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I've found that I'm using maps more once I found a little trick to make it easier for everyone. I print off the map, laminate it (picked up a cheap laminator for $25 and a 50 pack of sleeves for another 10 at office works) and then paint it with a mix of cheap acrylic paint and dish soap. Approximately 60/40 paint/soap works best for me.
The players use a cut popsicle stick to scrape it off and reveal the map as they progress. Works like a giant scratch and win ticket. I'd suggest black paint as nothing shows through it.


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first of all, I'm not sure if this should go into advice or here, so move if it needs to.
Ok, I GM for a group of players, and until recently I generally avoided dungeons as I found no good way to map them out that didn't take longer than needed. Graph paper and descriptions often had them confused, and I couldn't find any other way to hide what they haven't explored with ease. So dungeon crawls and mazes were generally out. But recently I found a REALLY easy way to do it that's fun, cheap, and effective. First you take the map you want to give to the players and laminate it. Then you take some acrylic paint and mix it with dish soap. I use approximately equal parts and it seems to be ok so far. Gently mix them together. I say gently because you don't want bubbles. Now paint over the areas you don't want your players seeing. Once it's dry check to make sure you can't see what's underneath and repeat if necessary. Once it's dry you can just scratch off areas as they're explored like a scratch and win ticket.
I suggest using a color that you don't have on the map itself, so if all your walls and details are done in black, use another color. I'm about to use grey and I'll let you know after it gets used how it works. Using black just made it hard to see as you were exposing the map. As for paint, get yourself one that's used for backgrounds as that way you only need one coat. I redid my map after the first experiment and it took less than 15 minutes to go from mixing colors and soap to waiting for it to dry. Only took about half an hour to dry as well, and it was a cool day. so all up I went from paper map to table ready in under an hour.
Thought I'd share this with the community as I've been finding it really useful and hadn't seen it before.
Anyone else got some useful tips for gms/players?


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I'm actually running a dragonstar game atm using pathfinder. It works well, and you suddenly can do ANYTHING as gm. You want dystopian? Head to blue dragon Territory. You want jedi and a mystical paradise, bronze. It lets your imagination run wild and anything is possible. It's 3.0 so work is required to make it work right, but it's good. But in the introduction they had a saying that might help you. 'science lets us understand the laws of nature, with technology we bend them. With magic we break them'. Beyond that it's fairly basic. Named bonuses don't stack no matter the source. That +2 belt gives you an enhancement bonus and it doesn't matter whether it's technology or magic, it doesn't stack.