With thanks to the folks at Briganti, I’ve been taking a look at their TTRPG map maker, Dungeon Alchemist. This one is much more of a tool, rather than a toy, but provides an exceptional resource for Dungeon Masters or Games Masters at any level. Due to the functional nature, our Parent’s guide is a little slimmer, but we’ve still got our full video and written review to let you know whether Dungeon Alchemist is worth it here in early access.
The Basics – What is Dungeon Alchemist About?
It’s a bit of a strange one for us, as while it’s available through Steam, Dungeon Alchemist is far from a game in the way which we typically think about it. The title allows for Dungeon Masters (or just those who love map making) to create buildings and landscapes for their favourite tabletop RPG systems. It’s suitable for pretty much any fantasy RPG, and while it’s not currently possible to make futuristic landscapes it’s entirely possible that this might crop up through development.
The software provides nine terrain types currently, each with options to customise the layout and base plant life for your map. The system will then generate the landscape to the size you need, or for a number of international standard paper sizes if you plan on printing it out. It’s also of course possible to create digital maps to nearly any size, which will rely more than anything else on the processing power of your machine. Once created, maps can be exported into different virtual tabletop environments, which will include line of sight and lighting detail from the settings you create.
Once you have created your base landscape, it’s incredibly easy to draw on rooms of various shapes and sizes. When you have the room boundary to your liking, a click of a button will see Dungeon Alchemist populate it based on your selection of building and room types. There are ten building styles currently, each of which come with several relevant internal room types to fit that setting. If you’re looking to make a decent-looking basic map quickly, this will let you create a sprawling map, castle, dungeon or small village in a matter of literally seconds.
Can I Customise Buildings in Dungeon Alchemist?
It’s absolutely possible to customise your settings in Dungeon Alchemist. This is arguably where the real power of the software lies. It’s entirely possible to create rooms, even without populating them with items, lighting or walls, and place these manually afterwards. Or, creators can pull together AI-populated buildings and rooms, and edit every aspect of them afterwards.
This includes adding to or removing tile spaces, adding, moving or removing doors and windows, and working with every item in the room. It’s possible to move and rotate every item, and when turning collision detection off you can also move items within each other and raise and lower them as needed. You can also change colours, and for lighting or items which contain lighting it’s possible to change the colour and intensity of light – a factor which will pull through to virtual tabletop solutions.
There are also a large number of editable chalk boards, notice boards, signage and portraits which allow you to replace images with pictures from your own desktop. You can delve into the resources library and place items individually, or use the AI item painter to populate maps quickly and effectively.
If there’s an item you can’t find in game, you can also use abstract walls and floor panels which act as a green screen of sorts. Doing this will allow you to place your own drawings anywhere within your environment. It’s very silly, but I created a simple PNG of a thin white line to allow me to make my very own football pitch.
Can I Share My Creations?
As well as exporting their environments to print or VTT, creators can also upload them to Dungeon Alchemist’s Steam Workshop. This will let other players view and download your environment, as well as giving you access to their uploaded creations too. There are somewhere north of 4,300 different maps on there currently, including a large number of player-created maps of real TTRPG campaign locations (such as Axeholm from D&D’s Dragon of Icespire Peak adventure).
The best thing is, if you see something you don’t like on another player’s map, or if you see something you would like to know more about to include in your maps, you can easily edit or reverse engineer them, after downloading.
Is Dungeon Alchemist Safe for Children?
As a tool, rather than a toy, Dungeon Alchemist is not currently rated by PEGI or the ESRB (and we doubt that it will be even after release). In terms of troubling content, there’s not much in here which gives us a great amount of pause. The software does include darker magic items, including skull items and even landscapes, and it’s even possible to create rivers, canals or pools of blood.
However, it’s all presented within a fairly tame setting. It’s certainly one which will get players of all ages to think creatively, and it’s one I wouldn’t hate our Micro-Bandits getting their hands on.
The Run Down – Our Early Access Rating for Dungeon Alchemist
As an Early Access title it’s one which we will, of course, not be providing final ratings for at this point. With that said, most of the time it’s generally hard to believe that this is an early access system. Dungeon Alchemist already contains a whole range of building types and items, and allows a fast and entirely customisable solution for people looking to create maps for both tabletop and virtual tabletop play.
There are some things which we’d like to see in here. First and foremost, the title does not currently have multi-level support, and doesn’t show building roofs at this time. It’s not designed as a VTT itself, but We’d be very happy to use it to host an in-person campaign if not for the current lack of fog of war. It would also be incredible if we could rotate created buildings, and set AI-generated walls and paths away from the right angle designs we currently have.
But it should definitely be noted that these features are already included in Dungeon Alchemist’s lengthy development roadmap, with the development team actively working on the title and bringing regular updates as well as weekly community initiatives and competitions.
As it’s not been designed as a game, Dungeon Alchemist doesn’t provide any audio output at this time, but the visuals are really quite lovely. Maps can be designed and edited in a straight 2D top-down view, 3D top-down or an isometric 3D view as well. On top of this, there’s also the option to control a cinematic camera, or even view maps from the perspective of tokens you place in the environment.
Dungeon Alchemist provides a number of standard mini tokens within the title, but you can also import your own custom Hero Forge 3D miniatures if you have them. If you do dip into a character-eye-view, you can also walk around the map to move the token.
It’s in this first-person view that the lighting effects really shine, but even from a 2D top-down perspective fire, fog, water and machinery effects really do provide a sense of atmosphere. It’s great that these lighting effects also carry over to VTTs, as well as providing a great representation on the Dungeon Alchemist map itself.
Another real benefit here is that the procedural AI has been trained entirely in house. This means that it’s not infringing on creative properties of DMs, players or creators, and it’s really put our mind at ease in a world with increasing concerns on the use of artificial intelligence.
There is so much that Dungeon Alchemist can do that I’ve often forgotten that it’s still in early access. Briganti are really looking to develop this alongside players, and the roadmap on Upvoty is largely driven by players’ votes to ensure they are working on what matters to creators.
It is still early access, but Dungeon Alchemist is already getting a vote of confidence from us here. We’re really looking forward to seeing what they have to add in future, as it progresses towards full launch, with more room and building types, more items and more features. If you’re a DM, GM or just love creating maps in general, Dungeon Alchemist is well worth jumping into right now.
As ever, to provide this preview and common-sense parent’s guide, we received free copies of Dungeon Alchemist from the folks at Briganti.
