What do your battle maps look like?


Gamer Life General Discussion


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I'm curious to know what other peoples' table tops look like, particularly their battle maps.

Do you use digital print outs, hand-drawn illustrations, graph paper, purchased products, what? Please share your pics.

If I have to make a map at all, it usually ends up looking something like this. (I actually rolled for forest terrain features for every square at the edge of the clearing; turns out druids and rangers would seriously rock in forests if GMs ever bothered to generate the proper maps.)

The Exchange

I use a large Chessex erasable map. And although my battlefields (exterior in particular) tend to have a lot of detail of the high ground / difficult terrain / water hazard / existing light levels types, I use a very simple, almost logo-like style to show those features.

This abstract method is a challenge to the players to fill in all the details from my description. With a good description, each of the PCs will fill in the blanks (and usually make it more specific, and more epic, than any art I might find.)

I'm not dissing the more directly representative style that companies like GameMastery support, of course. I'm sure my apprenticeship years in AD&D have a lot to do with this style. (TSR used to have the motto, 'Products of your imagination.')


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My table top is a 4'x8' sheet of melamine (sometimes called showerboard) which works as a dry-erase surface. I cut a 1" gride into this with a straight edge and a razor knife. It's great for drawing huge maps in colored DE markers. Additionally I use the reaper bones and bones II props and Itar's Workshop dungeon pieces that arrived recently. Finally, I enjoy making set pieces when I'm expecting epic fights.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Don't the grooves you carved into the showerboard ultimately get stained with the dry erase marker?

Sovereign Court

We use d&d tiles + miniatures (d&d, pathfinder and whatever else that fits as a miniature).

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Pathfinder Flip-mats and wet erase markers. My wife will print the actual maps to scale on paper, but I tend to just sketch rough outlines on blank grids.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Nice pics everyone! Keep it up! :P


At work, but I'll post when I get home.

RE:showerboard cuts
The grooves are razor thin, and the repeated marker-ing actually serves to darken and define them better.


One of my players has an official battlemat, but we don't really have the room for it (we play sitting around on couches and my GM's table isn't large enough for it. So we just use a 2x3 white erase board. Sorry, no pictures of it, though.

Sovereign Court

Generally we use the battlemaps and wet erase markers.

I have used flip maps, 4e tiles, graph paper, printed Campaign Cartographer maps and plain old imagination.


Our primary battle map is a blank grid on bulletproof plasticy-stuff, on a legged frame. We have 4 smaller unframed grids of similar make. We have a couple 3.5 paper grid maps. Dungeon tiles, a few of those location maps Paiso has published, a number of smaller maps from various sources (mostly Dragon magazine) and old Hero's Quest tiles and minis.


I run a campaign at the local game shop where we use a blank battlemat in addition to hand drawn dungeons on thick poster board for specific modules such as the Crypt of the Everflame.


As promised (for once), here's a pic and another one from the other end of the table.


We went slightly more hi tech in my group. We used the Chessex map for years but I really wanted to devise some means of having a digital tabletop without spending thousands.

Now we have this as a set up running the maps directly on MapTools from my laptop. Sometimes we use miniatures sometimes not. I love the look on player's faces when I call for a perception check and then unmask a hidden layer that contains a huge monster :) The biggest advantage is instant rulings on thing like sight-lines, light, area of effect and so on.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
OilHorse wrote:

Generally we use the battlemaps and wet erase markers.

I have used flip maps, 4e tiles, graph paper, printed Campaign Cartographer maps and plain old imagination.

This is how my group does it most of the time in real life (pics like the one I posted above are generally used during PbP games).

GM-JZ wrote:

We went slightly more hi tech in my group. We used the Chessex map for years but I really wanted to devise some means of having a digital tabletop without spending thousands.

Now we have this as a set up running the maps directly on MapTools from my laptop. Sometimes we use miniatures sometimes not. I love the look on player's faces when I call for a perception check and then unmask a hidden layer that contains a huge monster :) The biggest advantage is instant rulings on thing like sight-lines, light, area of effect and so on.

Ooh. I'm impressed! Is that really just a flat screen TV laid flat? How on earth is that not spending thousands? Isn't a TV like that ~3k? How do you keep from scratching the screen, or having it crack under its own weight? God forbid someone spills a soda or accidentally kicks one of the tables out from under it! You must have a heck of a protection plan.

Any chance you could show us some more pics, or possibly even a video of how you mask/unmask things and get "instant rulings"? What software do you use?

Sorry for all the questions. I think I may want to try and emulate this setup.


Ravingdork - we are next playing tabletop on Saturday so I'll be sure to take some more pics and a video.

The TV was free, I was lucky to get one from my brother who works in a electronics shop. It came in damaged but was repairable. I agree it is the absolute biggest cost in this set up but then having done it now, I wouldn't be opposed to using my own regular TV. I thought it would have terrible overheating issues but we don't tend to have anything like that, it is perfectly stable under it's own weight and drinks are strictly kept in screw-top bottles and to one side of the table!

To protect the screen I tried a few different things like a plastic coating, plexi-glass etc but nothing worked because the miniatures tended to appear to 'hover' above the grid and it was sometimes difficult at an angle to see exactly where everyone was.

So... in the end I just put a small white board on one end of the table and get everyone to roll on that. Like I said we sometimes use miniatures, but not always and I love being able to quickly pull up a jpeg of the Shadow Demon or Chuul or whatever they are fighting to show them a really nice detailed picture and just leave it in one corner of the screen as a reminder.

The sight lines, light etc is all provided by MapTools which is free and has a little bit of a learning curve but nothing major. With it you can set the vision of the tokens that represent the characters (whether they have normal, low-light or darkvision) and turn on fog of war so as you move the token only things the character can actually see are revealed. It's difficult to explain but it's very cool on the table. I think people do a similar thing with Roll20.


Oh and when you say kick one of the tables out from it I know what you mean now, it's actually a single dining table that extends so it's very stable - I've just let the middle flap down because that's where the power cord goes into the back of the TV :/


laser-printed maps to-scale directly from the scenario/module/ap
paizo flip mats/map packs
terraclips 3d terrain for some things

very rarely do I draw a map

Franchisee - Game Kastle College Park

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If you've got access to basic graphics software, it's not that difficult to make your own maps. With help of textures from sites like CGTextures.com or Texture King, you can make basic backgrounds pretty easy. Map icons can be difficult, but there are sets online.

Finally, Dungeonographer (which is also FREE!!!)has a function for changing your basic maps into finished battlemaps. You've still got to print and laminate them (if you want them to be reusable) for physical game play but they are great for VTTs.

Here's one that I made of a cabin in the woods near a stream.


Either a quick, roughly drawn map on paper or if I feel like having something prepped ahead of time, I will use dry erase battlemat with the map already drawn on it. Though more often than not, I find I am returning to more and more Theater of Mind style of combat.


my alternative may or may not be having blando kidnapped and chained to a desk in my basement


Well, we had a big L-shaped table that we had put a grid on, but it took up our whole dining room. There's pics posted somewhere that I'm not going to go digging for. Anyways, with the little one arriving, it had to go. Now I took our old (new?...current) dining room table, ordered a roll of gaming paper and bought a sheet of plexiglass. 40 bucks spent, and I have a 2.5' x 4.5' wet/dry erase gaming table. And should something happen to the paper I have enough left to cover the table again.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I just thought I'd add some of these beauties.


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Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I lusted after them for years, then finally broke down and splurged on Dwarven Forge. With the addition of homemade trees, lichen from a model railroading shop and some leftover polystyrene fillers from a kitchen project, we got this and this and this.

Can anyone recognize...

Spoiler:
Thistletop and Ripnugget's throne room?

Scarab Sages

I use a similar setup to the one posted earlier, digital. Cost is not that much. TV was $400-500 if I recall. Uses plexiglass with some spacers to keep out most dust/hair. MapTools is hosted on one computer, the player monitor joins from a second instance.

Been running this way since Legacy of Fire. Can't go back to marker and mat. Being able to track stats/statuses/hp on tokens is so much easier then the previous methods. :D The learning curve is a bit high, as GM-JZ mentioned, but not impassable. The Pathfinder Framework makes things *much* easier.

After years of doing it this way, I now have a nice collection of token images for monsters/NPCs from half a dozen APs and four Bestiaries, so grabbing a monster on the fly is simple. The latest framework also knows how to parse a statblock, so I can just copy one in from the Archives of Nethys, it converts that into the token stats, and away I go.


Wheldrake wrote:

I lusted after them for years, then finally broke down and splurged on Dwarven Forge. With the addition of homemade trees, lichen from a model railroading shop and some leftover polystyrene fillers from a kitchen project, we got this and this and this.

Can anyone recognize...
** spoiler omitted **

Those are awesome!

....

I have a couple of pads of 27" x 34" paper with 1" grid. Just before my group gets to the next book of the path they're in I pre-draw the important maps and just peel away as they progress. It's worked well for when they need to go back to a previous place (like multi-story dungeons). I use dry-erase markers and the foldable blank map from the beginners box when I have to do something on the fly.


Ok, so here's some pics:

First is the old table, which got moved out last summer. The wife said that with the baby coming the table had to go, so it is currently in storage. As much as I loved having that massive table, it really is more trouble than it's worth. You could barely get by it to the living room, and everything in the house wound up getting piled on top of it.

And here's the current table. Minis placed to show scale since the grid wasn't showing up in the pictures, though the grid is perfectly visible in person. Haven't actually run a game on it yet, but we're kicking off Iron Gods next week (thank god...haven't played regularly since August).

EDIT: Do try and ignore the halfway painted walls. We are putting up panelling on the bottom half and haven't gotten the pieces cut yet.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Ivan, your "current table" link seems corrupted.

The examples of digital tables seem like a good compromise, but I've got to say I'm in love with 3D modelled terrain, to go along with the 3D figurines. Although I spent a huge wad on some 20 boxes of Dwarven Forge, I've recently seen some great homebuilt dungeon walls, ruins and so on, built with nothing beyond cardboard, hot glue, paint and other odds and ends.

Given how dependent Pathfinder is on the actual positions, 5-foot steps, spell ranges, reach calculations and so on, I can't really imagine playing without a physical representation of the battlefield of some kind.


Wheldrake wrote:
Ivan, your "current table" link seems corrupted.

Really? Works fine for me on both my computers and my phone.


I am about to move to a larger apartment. I've been planning for years to build something like the Sultan (not as pretty) - now I will have space! I wanted to include a TV set up in the center with plexiglass similar to GM-JZ.

Currently, I use a chessex mat with Miniatures with 1" wooden blocks. I use the blocks to create vertical structures and elevation. Its been handy in my current campaign, set underground with cliffs, ravines and mushrooms (3"x3" cardboard square with a 1" grid - on multiple wooden blocks).


site where I purchased wooden blocks.

They are pretty cheap. I only bought 100 at first to test them. I am very happy with them and will buy more after I move. For more effort , you can paint them the appropriate color for the environment.


Ravingdork wrote:
I just thought I'd add some of these beauties.

Epic Loot Furniture

Board Game Tables

I've seen at least one more source of manufacturer, but can't find it at the moment.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition Subscriber
kadance wrote:
My table top is a 4'x8' sheet of melamine (sometimes called showerboard) which works as a dry-erase surface. I cut a 1" gride into this with a straight edge and a razor knife. It's great for drawing huge maps in colored DE markers. Additionally I use the reaper bones and bones II props and Itar's Workshop dungeon pieces that arrived recently. Finally, I enjoy making set pieces when I'm expecting epic fights.

Kadance and I played together for years, until I moved away. The melamine board not only does a great job, it's a LOT cheaper than an equivalent amount of dry erase board from an office supply store.

You should post some prop pics, man. I'll see if I can find any of the Bal-Hamatugn piece you did for our Shackled City game.


My table is in fact inspired by The Shining Fool's homemade (2,000 pound) table that he DM'd and played on for ages.

I also want to toss out Pyromancer's website for an easy to use, online map creator. You can even make your own custom graphics packs to use with it (and you could share them here).

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