The mean streets of the big city come alive with Flip-Mat: City Streets, setting the scene for a dark alley ambush, rooftop chases, or other urban encounters. Combine the mat with GameMastery Map Pack: Shops for building interiors designed specifically for use with this accessory or use the Flip-Mat on its own to provide your players with dynamic urban adventuring they won’t soon forget!
This portable, affordable map measures 24" x 30" unfolded, and 8" x 10" folded. Its coated surface can handle any dry erase, wet erase, or even permanent marker. Usable by experienced GMs and novices alike, GameMastery Flip-Mats fit perfectly into any Game Master’s arsenal!
On tabletops across the world, the Flip-Mat Revolution is changing the way players run their fantasy roleplaying games! Why take the time to sketch out ugly scenery on a smudgy plastic mat when dynamic encounters and easy clean-up is just a Flip away?
Cartographer: Corey Macourek
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-282-1
Flip-Mat: City Streets is designed to work together with Map Pack: Shops.
...that makes it really hard to see dry erase marker sketches that I use extensively in my game. If I had known that the map is this dark, I probably would not have bought it.
When used with map pack shops (or not) this flip-mat is a great product that has huge potential for a variety of adventures.
In regards for the backside having no buildings, this is perfectly understandable as another building design would limit the mat to just 2 different layouts. With the addition of the map pack shops this empty side can be laid out with what ever design you want, from a smaller town with only a few shops to all of the shops placed where ever you'd like (don't feel I should have to say this to role players but, use your imagination). What would have been great is if the map pack shops had the same shop from above on the reverse side, like the flip-mat has.
I only gave 4 stars as I feel its fullest use relies on the map pack shops complimenting it, and some people may not have this other product.
By itself, this Flip-Mat is not one of the best Paizo has made. The "bird's-eye" street view is fairly dull and uninteresting, as most of what you see are rooftops, The layout of the buildings is too bland, neither following a "high street" layout, which would have been useful for many city encounters, nor clustered in a cramped, "old-world" style, which would have made for interesting rooftop chases. The overall blue-grey colour scheme is also a little uninspired, as it implies too much concrete for a quasi-medieval city (maybe a brown or green look would be better?) Still, the colour (and the little touches like sewer grates), allows you to use it for more modern settings as well. The Flip-Mat also has a blank (or rather, paved) flip-side, which is a deal-breaker for many.
Where the mat comes into it's own is when it's used along with GameMastery Map Pack: Shops, as then you can lift the roof-tops off the buildings and look inside. While an interesting concept, it seems like it would have been better to just draw the flip-mat with the inner layouts of the buildings visible, rather than the rooftops, and skipped the Map Pack altogether.
The city street map is one which has been done many times by many companies, and this product on it's own doesn't measure up to the best of them. Still, if the two products (the Flip-Map and Map Pack) were to be reviewed together, the rating would probably be one or two stars higher, though in that case it would be harder to justify the combined price for the ability to selectively look inside buildings.
