Real levels.
Tiles and blocks, full and half walls, bridges and caves, each on its own level.
FUN PROJECT
Tilegoblin.
A 3D battle map builder for D&D that I’m building for game masters. Every map is shaped by hand and brought to the table in the browser, one tile at a time.
In progress · public beta
tilegoblin.com
tilegoblin.com
THE STORY BEHIND THE PROJECT
Built for our table
I love playing D&D with my friends, but we never found a map builder that really fit how we play.
The ones that did enough weren’t much to look at, and the pretty ones didn’t do what we needed. So I decided to make one for us: maps built by hand, in 3D, on a grid with real levels. Walls have height, bridges span rivers and caves open up below the ground.
One rule I set early: the rules stay at the table. Distance is plain grid math, and the difference in height is there to see, not to calculate.
MADE IN THE EDITOR
Built tile by tile
A home.
Walls, a door and a bit of room for a story. Even heroes need somewhere to put their feet up.
A battle.
A forest clearing with an ambush waiting, right where the party’s careful plan meets the dice.
A secret.
A ruin to explore and something waiting beyond the light. Under the fog of war, some discoveries wait their turn.
WHAT I BUILT
A closer look
The editor
A map you build by handTiles, blocks, walls and wooden figures
Terrain is painted level by level, then the party moves across it. Every change is a single step that can be undone.
Wooden figures.
Heroes and monsters you drag onto any valid surface and turn with R.
A scene that reacts.
Doors, windows and chests open with a click, and the torches can be lit or put out.
Fog of war.
Paint fog over the parts of the map the party hasn’t found yet.
Measure.
Drag to measure distances, and keep the ones that matter on the map.
A view for the players.
A second window for the projector or TV, kept in sync with the DM’s screen.
Campaigns
The Campaign CodexEvery campaign in one book
After signing in, a book opens on a wooden table. Each campaign gets its own chapter, with a page of map cards and a table of contents up front.
Shared heroes.
The party belongs to the campaign, so the heroes follow you from map to map.
Saved to the cloud.
Maps save automatically, and a newer version is never silently overwritten.
The playful side
Letters to the Goblin KingEven the account settings are part of the story
Registering, resetting a password or deleting an account all happen in parchment letters to the Goblin King, sealed with wax. Besides the account matters, you can also send him a soup recipe of highly questionable origins, and the King writes back with his verdict.
To send a letter, you sign it by drawing an X. Deleting a map works the same way, so nothing disappears with a careless click.
THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND IT
Under the hood
- 3Dthree.js
The scene
React Three Fiber draws every map, figure and prop in the browser, on a single WebGL canvas.
- ACCOUNTSSupabase
Sign-in and saves
Email sign-in, campaigns and maps in the cloud, and private storage for portraits.
- EDITORReact · Zustand
One source of truth
The map lives in a single store with undo, and the 3D scene only draws what is in it.
Find this interesting? Let’s talk.
Whether you’re hiring or exploring what AI could do for your team, I’d be glad to hear from you.