Fellow dungeon masters know the importance of having a vast library of maps at their disposal. These days, with more and more games taking place online, having animated maps for your virtual tabletop can help create an even more immersive experience for your players. While there are many great resources and a thriving community of mapmakers available, sometimes you just need to be able to roll your own. For those not graphically inclined to do so from scratch, Wildshape aims to make it easy to design animated, fully 3D, maps, and it can even act as a basic VTT all on its own.
Wildshape is currently available on Steam and offers the following features:
- Create functional battle maps in minutes, or pour over them adding intricate detail
- Bring your maps to life with rolling hills, rivers, a rotating sky, and animals
- Import/export your creations to share with the community
- Shoot film vignettes to dramatically introduce a scene
- Host your players as game master, and make changes to the map as you play
- View your maps from the traditional top-down perspective, or from any other angle – even walk the terrain from a character’s point of view
- Customize a square or hex grid, molding it to the terrain or laying it overtop
- Reveal the terrain gradually to your players using fog of war
- Call up dynamic weather and lighting effects on demand
- Roll dice and animate characters as they run, fight, and die!
Wildshape appears to be the perfect tool to create just the right map for any encounter you may be dreaming up. While I am personally a fan of Foundry VTT for hosting my weekly Dungeons & Dragons game, Wildshape looks to fill a void when it comes to designing maps where existing resources don’t quite fit the bill.
Wildshape is currently 10% off on Steam and more information can be found at wildshapevtt.com.