Skip to content
Fablekeep
ESBuy Fablekeep

The Battlemap Forge

Build battle maps from layers — ground, elevation, water, paths, rooms, walls, objects and light — and publish them as scenes.

The Battlemap Forge builds battle maps from scratch: you paint the ground, raise hills and cliffs, run a river through it, lay paths, put up rooms and walls, place objects and lights. Then you publish it as a battle map, with its grid, walls, doors and lights ready for fog and vision.

Every map stays editable. Change it and publish again as often as you like: the fog, pins and templates on the scene are kept.

The Battlemap Forge with a published forest clearing map
The Battlemap Forge: your maps, as drafts or published

Start a new map

  1. In Battle maps, click Build a map. The Battlemap Forge lists the maps you’ve made, each marked Draft, Published or Changed since publish.
  2. Click New battle map.
  3. Give it a Name and choose where to Start from:
    • Blank sheet — one ground texture, ready to paint (you choose the size, grid and starting ground).
    • Generator — a complete map from a procedural generator.
    • Forest clearing, River cliff or Rocky canyon — a sample map to build on.
  4. Pick a Style: Inked (hand-inked illustration: rough ink outlines, watercolour shading) or Painted (realistic textures, soft light and shadow).
  5. Click Open the forge.
The New battle map dialog with the starting points and the Inked and Painted styles
New battle map: start blank, from a sample or from a generator

The editor

The tools are on the left, the map in the middle and the side panel on the right.

The Battlemap Forge editor with the tools, a forest clearing and the Layers panel
The editor: tools on the left, layers on the right

Tools

Group Tools
Select Select & move, Eraser
Ground and relief Texture paint, Raise ground, Lower ground, Cliff, Plateau / pit, Drop-off, Rock mass, Edge line
Water River, Lake / pond, Pool / fountain
Paths Path (dirt, gravel, cobbles, flagstones and more), Bridge
Buildings Room, Wall, Door / window, Stairs, Fence
Life Object, Scatter (trees, rocks, plants over an area), Light

Hover a tool to see what it does; the hint bar above the map explains the current one. Brush tools take [ and ] for the size, Space+drag pans, Ctrl+Z undoes and Ctrl+Y redoes. Changes save by themselves (Saved at the top).

Layers, selection and assets

The side panel has four tabs:

  • Layers — Ground, Elevation & cliffs, Water, Paths, Structures, Objects, Scatter and Lights. Hide a layer to leave it out of the render, or lock it so it can’t be selected.
  • Assets — the objects you can place: built-in art and the packs you imported (see Importing maps and asset packs). Search them, mark favourites, and click or drag one onto the map. The Prefabs tab holds ready-made groups (a lamp post with its light, a market stall) and the ones you saved yourself.
  • Selection — the properties of what you selected: size, rotation, style, and Duplicate, Up, Down and Delete.
  • Map — the map’s own settings, such as its size, grid and style.

Levels

Buildings can have several floors. In Levels at the bottom of the map, Add a floor above or Add a cellar below, and use Stairs to link them. The published scene keeps the levels, and you choose which one is on the TV.

Publish it

  1. Click Publish to scene at the top right.
  2. Set the Scene name and the Location where it appears in Battle maps.
  3. Click Publish. Fablekeep paints the map at full resolution and saves it as a battle map with a matching grid, walls, doors and lights.
  4. When it says Scene ready, click Open scene.
The Publish to a scene dialog with the scene name and location
Publish to a scene: name it, pick its place, and Fablekeep paints it

After a change, the button reads Update scene: it replaces the scene’s image and grid and keeps its fog, note pins, templates and snapshots. Turn on Publish as a new scene instead to keep the old one.