ArtificeDrawing the maps
Notes on Artifice battle maps — real 5ft squares, a 3D tabletop, and maps generated as your party travels so the adventure never runs out of ground.
A map in Artifice has two jobs. It has to look like somewhere worth fighting, and it has to give the rules engine an exact answer to every question about distance. A map that is merely a pretty picture is useless to a rules engine, and a grid with nothing on it is useless to everyone else.
The grid is not decoration
Every map is played on a true 5ft square grid, and the grid is the map’s actual coordinate system rather than a texture laid over the top. This is the difference between a virtual tabletop and a shared image.
Because the squares are real, the engine can answer questions without anybody eyeballing them: whether the captain is within reach, whether that dash across the road is inside your movement or one square past it, whether stepping away from the bandit beside you provokes an opportunity attack. Every move is an ordered path of squares, and the engine checks each step before your miniature takes it.
A tabletop, not a picture
The map is laid out as a 3D tabletop. Your party and everything they fight stand on it as 3D miniatures, and the dice are thrown on screen, so you watch the result land rather than reading a number.
When you choose where to move, the table shows you every square you can reach. Hover a destination and you see the route, what it costs, and how many feet you have left. If the route leaves an enemy’s reach, the line turns orange and the table points out exactly who gets a swing at you.
Maps that keep coming
Artifice generates its maps. When your party sets out for somewhere new, the Dungeon Master prepares the destination while you travel, and the scene opens on a map made for exactly that place in exactly this story.
That changes what a campaign can be. There is no fixed list of locations waiting for you to work through, and no edge of the world where the content runs out. Chase the thief into the marsh, follow the river to a village nobody has named yet, or turn around and go somewhere the Dungeon Master never planned for. The table is ready when you arrive.
Every map is new, drawn for your campaign and nobody else’s, and every one plays on the same exact 5ft grid. Wherever the story goes, there is ground to stand on.
Bring your own
Not yet. Today every map is generated by Artifice as your party travels. Uploading your own is something we would like to support, and when it arrives it will use the same 5ft grid as everything else.