamps and styles you get. Switch between a world and a city, and between Inkling Wash and Gilded Night.
Writing the story behind this map?
The map is the start. Inkling is a whole writing desk: your chapters, a “Previously…” recap of your own words so you can pick up right where you stopped, your cast and your storyboard, with this map sitting beside the page.
Every building drawn in one hand
Over thirty buildings, from the castle on the hill to the blacksmith with his anvil and the tavern with its tankard sign, all in one bold ink style with cut-out windows and chimney smoke. Nothing looks pasted in from a different clip-art pack, so the whole map reads like a single artist drew it.
Beasts, not stickers
A dragon to guard the mountains, a sea serpent coiled off the coast, a kraken wrapped round the port, a galleon flying a skull and a dragon-prowed longship. Drop them in, drag them where the danger is, and resize them to taste.
Realms with real borders
Carve the land into kingdoms with soft color and a dashed border. Redraw part of a border by drawing the new line, split a realm in two, and name each one. A key in the corner lists them all, and realms never overlap.
Land that looks painted
Paint in dunes in pale gold, marsh in blue green, jungle, plains and snowfields, each with soft edges that fade into the land around them. Forests and mountain ranges are drawn in the same art as the ready-made layouts, tree by tree and peak by peak.
Roads that find their own way
Draw a road between two towns and it bends around mountains and water on its own, the way a real road would. No more wobbly lines that march straight across a lake.
Cities on real streets
Start from the real street plans of Prague, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Edinburgh, Venice, Kyoto and six more, stripped of their names so they become yours. City maps come in today’s world: restaurants, cafés, city hall, parks, the station and the stadium. Writing something older? Flip the Fantasy town switch for taverns, the smithy and the keep. Double-click any town on your world map and its own city map opens, already named.
Three looks, one click
Inkling Wash is soft watercolor with one ink line. Copperplate is an engraved atlas plate. Gilded Night is ink-blue paper with cream line and gold leaf. Every stamp re-inks itself to match.
Pulled from your story
Point the map maker at a story you have already written. It reads the places your characters visit, the kingdoms they name, the roads they take, and lays them out as a starting map. The world you built in prose becomes a world you can see.
Drawn by hand, or directed by you
Prefer to draw? Trace coastlines, run rivers, lay roads, shade regions, and stamp mountains, towns, and keeps exactly where they belong. Prefer to describe? Tell the generator what the realm looks like and steer it until the shape is right. Mix both. Every place gets your name in your words.
One map per world, as many as you need
A realm for the epic, a city for the heist, an island for the short story that will not leave you alone. Keep a map with no story attached, or tie it to the book it belongs to. Reopen it any time, keep changing it as the story grows, and drop it onto your storyboard as a card.
Beside the story it belongs to
Your maps live on the same desk as your draft, your cast, and your board, so the world and the words never drift apart. Export any map as a crisp SVG or PNG when you want it out in the world, on a website, or in the front of the book.
Running a D&D campaign?
Plenty of our map makers are DMs and players. These posts show how tables use the map maker, character cards and session notes together, without replacing your virtual tabletop.
- A world map that grows every session
- How to make a town map for your campaign in 20 minutes
- One page and a map: a player primer for your homebrew world
- How to keep track of NPCs
- All twelve posts for D&D players and DMs
Dungeons & Dragons and D&D are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC. Inkling is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Wizards of the Coast.
Free to build. A Map Pass to put it in print.
No card to start. Build a realm or a city on real streets in a minute, name it, download it. Every map you make is yours to publish and sell, even the ones from your free trial. When it is going in your book, the pass gives you the print-ready files, priced like a paperback.
- Every stamp, beast and drawing tool
- Every style except Gilded Night
- Two maps kept; after the trial they stay safe, view-only
- Two picture downloads with a small "Made with Inkling" label
- Four of the twelve real-street cities
- Plus the writing desk, up to three stories
- Ready for your book: print, poster and SVG files, without the "Made with Inkling" label
- Unlimited kept maps, realms and cities
- All twelve real-street cities, a city map for every town
- Gilded Night, the special-edition style
- Unlimited downloads in every size
- Everything in Map Pass
- The whole writing desk: stories, recaps, covers, characters, storyboard
- Write the story of any place straight from its map
All of it. In one place.
This isn't five apps stitched together. Your storyboard, your cast, your maps, your covers, and the story itself all live on one desk, right beside the words. Nothing to sync between tools. No five separate subscriptions. Just everything a writer needs, finally in the same place.
Your whole writing desk, in one place
Start free today. Bring one story in, and see how much lighter it feels with everything beside it.