Home >> Games & Cards >> Role Playing Games

How to Make a Fantasy Grid Map With Excel 2007

Anything imagined by one person is always easier for others to see if it can be drawn or made. This is especially true for the different settings and worlds used for roleplaying games, where details like walls, rivers or traps can have a large effect on game play and need to be clear to all players. Instead of drawing maps of these settings on graph paper, they can also be created with Microsoft Excel 2007.

Things You'll Need

Clear tape

Instructions

Getting Ready
- 1
  Scan your drawn map into your computer and save the scan as a ".jpg" image file. Skip this step if you have downloaded a map from the Internet.
- 2
  Open Microsoft Excel 2007.
- 3
  Click on the "Margins" button in the "Page Setup" group which can be found in the "Page Layout" tab.
- 4
  Click on the "Custom Margins" button in the window that appears, then enter "0.5" in each of the text boxes labelled "Top," "Bottom," "Left," and "Right" to change the margins of printed pages to 1/2 inch.
Getting a Grid on Your Map
- 5
  Click on "Insert" from the menu along the top of the Excel 2007 window and then choose "Picture" from the menu that appears. Select "From File" to open a file search window.
- 6
  Click the image file that is the map that you want to make into a grid map. Click on the "Open" button to load this image into Excel 2007.
- 7
  Click anywhere on your uploaded image and drag it so that its top left corner completely covers cell "A1."
- 8
  Click on the top of the column labelled "A," press the "Shift" key and press your right arrow key until you have selected all of the columns that cross your image. Right=click on any of the selected columns, choose the "Column Width" option and type "1" in the text box labelled "Width."
- 9
  Click on the far left of the row labelled "1," press the "Shift" key and press your down arrow key until you have selected all of the rows that cross your image. Right-click on any of the selected rows and choose the "Column Height" option and type "1" in the text box labelled "Height."
Printing and Assembly
- 10
  Print your map. Save it if you want to keep an unaltered copy.
- 11
  Arrange the pages of your map on the floor or a table so that you can see all of it at once. Then cut all of the 1/2 inch borders from all of the pages in the middle of your map. Cut the 1/2-inch border from all of the sides of the pages on the edges of your map except for the sides that are on the outside.
- 12
  Attach all of the pieces of your map together by placing tape over the breaks between pages.

Role Playing Games