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One thing to keep in mind is that the judicious use of white space can often alleviate map-making problems.  You have to use Dungeon Tiles, but you can leave blank areas on the map (just make sure you export the grid so that the DM understands where the 1" squares are).  Then in Microsoft Word, you can overlay a text box on the map image and make it translucent with a specific color.  Voila, you have "blank tiles" that are any color you need them to be.  This is particularly useful for maps that include water, as there really aren't any good open water tiles in any of the sets.

As Wizards of the Coast releases the "Essentials" line of products throughout 2010, of which I believe there are three Dungeon Tiles master sets planned (dungeon, city, wilderness) you can expect that LFR will standardize on those sets (which are intended to be "evergreen" and therefore shouldn't have the out-of-print / hard-to-find / expensive-to-buy-on-ebay problems that plague the vast majority of the existing sets). 

The wording in the writer's guidelines is "With only very few exceptions which must be approved at all levels of the administration, maps should be built using Dungeon Tiles, a Wizards of the Coast product designed for DMs to produce fast, visually appealing tactical environments. You can take digital photos of your tile layouts and add appropriate marks in editing software or use a map program to assemble the maps and then add marks."

While you can use photos, that requires you to own every tile. Also, photos are not as easy to read for DMs as the tiles from PyMapper.

(If you want some humor, keep reading where it says, "In the near future, D&D Insider will have a
Dungeon Tiles Mapper application available for free"!)

Ok, seriously, you can do pretty good things and pretty creative things with the dungeon tiles. In general, keep in mind what you are trying to do with terrain and story. Do you have high and low areas? What kind of features? Indoors? Outdoors? As you get to know the tile sets, these types of questions start narrowing down which tiles can be used and you can come up with good ideas.

A featureless open room can play poorly. Thus, while you can use white space, I would caution that there should be a reason for it, such as "white featureless grid represents the ocean". White space can work well as pits, borders, featureless terrain such as sand, etc. PyMapper lets you shade the white grid space so you can make it more like the terrain you are emulating.

In designing rooms, keep them interesting but focused on the need at hand (not complex just for the sake of complexity). Look at the monsters to determine what foes need protection (the ranged artillery or controller, the ranged leader, etc.), what a lurker might need (shadowy corners, raised areas that block sight), what a skirmisher might need (terrain that divides up the fight and prevents a unified front, blocking terrain to move behind), what brutes might want (a choke point, perhaps, or a wall to hide behind until the squishies approach), and so on. I suspect these kinds of thoughts will produce a good map and a good impression with the writing director reviewing your work. During playtesting I look carefully at how terrain played.

(And I can level some self-criticism my way in that I really need to not always make such huge maps... especially if the area is not being used to its full extent. You want enough room for realistic maneuvering but not a huge space that will not be used, since it affects DM prep time, print costs, and/or tile setup).

The Yahoo group that Dave posted is pretty helpful. The guy making the software is always adding features and the group members are glad to take a look at any problems you experience.

In general, it should only take a very short time for you to get up and running and getting used to the program.

Feb 12, 2010 -- 4:37PM, MindWandererB wrote:

Feb 12, 2010 -- 3:30PM, Alphastream1 wrote:

(If you want some humor, keep reading where it says, "In the near future, D&D Insider will have a Dungeon Tiles Mapper application available for free"!)

You mean this?  It's been out since 2006.  Too bad they never updated it.

No, I mean't D&D Insider.  Jai's was released for LG!  (From the link Dave gave you can get to PyMapper, the current version of that tool).  I've been trying out Masterplan, but I'm not sure it is any better for tiles (though it has other tools useful to authors).