I'm running the AP version of RotRL. I'm finding it both hilariously funny and incredibly frustrating that for a game that uses squares none of the maps are aligned along the squares axis. Everything is at an angle. Currently what I'm doing is drawing the map on a battle map as the party moves along. Note doing this for the Foxglove manor was kinda of obnoxious. Luckily I have a couple of battle maps so at least I didn't have to redraw some floors as they went up to the attic and then back down. I keep thinking of using something like maptools however the way my group rotates hosting the game would require me to lug around two laptops along with everything else which is not really what I want to do. So I'm curious how other gm's handle this... Did I mention Foxglove manor was a pain....
How much money do you have lying around?
In our campaign, Shiro's player has a 24" color printer, so I've been 'asking' him to print the maps from the interactive PDFs. It's not cheap, but you can print the maps with a 5' square = 1" scale with it. Even the battle of Sandpoint worked out as he printed 3 full sheets, giving us at least an idea as to the scale of Sandpoint.
Hi's player keeps talking about ceiling-mounting an LCD projector for me (around $300-$400, not including labor), but so far he hasn't done it because we're giving up this house in June. I suspect that's going to be our solution once we move into our permanent home then. (Long story -- two houses in the S.F. Bay Area, unwilling to sell either one = lots of moving and rentals).
But yeah, I think anything short of a ceiling-mounted projector isn't ideal. At first I tried a room-by-room diagram on a battle mat (for example, for the Graul homestead in Module 3), but having the whole party wait for me to draw the new room isn't working, especially because I'm a crappy artist.
Shiro's player runs our Carrion Crown campaign and just prints all the PDFs with his 24" printer, doesn't worry that we see the labels and the secret doors, and it works out remarkably well.
So I'd say:
(1) Perfect solution = ceiling-mounted projector onto a battle mat = $300-$400 for the projector, $20 for the PDFs, and a couple hours' labor to mount the projector and connect your laptop to it.
(2) Secondary solution = ultra-wide printer onto 1" squares = ??? for the printer, and probably around $1-$2 per map in ink. It's working quite well for us. The players are remarkably good at pretending they don't know the layout.
(3) Tertiary solution = draw it room-by-room on a battle mat. Takes too long and I've given up doing it.
Sorry to be less-than-useful, but that's where we stand...
Glad to know I'm not alone in this. Although I don't have access to an ultra wide printer I may preprint the maps anyways and then just use the battle map for battles. I only need to think about how to occlude the parts of the maps I don't want them to see....
FYI I also am a crappy artist so...
We use MapTool. The maps are pretty easy to import from the PDFs. You would need to have two computers: one for yourself (your own laptop), and a machine at the host's location. Perhaps the host could supply that one.
We also usually play at one location (my house), so I never have to lug a lot of books and equipment around.
A nice thing about GMing via a laptop is that you really don't need to bring a lot of books around. I use the PRD as the rules guide, and the PDFs of the module I'm running.
I found an art shop that sold me A2 paper. All I had to do was go through the whole 120 sheets and put 1 inch lines (start from the back and its just tracing =D). Once you're all done, use a sharpie or thick marker to draw the maps and details. At 16 inches long and 11 wide, it fits most maps. I really enjoy breaking out the colors and going into detail for my players. This tactic has replaced my use of lots of tiles.
Anyone who wants to do it room by room. Cut it out and place it as they go. Anyone wanting it to look better, cut and glue it to a matte-black board for depth.
For the price worried, use A3 or simple A4 to trim cost.
I've come up with a system that is working well and isn't very time intensive... but it does require an iPad and the Battle Map app ($30).
Here are the steps:
1 - Copy the map (in Acrobat, use Edit -> "take a snapshot"
2 - Paste into paint then save as an image
3 - sync the image to your ipad pictures using iTunes (just like you would with photos)
4 - Open a new map and change the background image to your saved map
5 - Resize the background image. Not so the squares line up... that won't happen. Just get the squares on the map to be roughly the same size as Battle Map's grid.
6 - Hide Battle Map's grid and turn off "snap to grid"
7 - Using the "background" button at the bottom of the screen, pick one of the background tiles and "color" in all the parts of the map you don't want the PC's to see (ie, the interior of the building, or all areas except for the starting room, etc.)
8 - Place your PC's "tokens" on the map, switch to player mode, and begin
As the player's move into a new area, simply take the iPad back, switch to GM mode, erase the tiles that are covering that portion of your map, switch back to player mode, keep going.
It sounds like a lot, but it goes really quick once you've done it a few times. And you don't have to draw anything...
For Foxglove Manor, I drew out the rooms in Inkscape, and exported to either a PNG or PDF, I can't recall, but I then used Posterazor to print it out to scale over multiple pages. I used a paper cutter (the type with the blade of death that you swing down) to uniformly cut the paper, and taped the pages together.
For everything else, I use one of the following two approaches, depending on how I'm feeling, and how easy the map is to deal with. Our setup involves a large rectangular slab of glass on a cabinet, with a grid between the table and glass. We use wet erase markers, as they tend to be highly visible.
Simple floorplan - draw it out as the players traverse space, to really make it feel like exploration. I'll be faithful to the book map dimensions if it's not too hard, but otherwise, I try to preserve the "spirit" of the layout, meaning I'll make things fit square, but preserve visibility of key points, such as whether the entrance hallways is a straight shot to the exit hallway.
Complex floorplan - describe the area, then draw out a room when combat begins. The drawing will almost certainly be a "spiritual" adaptaion, as I described in the previous paragraph. I'll draw a "mini map" of the logical depiction of paths and intersections to illustrate the matter.
I mentioned Foxglove Manor earlier, where I used pre-drawn paper maps. I thought this was particularly useful in that case, since the party could easily change floors often. For a recent example, in the caves below Jorgenfist, I took the complex floorplan approach. This was simplified in that I had Conna give the PCs directions for the shortest route, and they agreed to go that way, so I just drew rooms. In the upcoming library section, I'll take the first approach, and draw hallways and rooms as they encounter them.
That's been the only case so far. I might do Runeforge this way, at least the hub area, since I can't really draw it well by hand, and using the "spirit" approach probably won't work. On the paper map, I or the players can mark off where they've been. (Side note: I might actually remove the entrance/exit hallway, since that breaks the seven-pointedness nature of the sihedron. Instead, ingress into Runeforge will place travelers near the pool.)
Looking ahead, for the spire/citadel/whatever at the end, I think I might do something special: Inkscape the layout, print it to scale, print a blank circle, cut out the rooms along their walls, and also cut by visibility (e.g. a right angle turn hallway becomes two pieces), and as the PCs explore, I'll tape on the new areas they visit onto the circle. Though, it's rather big, so I might print it smaller, and use it as the "minimap", and draw rooms when combat occurs.
For the Eye of Avarice, I'd really LOVE to have a 3D setup, since it has so many elevation changes, and a flat drawing really distorts perception, but that would be exceptionally complicated, I think. Instead, I think I'll replicate it in Minecraft, and take a couple of screen shots from various angles to illustrate what it really looks like.
Edit: As for speed, I thought my "exploration" approach would take too much in-game time, but it seems that it's surprisingly quick for me as GM to just draw <something>, and if it's faithful to the original map, cool. Otherwise, just as long as there's a room that's similar enough for tactical purposes, just drawing <something> and being done with it sufficient. I can plot some lines on the table in a minute, where talking about doors and hallways just confuses people -- that's my guess, anyway.