Horror battle map generator for places investigators should never enter

Set the scene the way you’d set the mood. A top-down, gridless map comes back in under a minute.

Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green, or any table that dims the lights

Horror is about the room before anything walks into it. Describe the ward, the lighthouse, or the square as your investigators would find it, and NeedAMap draws it from above with the trail on the floor, the boarded doors, and the candles still burning, ready for Roll20, Foundry VTT, Owlbear Rodeo, or print.

Every map is one place at encounter scale, so the dread has somewhere to sit: a padded cell, a rock the storm owns, a chapel the woods have taken back. Describe what was left behind and the map tells the story before anyone speaks.

Made from a description, word for word

Five horror maps from the library, each shown with the sentence that made it.

Abandoned asylum ward: horror battle map with rusted beds, padded cells, and a blood trail down the hall seen from above

Abandoned asylum ward

  • Square
  • 1K
  • Painted

The description

“Abandoned asylum ward, rusted beds, padded cells, a blood trail down the hall”

Cursed lighthouse on a storm-lashed rock: horror battle map with a spiral stair, breaking waves, and a wrecked rowboat

Cursed lighthouse

  • Square
  • 1K
  • Painted

The description

“Cursed lighthouse on a storm-lashed rock, spiral stairs, a wrecked rowboat”

Plague village square at night: horror battle map with boarded doors, a burning pyre, and hanging cages

Plague village square

  • Square
  • 1K
  • Painted

The description

“Plague village square at night, boarded doors, a burning pyre, hanging cages”

Overgrown chapel deep in the woods: horror battle map with a collapsed roof, open graves, and candles still lit

Overgrown chapel in the woods

  • Square
  • 1K
  • Painted

The description

“Overgrown chapel deep in the woods, collapsed roof, open graves, candles still lit”

Carnival funhouse: horror battle map with a cracked mirror maze, a stopped carousel, and an empty ticket booth

Carnival funhouse

  • Square
  • 1K
  • Painted

The description

“Horror carnival funhouse interior, cracked mirror maze, stopped carousel outside, empty ticket booth”

See all examples →

The scenes a horror campaign runs into

Asylums, hospitals, and institutions

Padded cells, rusted beds, the hall with the trail on the floor. Name what was left behind and the ward tells the story before anyone speaks.

Lighthouses, coasts, and cut-off places

A rock the storm owns, the spiral stair, the boat that will not get anyone home. Isolation is the encounter, so describe the one way in.

Villages under a curse

Boarded doors, a pyre in the square, cages on the gallows. Say what the village did about its problem and the map shows the evidence.

Chapels, graveyards, and the woods

Collapsed roofs, open graves, candles somebody keeps lighting. Sacred ground gone wrong gives a scene its cover and its dread.

Carnivals, theaters, and abandoned places

Mirror mazes, a carousel that stopped mid-turn, a ticket booth with the lights off. Describe what should be joyful and the wrongness does the rest.

Manors, crypts, and ritual chambers

The gothic staples. The example gallery shows a decaying Victorian manor and a candlelit ritual chamber with the descriptions that made them.

How it works

1

Describe the scene

Write it the way you’d narrate it: the ward, what’s on the floor, which cell door is open. One sentence made each map above. More detail gives you more control.

2

Pick the shape, resolution, and style

Square for a room, Wide for a road, Cinematic for the set piece. 1K for quick prep, 2K when players zoom in, 4K for print. Painted, Gritty, or Ink to match the campaign.

3

Download and drop it in

Under a minute later the map is in your library as a standard image. Drag it onto your VTT page, or print it.

The first description on this page, exactly as typed

“Abandoned asylum ward, rusted beds, padded cells, a blood trail down the hall”

The full walkthrough →

An engine built for one thing

Every map runs through rules written for the table, so what comes back is something you can play on.

Drawn straight down

Flat and overhead, no tilt, so tokens sit square on the floor.

Empty of figures

No people or creatures baked in. Your tokens are the only ones on the map.

Edge to edge

No borders, titles, or compass roses to crop away. What you download goes straight on the table.

Faithful to your words

What you describe wins: the content, the lighting, the layout. Painted, Gritty, and Ink change how it’s drawn, and the scene stays yours.

Under the hood: current frontier image models, wrapped in map rules refined scene by scene since the first tavern.

5 free maps

when you sign up, no credit card

Under a minute

from description to finished map

Credits come back

automatically if a generation fails

Commercial use

allowed on every tier, including free

Related pages

Common questions

Yes. Describe the light source, a burning pyre, candles, moonlight through a broken roof, and the map is drawn dim around it. The image still reads at the table, and your VTT’s own lighting and fog handle the rest.

Blood, wreckage, and the signs of what happened, yes. The engine draws every scene empty of people and creatures, so the bodies, the cultists, and the thing in the dark are your tokens to place.

Yes. A haunted chapel is a haunted chapel. Describe it and use the map with whichever system your table runs.

No grid lines are drawn on the image. Roll20, Foundry VTT, and Owlbear Rodeo each overlay their own grid on an imported map, so you set the square size once in the VTT and nothing on the image fights the alignment.

Your first 5 maps are free at 1K resolution, with no credit card. After that, a 1K map costs 1 credit, 2K costs 2, and 4K costs 4. The monthly plan is $4 for 15 credits, rolling over up to 30, and a $3 pack adds 10 credits that never expire.

Yes. Commercial use is allowed on every tier, including the free one. Run paid sessions with them, put them in a module you sell, or print them for a convention table.

Cursed lighthouse battle map, shown behind the sign-up call to action

Your next investigation, mapped in under a minute

5 free maps, no credit card required.

Notify me at launch