Library maps, drawn from a seed

A library is where the party goes to read the one book that matters, and most map generators have nothing for it. Mapsmith draws the inside on two floors: a reading room with long desks, stacks and a copying room on the ground floor, and upstairs the deed room, the map room, the locked stacks and the room where the librarian sleeps. Every room is numbered and furnished and has a line on what’s there. The library has a librarian and a hook.

The ground floor of a library on a stone yard: a long reading room with two rows of desks and chairs, stairs at one end and shelves along the far wall, and three rooms behind it, two with shelves and one with a writing desk

The Old Library, ground floor. The same seed always draws the same library.

Make a library in your browser Mapsmith Pro, $6 once

What one library comes with

This is the one the button above opens, as Mapsmith wrote it:

About the place: “Scholars come from far off for one book it keeps locked away. The librarian is Sefton Blackwater.”
A hook: “Someone has been reading in the locked stacks at night.”
The reading room: “Silence, dust, and a cough that echoes.”
The copying room: “Slanted desks under the windows, and ink on everything.”
The old stacks: “Rolls and boxes, labelled in a hand nobody can read any more.” Hidden there: “A loose board with a purse under it.”
The deed room, upstairs: “Records of every birth, death and deed in town, more or less in order.”
The librarian’s room: “A candle, a cot, and a book open face down. Sefton Blackwater sleeps here.”
The locked stacks: “Shelves so close you go sideways between them.”

The upper floor of the same library: a landing with the stairs at one end and four rooms off it, numbered 5 to 8, three lined with shelves and one with a bed

Upstairs: rooms 5 to 8. Click a number on the live map to read it.

Change a word of the seed for another library, or pick another building from the same list: an inn, a temple, a guildhall, a bathhouse, barracks and more.

Into your virtual tabletop

Mapsmith Pro saves the floor you are looking at as a Universal VTT file (.dd2vtt): the players’ map with no numbers, plus every wall, door and window already placed. The shelves are walls too, so a reader in the stacks is out of sight from the door. This ground floor has 20 walls, 4 doors and 5 windows; upstairs has 22 walls, 4 doors and 4 windows.

The same ground floor as a virtual tabletop reads it: walls and shelves outlined in red, doors in blue and windows in green

Walls in red, doors in blue, windows in green. Without a key, the Save for virtual tabletop button shows you this for any map before you buy.

Foundry VTT: the Universal Battlemap Importer module reads the .dd2vtt as a scene with its walls and doors. Step by step.
Roll20: import the .dd2vtt and the walls and doors come in on the dynamic lighting layer.
Owlbear Rodeo: the Scene Importer extension with Dynamic Fog. Step by step.

Free, any map saves as a PNG named with its size in squares, so Owlbear Rodeo sets the grid itself. Pro is $6 once, not a subscription, and the same key saves towns, regions, dungeons and ships too.

Play it alone

Press Explore and the map hides: open the library one room at a time, with what you find rolled as you go. Search a room for secret doors on a 5 or 6. More on the solo crawl.

Where it runs

In your browser, free, with nothing to install, and on itch. If you keep your campaign in Obsidian, Mapsmith is a free plugin there (Community plugins, search Mapsmith), and the library sits in your note with a note for every room. One Pro key works in both.

Make a library The upper floor Mapsmith Pro, $6

Mapsmith is free and open source (MIT); Pro adds the VTT save. Made by Bananafest Destiny. The code was written with AI, and the textures under the maps (stone, wood) were made with an image generator; the maps themselves are drawn by code, and the Plain look uses no textures at all. Foundry VTT, Roll20, Owlbear Rodeo and Obsidian are their owners’ trademarks, named only to say what Mapsmith works with.