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Alright, here's the situation. You can only buy three Map Packs and three Flip Mats, so you decide to get those that are most useful. Which three do you buy of each? Which ones do you find yourself using more often than others? It doesn't matter if they are currently in print or not. Assume you've got all the APs, but none of the GameMaster/Pathfinder stand alone adventures.
I'm asking because I want to pick some up, but I really want to get the ones that will provide me the most bang for my buck.
Alright, here's the situation. You can only buy three Map Packs and three Flip Mats, so you decide to get those that are most useful. Which three do you buy of each? Which ones do you find yourself using more often than others? It doesn't matter if they are currently in print or not. Assume you've got all the APs, but none of the GameMaster/Pathfinder stand alone adventures.
I'm asking because I want to pick some up, but I really want to get the ones that will provide me the most bang for my buck.
With the flip-mats, your biggest bang for the buck will come from the most generic of them. My top three in this situation would be:
The woodlands and/ or river crossing both are amazing and between the 4 sides you can make nearly any outdoor encounter really come alive. It's tough to decide, if you do a lot of outdoor encounters I suggest both. These two are my most used maps overall.
Waterfront Tavern is awesome. You can use it for any tavern encounters and a lot of water encounters. Works perfectly with the waterfront map pack (which I highly recommend also).
If you might be going into the desert the desert flip mat is also excellent but it's less used because we don't go into the desert much. It works fairly well for any sparsely vegitated area though.
I'm not sure I have another recommendation for flip mats because most of the rest are fairly situational. If you do much outdoors/ forest stuff at all then you will get tons of use from the first two I mentioned and they are well worth it.
As for map packs. They are also fairly situational. If you are doing a lot of city encounters you will use a different set of maps than a outdoor heavy campaign. The maps packs I own my favorite is the waterfront. Tied for second is probably the farm and the slums.
I have the ancient forest and elven city ones but I don't care for either. The ancient forest is too dark and I just can't see building a lot of encounters using it (especially compared to the flip mats I mentioned above). The elven city is... I just don't like it, maybe it's a taste thing.
Other than the forest packs I mentioned at first the maps are almost all situational. For a lot of groups maybe the sewers and the dungeon ones would be the best, I don't have them so I can't really speak about them too much. Likely the caverns and sewers will be my next purchase.
I've talked mostly about the products I already have so there are likely some other map packs and flip mats that are great but it's hard for me to recommend them based on the preview pics only (which you can see as well as I can). My suggestion is to go with maps which are more generic rather than highly specific ones as the generic ones will get more use.
I have gotten a lot of use out of City Market, both Taverns, and the Woodlands Flip-Mats.
I also tend to use Map Pack: Caravan a lot, because the different wagons are essentially modular and work in a number of different arrangements.
Oo... I forgot about the Caravan pack. I need to add that to my queue of stuff I want to get. Way too many caravan encounters.
I own the basic (blank) flip map which is great. I've started blutacking map cards to it and then drawing the gaps between them with dry erase markers (I use dry erase in case I accidentally mark the map cards--easier to rub off!). That way I can get varied kinds of terrain even when using the same map cards over and over.
I also have the Dungeon flip map, which is gorgeously designed, but how often are you going to use the same dungeon layout over and over? (Unless you're going to run Crypt of the Everflame over and over. Which you might.)
My favorite map cards are the City, Slums, and Tavern packs--I use bits and pieces of them together to make various urban and village terrains.
I'll have to pick up the Woodlands flip map. Seems popular (I have the forest map cards, but I can see the merit in having the flip map instead).
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll look into some of those, although I was leaning towards the flip mats suggested here.
Are there any plans to reprint the out of print maps?
I really doubt it.
This is a paraphrase of my recollections of what the paizo staff said:
Reprints of most products are unlikely because demand for them is generally quite high when they are initially released then really low after that. Reprints generally don't sell well.
Again, that's just from my recollections but they have definitely said reprints of maps specifically are unlikely.
I *think* they also said they are more likely to do a similar, but new flip-map in the future if one is particularly popular.
I really like the back of the Keep flip-map - green forest with paths. The Keep itself is quite nice as well (I use it for the Keep in PF #3). The darklands one is also useful.
Flip-Mat: Tavern sold out really fast, but doing a reprint means not doing a new one, and a reprint is likely to get fewer orders than a new one.
We'd like to do it and it would make some amount of sense (I mean, it's a tavern), but we just don't have that money sitting around for "extra" products.
At least not until you guys buy more of the maps mentioned in this thread. :)
Seriously, the best bet is to try to get these things before we sell out.
Sounds like part of why people like the Tavern flip mat is the grass flipside, so if Tavern can't be reprinted, hopefully a flip mat with the grass back could be done again (looks like the Bandit Outpost is going to have something like that).
I'll reiterate that the inn map pack is pretty cool--yes you have to assemble, but it's three inns in one package.
Flip-Mat: Tavern sold out really fast, but doing a reprint means not doing a new one, and a reprint is likely to get fewer orders than a new one.
We'd like to do it and it would make some amount of sense (I mean, it's a tavern), but we just don't have that money sitting around for "extra" products.
At least not until you guys buy more of the maps mentioned in this thread. :)
Seriously, the best bet is to try to get these things before we sell out.
Unfortunately I took a break from RPG's and buying stuff for them about the time Paizo lost the license to produce Dragon and Dungeon, so never picked up any of these. Recently I've gotten bit by the bug again when I saw the Pathfinder RPG in my local store. I've now purchased almost all the AP's and subscribed to them and the RPG. I've also picked up most of the Companion and Chronicles books. I've also picked up a bunch of the miniatures and other card decks as well. I've hit this full steam, but now the funds are running thin! I want to pick up some of the remaining items I really want and slow down.
If you were to do a new Tavern that was just as good as the old one, I'd be perfectly happy with that...well maybe not. The completest in my will agonize over not having it. This won't be the first time I've gone crazy over missing something for a collection! Have no fear I will be buying a few of the more useful flip mats and map packs.
I have the Original Tavern flip-mat (with a blank grassy reverse) and Waterfront Tavern (with a grey seawater reverse).
Definitely buy the Basic Flip-Mat as well. I use the Waterfront Tavern reverse for "generic dungeons", because it has a fairly neutral gray color. However, the reverse of both taverns is awfully dark, and the markers don't show up as well.
A fellow DM has very well-worn copies of the original and city squareSteel Sqwire flip mat. The markers show up better on these lighter maps than the ones I have, so I covet the Basic Flip-Mat greatly. After the Basic map, I'll probably get Woodlands.
The only map pack I have is Waterfront, which I haven't gotten a chance to use yet. It has a pair of boats, which is useful, but I think you can't write on them with the markers.
Personally, I'd prefer that Paizo makes new tavern maps rather than just reprinting the old ones. In our games, we tend to travel a lot from tavern to tavern, and I don't want to reuse the same tavern map for every location, but for the ones they'll come back to a lot. It'd also be nice if the reverse was a little bit lighter.
For other regular locations, I'm planning on getting some Gaming Paper, so I can draw them out in advance and then reuse the map.
These are extraordinarily useful products for us, the most useful stuff outside the core rulebook and dice.
Seriously, the best bet is to try to get these things before we sell out.
O ja. Things like the Arena and the Theater aren't going to be as useful as taverns and woodland campsites (Cathedral is close), but those are absolutely gorgeous maps, and whenever you have some encounters in places like that, it'd be fantastic to have such a great map to run it on. I almost think they're worth buying now for use when running encounters possibly years from now.
I wish the Paizo pages for the flip-mats had better pictures of the reverse side. The reverse can be as or more useful than the obverse.
I wonder how a reprint of the tavern map would work with a GameMastery maps subscription.
