What do you do with your magazine inserts? (Poll)


Dragon Magazine General Discussion


I was hanging around the weekly gamer gathering, and one of the guys that runs D&D miniature events showed up with newly laminated battle maps.

He laminated several maps from the starter set, but also the Dragon's Hoard map, and one that I don't remember off hand.

It made me remember that I had planned on doing the same to my maps: the dragon's hoard map, the gladiator arena, the four-part map of Forgotten Realms, and some others.

But it also made me wonder...

What do any of you do with your inserts for Dragon and/or Dungeon?

This is really a fill-in-the-blank poll, but I imagine some options are:

Keep them in the magazine... keep the magazine "mint" condition!
Take them out, throw them away... don't want/need/use 'em!
Take them out, save them, but don't use them... can't stand throwing things away!
Take them out, use and abuse them... these inserts were made for using!
Take them out, prepare them for optimal re-use... there have been big steps in color copying and lamination techniques!


Trash


I use some of them, especially the urban maps for impromtu street encounters. Most of the others are scattered around here somewhere...


I take them out and save them. I've used a few, but not often mostly because I don't remember what's there and finding what I wnat in the stack of folded maps and such takes a little time (more than I want to spend in-game for sure).

I trash things that aren't maps (and I keep some posters).


Keep Maps, I also keep tokens and things like spell effect templates, but have rarely used them. Only posters I kept were DnD Minis, and then only until I had bought all of that set I was going to buy.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I allways keep them. But I only have used a few of them...

Shadow Lodge

I pull them out and use them... for the most part. Greyhawk maps I'll use (Thanks for the Isle of Dread, Dungeon Mag!), but although I've pulled out the counters from old issues, I'll never use them. Not with the high standards of minis that my friends and I use.

By far the most prized inserts are the battle mats. The alley. The town. The caves. Each of these has gotten use in at least one game that I'm involved in at one time or another.

I want more of these!
(It would be great to see a mat of a tavern's interior sometime. Talk about useful!!)


They fall out of the magazine when I'm not using them, and manage to get lost. Six months later I'll find them while cleaning under my bed.


I finally got around to getting my minitares maps laminated... and do they look great!

I can't wait to use them for our upcoming city encounters in Cauldron, or some of the "large cavern" encounters in Thirteen Cages.

And my favorite is the Gladiator arena... I'm going to get some of my friends involved in some 25 or 50 point skirmishes. I'd love to put a bunch of goblins against a dire lion, or a couple of fighters against a minotaur.

Wheeeeeee!

I also lamintaed most of the campaign maps I have: the 4-part Forgotten Realms, the Eberron, the Westeros and others. It made remember back in the 80's when I used contact paper on my 4-part Greyhawk maps. But these look way better.

And my mom won't throw them away when I'm not at home.


I use anything that can pass as a battle map and I save all the campaign maps.

I love the little tokens but have never actually used them.


I never use them b/c I do not like being told what something looks like by others ... I like to create that for my self. If I did not have time and had to come up with something quick then yeah probably. I do save them after removing that stupid gum off them because I am a neat freak and a true collector.

Liberty's Edge

I hang on to them, oddly enough. I put most of them in a pocket folder. Especially the tiles, and the cool maps. The posters... while I hang on to them, I don't get as excited about them as the others.


Two of the large tile maps are currently being used in my campaign. The party entered a portal (with the intent of keying it to the other portals they have entered using the artifact that serves as a universal portal link key) and discoverd that it is both a space AND time portal. They appeared at the center of a field of battle being waged by Orcs and Goblinoids. They have to survive the battle with 80 combatants on a side and the PCs in the middle. Both sides view the party members as enemies who have gotten in the way. Two huge poster tiles side by side creates a wonderful battlefield.


Realms maps - trash.
Almost everything else I've held onto. The arena and hoard maps have been used a couple of times, and the street maps several times over. Time to get that Isle of Dread map... cooooool.


They usually end up on my floor, where they then drift under my bed(and are later retrieved while looking for socks), under my tables/cabinets(lost until spring cleaning), or they end up in just the right place for Chaplain-like comic falls onto my polished wood floor.


All are saved for possible future use - stacked all nice on one of my gaming shelves.


I keep all of them. Used to keep them separate, but some of them I left where they were, because the companion article has relevance...


I keep and use them all. I am a huge miniature guy and most of my player are/have been painters, but for large battles or specific monsters the tokens are great. I usually cut them out and mount them or print them on cardstock, number them on the back to keep track of them on a master chart during large battles. I love the maps and mats, and templates. Keep these coming, and if possible make back issue items available for down load on both sites. I would like to see alot more urban stuff. I began the cauldron adventure on one of the street maps and my players loved it. Helps bring the city more to life.


I usually throw them in my box of "stuff I'll probably never use but I want to keep it just in case" and then I roll the glue into litle balls and flick it acroos the room.


kILL MY PCS'S WHEN I'M ON AN EVIL STREAK, i USE HORRIBLE RENDING SOUNDS, complete wityh blood and gore sounds, I then pull out an axe(we play outside) and chop it to bite with the players looking on with a horrific gaze on their face

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I keep them normally with the magazines because I forget where they were originally. But the Idea of making a laminated colour copy sounds great... (especially of the Realms map - and the coming Greyhawk map) and of the Cauldron poster map, where I can insert my own annotations and new shops and inns. Cool idea.


I take them out and save them. I don't plan on using them, but you never know when they'll come in handy. I have a big pile of inserts somewhere. I'm a little bit of a packrat, when it comes to D&D gearz. I usually end up using almost everything, prob just not the way it was intended. meh...

The bad part is that I get waaaay too creative with the glue. I take it off the magazine, very carefully, and then stick it just under my nose like a big hanging booger and try to hug my cats. It's fun to watch them freak out. They get this cute little look on their face. Their lil' noses wrinkle up and they back off, like I'm gross or something.

*cat runs away* "WHY WON'T YOU LOVE ME?!?! ALL I WANT IS LOVE!!!"

I really need to grow up. LOL


Mr. Raccoon wrote:
kILL MY PCS'S WHEN I'M ON AN EVIL STREAK, i USE HORRIBLE RENDING SOUNDS, complete wityh blood and gore sounds, I then pull out an axe(we play outside) and chop it to bite with the players looking on with a horrific gaze on their face

uhhhh.... *Hide Check*


I keep the miniatures maps for my Advanced Heroquest set and file-13 the rest.


Take them out, throw them away... don't want them. i just throw them away, they bother me when im reading

Paizo Employee Director of Game Design

Hey there all,

This thread has got me thinking a bit. What maps/pullouts would you find useful in the future. Not making any promises here of course, but just wondering what you would find nifty. Just curious...


Well, the pullouts I've used the most are ones that show a segment of city street at 1" scale. I think some segments of forest paths and such might get a bit of use as well. Perhaps an inn or tavern would get used too.

So for me its battlemat type fold outs that I use.

I haven't use the little ones (8x11 inch and smaller) that have been in dragon & dungeon. I've so far only the large fold out ones.

I'd love a good map of Eberron with the cities & primary roads and such, but since I don't care for Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms maps, I'd prefer not to see any of the above maps and go for general use stuff instead.


As far as what maps would be useful (acknowledging of course that one can never have too many maps at hand, and that they will all become useful sooner or later), I would say maps of urban areas; there are already so many maps available for wilderness and dungeon settings, but surprisingly few for city advenuters. Examples are the aforementioned tavern (a variety pack of taverns would be nice, since they are the launching pad of so many adventures and the site of countless egotiations), a prison and/or city guard barracks, temples, hotels, some small business spaces which could be tailored to represent anything from an exchange house to an alchemist's shop, even some generic city layouts. These are the sorts of things that invariably come up in campaigns, and which require a lot of DM time putting together. Aids of this sort would go a long way towards cutting down my prep time, letting me focus on NPCs and the needs of the narrative.


Good question... I keep my magazines, both Dragon and Dungeon, in polyvinyl bags when not in use. (It's a must, since I have well over 300 issues of the two magazines, and with the older Dragons in particular, the covers used to fall off if I didn't preserve them somehow.) So what I do with all these inserts, including those of somewhat dubious use, is to remove them from the magazine, and place them in the bag with the issue they came from, behind it. This is so that later, I can find them... I can see through the bag for a glimpse of the map/insert, and the front of the magazine often shouts out something like: "Giant Eberron poster map!" or something similar. This seems silly when said map is absent, so I keep 'em together. ....All except the posters. I outgrew posters over a decade ago, so all new posters go to the same place that my old Heather Locklear, Alyssa Milano, and Knight Rider posters went: Poster Heaven. A word to the wise: If you are over 23 years old, and you have something on your livingroom wall that is hanging by thumbtacks, get it framed or get rid of it. We can't live in Neverland forever.

As for what I'd like to see as far as Maps go: I'd like to see usable (1-inch square grids) maps of the locations in the adventures of Dungeon magazine. If you can't do all of them, focus on the ones that cater to long-standing campaigns, like the Adventure Path and the new Eberron path. I'd also like to see some good general-use maps: the inside of large taverns and inns, castle or keep courtyards, throne rooms, the decks and below-decks of ships and boats, roads leading through forested or rocky ambush zones... You know, the stuff that just keeps cropping up in regular campaigns. Anyone with an erasable marker and a large grid-map can draw rooms in a dungeon. It's the rooms in buildings and cluttered alleys and marketplaces and castle fortifications that take extra time and care to draw that could benefit from a well-drawn, color map.


Usually I keep the maps handy, but I can't find The Lost Temple map. Can someone tell me which Dragon / Dungeon this came in?


keep them all, have never used a single one...oh well, Im sure I might some day


In response to Jason Bulmahn's question above, I love the large color battlemap posters like Dragon's Hoard and The Lost Temple, keep them coming.

I'd like to see more exotic terrains for various D&D campaigns:
- A map of a desert ruins, or a large desert catacomb.
- A large ice cavern or set of large ice caves.
- An underdark location featuring one or more earth nodes.
- A large cavern filled with lava flows (aka Diablo).
- A grassy/hilly clearing in an "evil" forest - did those trees just move?
- A swamp hideout with marsh, water, ancient partially sunken temple.
- A temperate terrain w/ ruins of a keep, scorched earth from a large battle including skeletons.
- A large cave featuring multiple levels of caves, water, and/or the classic rift w/ rope bridge

Thanks!
Ross


Add my voice to those who want 1-inch grid maps for encounters.

Taverns, street corners, sewer hidey holes, an exotic dungeon locale, an unholy shrine, mountaintop ridgeline, a throne room, a dueling court, a wizard's sanctuary, a waterfront, a fortification, a mausoleum. Just keep them coming. There's no end to the applications.

Like the maps of mystery, these feed the imaginations of DMs, who can utilize them as standalone encounters or to be used to enhance published adventures.


The inserts I get the most good out of are monster tokens and map tiles, like the old ones from Ron Shirtz. The monster tokens made from an issue's artwork helped sell me several issues of Dungeon, and I think it's be great to see those in Dragon as well.

What I don't use are artwork posters and battlemaps, especially world maps. The larger a map, the more likely I won't be able to use it.

Another thing that's important, if you're going to make something that needs to be cut out (Monster tokens or partial maps), it's important that things line up on both sides. If I have to ruin one side to use the other, then it's not very useful. Monster tokens could also benefit from being labeled somewhere, so I don't have to go rooting through artwork to figure out what I'm looking at.


I use them all the time... but I dont lamanate them even though the gladiator ma should have been lamenated..... There are issues I have boughten just for the inserts


Take them out, use and abuse them... these inserts were made for using!


Use them.
Reprinting old maps (i.e. Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, etc.) would be good for those who didn't have a chance to get them the first time around(hint, hint).


I love all of the inserts, but especially the battlemats (AKA battlemaps), map tiles, and tokens. I like the posters, as I'm a freelance illustrator (drawing & painting), among other things, and often use those as art-reference material; however, I don't put them on the wall. The maps are useful also, but I use them less frequently than the grid-mats and tokens. A side note: I love the gum since I can remove the inserts without tearing them or the page they're attached to. I remember the old days before that stuff was available.). I store all the inserts in files in my art-reference file-cabinets. They're labeled, and I even created a small database to organize them, note their locations and possible uses within my Greyhawk campaign, and for easy access.

I'd love to see an entire publication or gaming accessory book (several, actually), completely devoted to the types of battlemat-type inserts and tokens that were mentioned above by some of the contributors to this message-thread, particularly those mentioned by Ross Wolf, masterOfdungeon, Nathan Ballingrud, Maveric28, and Troy Taylor. If I left out some other good ones, I apologize. IMHO, there is a growing desire (in some cases, a need) for these types of battlemat and token accessories, especially among those who use miniatures a lot during their gaming (like I do in my campaign). AS mentioned above, having them can cut down on the preparation of a gaming session, allowing the DM to concentrate on other aspects. I admit there's a lot to be said for creating your own (if you're inclined to and have the time), and with map-making and battle-grid-making tools out there like "Campaign Cartographer", just to mention one among others, it can fun and you can end up with more-than-satisfactory results, but it's hugely time consuming, to say the least and a pre-made battlemat of a large tavern or inn, for instance, would really be useful.

I also think lamenating them to many hours of re-use is a great idea. While I'm not expecting future gaming accessories of this type anytime soon, if ever, I am hopeful. Things far less useful have been published and will continue to be published, so you never know, really. There's always hope for those of us, who are willing to throw good coin at the merchants who sell them. After all, one man's poison is another man's delight. As for the length of my post, I love to type and I'm fast, also. But thanks for indulging me and letting my soapbox and I into your (or onto) your computer. "A day's greeting to you, one and all."

Shadow Lodge

I've been away from the boards for a long while.
Mr. Bulmahn, about three months ago, a month before you posed your question here, I had a suggestion and I'll post it again, if for no other reason than to bump this thread and answer you directly.

I'm all about wanting more 1-inch grid battlemats.
*** Tavern! Tavern! Tavern!
Actually, a full sized, two-story Inn would be fantastic! Tavern downstairs with big common room, individual rooms upstairs... Lots of places for intrigue and confined-space battles.
*** I'd actually like to see a large open, generic Wilderness area. Maybe with a small trail on it. Forest tiles are somewhat available around about online, but they're never larger than 8.5"x11".

I think a cool idea might be to tie the battlemats to upcoming WotC D&D releases. Hit us with an Ice Plain with snowdrifts as a tie-in to Frostburn. Then a Desert Ruin for Sandstorm's release. And a Large, multi-decked ship for the release of Maelstrom next year.
How's that sound for marketing passibilities?

Other battlemap ideas:
-Rocky mountainous pass with many small flat "landings" for combats (tie to Races of Stone)
-Tribal village (usable for Orcs, Wild Halflings, Lizardfolk...)
-Rogue's Guildhouse, complete with Gauntlet of Traps (a tie-in for Complete Adventurer?)
-Military Keep, or Outpost on the Wilderness
-Temple (one of say, Heironeous and another to Hextor on the other side would be really cool!) (tie to Complete Divine)

That's all the time I have for posting right now. I'm ducking out of work early. Happy Turkey Day everyone!

--Fleetfang!


I use them all and have even made about a half-dozen copies of each one for larger terrain layouts laminate and use dry erase pens for aoe and things of that nature the huge realms map i taped together and had laminated and am using it for my FR campaign. Since it is laminated i have marked out boundaries of smaller territories and given them all rulers and even marked out my partys progression across the world its really handy, the sewer set that came out about a year ago i guess was the cooles because about 6 months ago i ran an adventure about the sewers of Baldurs Gate and was able to link all of the pieces and the color copies together to make a roughly 4'x 6' sewer complex and then use mini's of goblins and an otyugh to really flesh out the game it was wicked bad cool!


I had to dig this thread out of the archives, because I really dig the Drow Outpost map in Dragon #337. I didn't notice that any map was going to be included in this issue, so it was a nice surprise when I pulled it out of my mailbox earlier today.

Not only is it a nice battle map, but it ties in with other maps from WotC. That just increases the value of my Dragon subscription.

I have a little pile of new maps that I'm going to have to take to get laminated again. My new gaming group members have all seen my stockpile of laminated posters, and they're impressed. Or maybe just concerned at my lamination addiction.


Keep 'em. Never know when I might draw inspiration from them.

Want to see more maps. I am a confessed map junkie. More More More.


For the Poll: I keep them in hopes of finding a use for them someday.

For Jason's Question: I want tiles that I can use to build my own locations. Versatility... think versatillity. :)


I keep 'em all, and use a few of them on occassion.

I'd like to see regional maps for the Campaign Classics issue. :)

I'd also like small tilesets that can be re-arranged to form rooms, rather than pregenerated rooms.


Big Jake wrote:

I was hanging around the weekly gamer gathering, and one of the guys that runs D&D miniature events showed up with newly laminated battle maps.

He laminated several maps from the starter set, but also the Dragon's Hoard map, and one that I don't remember off hand.

It made me remember that I had planned on doing the same to my maps: the dragon's hoard map, the gladiator arena, the four-part map of Forgotten Realms, and some others.

But it also made me wonder...

What do any of you do with your inserts for Dragon and/or Dungeon?

This is really a fill-in-the-blank poll, but I imagine some options are:

Keep them in the magazine... keep the magazine "mint" condition!
Take them out, throw them away... don't want/need/use 'em!
Take them out, save them, but don't use them... can't stand throwing things away!
Take them out, use and abuse them... these inserts were made for using!
Take them out, prepare them for optimal re-use... there have been big steps in color copying and lamination techniques!

It all depends on how useful they are to me, and if I think I can use them at some point. But for the most part, it's to the trach with them.


Big Jake wrote:

I was hanging around the weekly gamer gathering, and one of the guys that runs D&D miniature events showed up with newly laminated battle maps.

He laminated several maps from the starter set, but also the Dragon's Hoard map, and one that I don't remember off hand.

It made me remember that I had planned on doing the same to my maps: the dragon's hoard map, the gladiator arena, the four-part map of Forgotten Realms, and some others.

But it also made me wonder...

What do any of you do with your inserts for Dragon and/or Dungeon?

This is really a fill-in-the-blank poll, but I imagine some options are:

Keep them in the magazine... keep the magazine "mint" condition!
Take them out, throw them away... don't want/need/use 'em!
Take them out, save them, but don't use them... can't stand throwing things away!
Take them out, use and abuse them... these inserts were made for using!
Take them out, prepare them for optimal re-use... there have been big steps in color copying and lamination techniques!

I save them all. I never know when I'm going to have the opportunity to use them.


I never use them for anything so I give them away to other gamers who feel that they might use them somewhere for something. Th ereason being is that that we use LEGO's for our battlemaps since a piece of paper and miniatures just won't do for us.


Amaril wrote:
I save them all. I never know when I'm going to have the opportunity to use them.

Like last night... I pulled out the sewer map (Dragon #305) during Hall of Harsh Reflections (Dungeon 127) as the party left Sodden Hold. All the players went "oooh" pretty much at the same time.

It was pretty cool to have them out on a sewer map fighting a carrion crawler, two gricks, then later a black pudding... in a sewer.

The visualization also added opportunities to seek for a way up to the city, as well as a place to camp as the day wore on. Nice map!


I pull them out and laminate them when I can afford it. The tokens and spell templates I haven't done anything special with but I have used them on occassion in the past.

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