Autorealm is a software you can download in the link that is designed for creating maps for Table Top Roleplaying games. It can be used to create world maps, settlements, and dungeons. Autorealm is a versatile system that can allow for plenty of successful maps. It also has a steep learning curve, which may turn you off if looking for an easy way to start making the dungeon map.
Figure 1: Autorealm Map
Pen and Paper is self explanatory. All you need is paper and writing utensil to start working. I have switched over to this method as it allows me more control than I have with some of the other methods. It also allows me to work on things at any place with arm room, and not have to worry about my laptop dying. It's harder to make backups of these maps though, which might lead to a few instances of you desperately blowing on the paper to save it from the spilled drink.White board, is another interesting method. Should you have a large white board you can lay it on top of the play area and just sketch out the dungeon map as the players explore it. Whenever the dungeon is done just erase it. The downside of this is that the DM would need to have a sketched out version of the dungeon on their own to work with in the first place, which means they are simply blowing up their initial dungeon idea.
Paint.net is a more robust version of Microsoft paint, which you can use that instead of downloading pain.net if you want. With paint.net though it makes it easier to add text next to certain rooms like, Goblin Den, and so on. It allows you to make simple lines and shapes, and number rooms. Only significant downside is that it doesn't allow you to do much more than that, unless you begin photo shopping pictures of fantasy places to make your map which would be more time consuming than all the other options.
Donjon is a site full of random generators. The above link is to the 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons dungeon generator. This is useful in that, you don't have to do much. All you would have to do is provide a link if doing a digital session, or print it out for your in person one. It does prevent you from giving your own personal touch to everything, but that might be something that's fine for your campaign.
Figure 2: Pain.net and Autorealm in tandem
Finally you can simply mix everything in whatever way you want. Figure 2 is a map I made for a forum game. I created to border in pain.net then saved the whole thing as a jpeg file. Next I inserted the jpeg into autorealm which allowed me to add icons and text. Then I saved that one as a png and opened it up in paint.net to fix up the lines, and create the sea color. After which I put a multiply overlap on top of the land in differing colors to create. Upon completion I had the Kingdom of Doumore with a political map of its duchies.
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figures 3 and 4 offer similar stories. In them I used donjon to create a world map I liked. After which I colored in and fixed edges of the continents, even copying pasting portions of other maps I disliked to create new continents. In figure 4 I placed the letters in autorealm, and figure 3 I added in counties which I planned for players to conquer with nations.While those last three weren't of dungeons the point is that any method or culmination of them can work for you. Me, I'm sticking with pen and paper for this dungeon. I just need to figure out if I want a more abstract "bird's eye view" of the dungeon layout, or a semi-detailed isometric representation.
Next post we'll actually start creating maps for the dungeon and planning out the characters involved and so forth.
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