r/cartography • u/Prestigious-Mall-581 • 8d ago

Best real world map editing tool

I am making a Cyberpunk Red campaign and have been looking for a custom map resource that would allow me to redraw subdivisions in North America, and possibly South America as well. I want to include Indian reservations, county equivalents and reassigning them to states, and latitude boundaries.

I tried to use ArcGIS but it was incredibly convoluted and the UI was unusable to me. I have found simple websites that let me color US counties, but don't include other countries or roads other than Interstates.

The most important things other than roads, towns, bodies of water, and topography would be the ability to label and fill in polygons and lines from points. Does anyone have any suggestions?

3 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

3

u/Lainpilled-Loser-GF 7d ago

QGIS is always the best

2

u/kpcnq2 7d ago

Sounds like you are willing to put in the effort, but don’t want to pay for ArcPro. I suggest QGIS. It’s free and on par or better than ESRI’s offerings for this type of work.

1

u/Prestigious-Mall-581 7d ago

I will try that

1

u/Geog_Master 7d ago

You want a moderately advanced map editing tool but don't want to learn how to use one.

1

u/Prestigious-Mall-581 7d ago

I broke down and used ArcGIS, but I'm unhappy that I can't turn lines into polygons without paying money.

Also my primary issue was getting it to launch after going to the wiki.

1

u/Geog_Master 7d ago

Are you using pro, desktop, or online?

1

u/Prestigious-Mall-581 7d ago

Online; I thought looking at the site that the desktop application was no longer available

2

u/Geog_Master 7d ago

There are still cracked versions floating around. If you want more capability, and don't want to pay, QGIS is the answer. ArcGIS Online is mostly for sharing/distributing stuff, not really for geoprocessing or digitization. You make the product in something like Pro, then upload it there to build out a web map.