Whether your party is tracking monsters through the misty highlands or fighting a guerrilla campaign against an invader, no Game Master wants to spend time drawing every fold and bluff that the party might hide behind. Fortunately, with Paizo Publishing’s latest Pathfinder Flip-Mat, you don’t have to! This line of gaming maps provides ready-to-use and detailed fantasy set pieces for the busy Game Master. Whether you need to hide an ambush or battle deadly beasts, this double-sided combat mat makes the perfect setting!
Don’t waste your time sketching when you could be playing. With Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Hill Country, you’ll be ready next time your players venture out into the wilderness!
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, Pathfinder Flip-Mats fit perfectly into any Game Master’s arsenal!
Hill Country is a standard-size Paizo flip-mat (24x30 inches). One side depicts a path leading between a couple of ridges and into a cave, while the other side shows a high rocky-outcropping and a narrow path leading to the top of a bluff. I've used the mat a couple of times (as both a player and as a GM), and my verdict is that it's okay, but not great. It's very pretty (especially the side with the winding path leading to the hill top) with great texture and colour for the ground, boulders, hillsides, etc. As always, the ability to use any kind of marker is fantastic. However, one problem I have with some of the Paizo flip-mats is that the scenes they depict are almost too memorable! I want to use them again and again without players joking about how they've come to the exact same distinctive hilltop or next to (yet another) group of rune-etched standing stones. I also don't like how both sides of the mat have paths cutting through them, because sometimes I like my wilderness adventures to be track-free and it's not as much fun to have stuff like difficult terrain if a path nicely takes the PCs around it (plus, I can easily draw a path on any map). Still, depending on your needs you might get more out of this than I have. I will suggest that GMs sit down before an encounter and mark elevations (and Climb DCs) of features on the mat--it will save a lot of time during the session when PCs try to scale cliffsides, ask how tall a boulder is, etc.
Looks cool. I've been waiting for more terrain maps for wilderness/ outdoor encounters. I'm already planning hooks and designing encounters up that fell.
Looks great, and potentially very useful! I keep thinking y'all should do one that's vertical, like a cliff face. There's nothing out there like that, but it could be a source of a great encounter.
I love the convenience of flip-mats, especially ones like this of outdoor areas that are often difficult to sketch.
Given that, I often find that I need a larger area than a single map can encompass. I would like to see maps like this with the two sides able to connect together to form a single larger map. I would buy two of many maps if they had this feature.
Even better would be two flip-mats with each side able to connect to one side of the other map. For example, two maps each with one side of forest that connects to other map's forest side and one side of desert that connects to the other map's desert side. This would allow larger areas to be represented without having to buy two copies of the same map. Similarly, maps of buildings where different floors are represented on each side could instead be two maps with one floor of the building on one side and something else on the other side. This would eliminate the necessity to buy two of the same building map to accommodate party members being on both floors simultaneously.
This looks like a good one, and I'd also echo roonechr's request above - planning for these to be 'connectable' to others is nice, much like the mine/dungeon stuff for the map-packs.