Getting Started with Dungeon Scrawl

Here are the Dungeon Scrawl basics - everything you need to create and export your first map.

Navigation controls

Move the map around:

• Hold space
• Hold middle click
• Use the pan tool - at the very left of the toolbar
• [Mac] Swipe the trackpad with two fingers

Zoom in or out:

• Scroll (Ctrl + scroll on Mac)
• Use the + or - keys
• [Mac] Pinch the trackpad

Creating the map

By default, the rectangle tool is selected when you first load the tool. Drag to create a rectangle on the canvas. You’ve made your first room!

You can erase dungeon areas by pressing e to toggle erase mode (press e again to get back to draw mode). The erase/draw buttons can also be found in the bottom left.

Undo any change you make to the map with Ctrl+z (⌘+z on Mac). Redo with Ctrl+shift+z or Ctrl+y. You can also undo/redo from the edit menu in the top left.

Snapping

Snapping is enabled by default. This affects most of the tools, and you can toggle snapping with s.
The “snap division” refers to the fraction of one grid cell that tools will snap to. For example, a snap division of 1 / 2 (default) snaps to half a grid cell. 1 / 3 snaps to a third. The shortcut to change it is shift+s followed by a number.

Map settings

You can set map-level settings from the background layer. These include:

• Square/hex grid
• Isometric mode

Map style

The style presets on the left are a good place to get started. When a layer is selected, you can press the bottom half of these buttons to apply that style to the current layer.
When a dungeon layer is selected, you can use the properties panel on the right to control the layer style. The modifications you can make include:

• Hide or show pieces of the layer, such as walls, floor, shadow, shading, hatching.
• Change the colors, line widths, line roughness of various components of the dungeon.
• Change the grid style (clean, rough, dotted).

Doors and stairs

Use the door tool or stairs tool to add these to your map - you’ll find them towards the right of the bottom tool panel.

• The properties panel in the bottom left lets you change the colors, line widths, and style of doors and stairs.
• Once placed, use the object tool to move doors/stairs around.
• Delete a door/stairs object by selecting it with the object tool and pressing backspace.

If you don’t see the doors you’re placing, make sure the images layer is still on top. This is where doors and stairs go.

Walls

Use the wall tool (kinda looks like a “W”) to draw walls. Click to set points, double click to finish.

Erase walls by drawing over them with the rect tool. If the wall is inside the dungeon, you’ll need to be in draw mode.

Images

Select the images tab on the left to browse the included images. Click on any of them to add them to the map.

• Once images are added, use the object tool (very left of the toolbar) to move, scale, and rotate them.
• With multiple images selected, group them with g or the on-screen button. Ungroup with g.
• Press backspace to delete selected images.
• You can upload your own images by dragging them onto the canvas, or clicking the upload button next to the images search bar.
• Scale and rotate handles are hidden for small zoomed-out images. Zoom in to see them.

Saving

Before too long, make sure to save your map. Clicking File → Save from the top left will give you a save file that you can later load into Dungeon Scrawl using File → Open.

If you leave the page without saving your map, you will lose your progress!

Exporting

Once you’ve finished your dungeon, you’ll can export it so you can use it outside of Dungeon Scrawl. Click the download icon on the left to do this.

Exporting an image

The “png” export creates an image of your dungeon. Just press “Export”.

• The tool automatically chooses the export area based on the size of your dungeon. You can resize this area using the blue resize handles on the screen.
• “px per cell” controls the resolution of the output image. The default of 70 is a good resolution for most virtual tabletops, such as Roll20, FoundryVTT, or OwlbearRodeo. A higher px per cell is useful for print.

If your map is large, you might get a warning that the map resolution is too high to export. There’s a limit to the image size that Dungeon Scrawl can create in the browser. There are a couple of ways around this:

• Reduce the size of the exported area (using the drag handles on the canvas).
• [Pro users] Use the high-res export option - this uses Dungeon Scrawl servers to exceed browser limitations.

The exported image includes the map dimensions in the filename, which can be useful when importing into virtual tabletops.

Happy scrawling!