So I'm completely new to all of this stuff. I've been hand drawing maps since early childhood and when one of my treasures was recently destroyed through the actions of the wife I decided it was probably time to learn how to do maps on a laptop instead.

Beyond just doing maps for fun I am currently dabbling in writing a novel and I run a D&D group for a good long time now out of a homebrew world which requires me to make new maps as they travel to new areas.


So my first question for people is what would be recommended for someone to start making maps (price is not an issue) who has no previous experience using software to draw maps.

Also I'm curious if there is an easy way I can make a map and add an overlay to it that when printed would be large enough for D&D miniatures so I can design encounter maps on the computer and just print them off.