MapForge 1.0 is live! (Patreon)

Alright, let's get the tradition out of the way first: I'm sorry for the delay. I know, I know. But this time I have a really good excuse.

Bringing MapForge to Foundry V14 was, honestly, an odyssey. This module is huge. Way bigger than it has any right to be. And V14 changed a lot of things under the hood, which meant some parts of MapForge didn't just need a port, they needed to be rebuilt. There were days where I felt like I was renovating a house while living in it.

But here's the thing: I'm really, really happy with how it turned out. This 1.0 is the version of MapForge I always wanted to make. It's clean, it's pleasant to use, and it puts the canvas first. Less UI in your face, more map in front of you. Everything was designed around one question: does this feel good to use? And when the answer was no, it got reworked.

Now, real talk. MapForge is enormous and I'm one person. I can't promise you zero bugs, nobody honestly can. What I can promise is that on the other side of this module there's a GM who's been telling stories at the table for almost 30 years, who loves this community, and who will put in all the effort in the world to keep the updates coming and make this the nicest mapmaking tool inside Foundry. If something breaks, tell me, and I'll be on it.

Okay, enough apologizing. Let me show you the fun part.

So what's inside MapForge 1.0?

Assets

Everything starts here. Bring in your Dungeondraft packs or MapForge packs, and the library organizes itself with tags, search and filters that actually help you find that one barrel you saw three weeks ago. Your whole collection, ready to drag onto the map.

Floor/Tiles

This is where the map is born. Paint terrain like you're using a real brush: smooth continuous strokes, clean texture blending, organic edges where grass meets dirt. Or fill entire room shapes in one click when you're building a dungeon. It feels less like configuring a VTT and more like painting.

Walls

Draw walls, doors and windows in one flow, and here's my favorite part: doors are animated now. They actually swing open and close on the canvas. You pick the door texture right in the tool, place it, and it just works, walls and vision included. We put a lot of love into this flow because doors are the thing you place two hundred times per dungeon, so they'd better feel great.

Objects and Animated Objects

Props, furniture, roofs, all with quick placement, rotation and scaling that stays out of your way. And then the animated ones: fire, water, smoke, things that loop and breathe. Drop a campfire in a clearing and suddenly the map has a pulse.

Paths & Lines

Rivers, roads, cliffs, ship rigging, whatever flows across your map. Draw a stroke and it becomes a textured path that tapers naturally at the tips, like it was drawn by hand. Roads that fade into the wilderness, rivers that narrow into streams. This one is dangerously fun.

Lighting

Set the mood of the whole scene in a couple of clicks. Lighting presets that feel alive, layered lights with a hot core and a soft halo instead of flat circles, plus weather to top it off. The difference between "a map" and "a place" is usually lighting, and this tab is built around that idea.

Shadow & Highlight

The secret sauce. Paint depth directly onto the map: contact shadows under trees and furniture, rim light on cliff edges, soft darkness in the corners of a crypt. It's the tab that makes people ask "wait, you made this in Foundry?"

Prefabs

Built a tavern corner you're proud of? Capture it. Tables, chairs, lighting, shadows, everything becomes a prefab you can stamp into any future map. Your best work becomes your own asset library over time.

Multi-Level

This one deserves a special mention, because it's where most of the V14 blood, sweat and tears went. MapForge now builds on Foundry V14's native Scene Levels. Floors, stairs, openings, mezzanines, holes you can see through to the level below, all native, all in a guided workspace that walks you through it. Multi-level maps used to be the scary advanced topic. Not anymore.

Flatten and Export

When the map is done, Flatten optimizes the scene for play while keeping the essential parts editable, so your players get smooth performance and you keep the ability to tweak. And Export generates the final files and variants if you want to take your map anywhere else.

Go make something beautiful

That's MapForge 1.0. It took longer than I wanted, it fought me the whole way, and I couldn't be prouder of it. Thank you for the patience, for the support, and for being the kind of community that makes building tools like this worth every late night.

Now go forge some maps. And show me what you make, seriously, I love seeing them.

Gabú

How to get it

The easy part! MapForge is on the official Foundry package system now, so no manual downloads, no manifest links, none of that.

In Foundry, go to Add-on Modules, hit Install Module and search for MapForge. Install it right from there.

Launch your world and enable MapForge in Manage Modules.

On the scene you want to work on, open the Tile Controls on the left toolbar and look for the hammer icon. That's the MapForge editor. Click it and start forging.