navajas's page

Thanks for taking the time to look at this (probably rambling) thread.

While we are long time veterans of nerdy board games, my family has never done the paper role playing game thing. I thought it would be a good "get us together around a table and have fun" creative thing to do and so have tried to vanquish my general cringing unease of the genre (I am a Nerd but haven't invested any more feats since I took the Jock dedication at Level 2) and successfully ran the beginner box on vacation a couple weeks back.

As I look forward to tying in Troubles and Guantlight I'm trying to figure out HOW to navigate the lack of periphery support for them, specifically I guess the lack of maps. (I am aware of the Otari flip mat, but as I'm only using the beach house part of that map it'd be a pricey buy, and I've already drawn it out pretty well on some flip tiles.) To emphasize: the whole point of this endeavor is to get us face to face around a table. I am aware that the whole hobby seems to have gone to screened VTT software, but having us sit around staring at laptops "together" is not really the point.

I've also seen the Abomination Vaults Terrain models, but my word do the contents look anemic for actual play. Has anyone successfully used those? There are no rounded shapes, there do not seem to be enough materials for the larger rooms, or dang, maybe even some of the modest ones.

I know we could "theater of mind" the whole thing, but my sons really enjoy the tactical skirmish aspect of the system.

I have a couple of printers (resin and PLA). Are there good files I'm not finding somewhere?

Am I missing an easy fix to the ACTUAL (not virtual) table top map aspect of the hobby? How do folks deal with this? Do you get one of those big (but not nearly big enough for a whole level) blank mats and draw everything as you go? Doesn't that take a long time and speed bump your session? Do you draw everything out on a whole level and then block it off with paper as they go? If so, don't you need multiple blank maps? Some of the AV floors are pretty huge. (And it took me a good couple hours to tape together and draw out just the beach house from Troubles...)

I talked to a couple of my large format printing shops in town and it looks like I could get some maps printed with PDFs I found on DriveThru, but that's going to be around $100 - $500 per level... and there's no way to really ensure those squares come out 1". I'm not made of money.

Anyway, if anyone has some advice I'd be very grateful.

Thanks!