In my post about the showdown in the Upper Temple of Orcus, Omote noticed a strange “map/poster” sitting on an easel in one of the pictures:
That is a piece of extra shower board/tile board/Melamine. Before I started using my massive battle map, I used two pieces of “whiteboard” purchased on the cheap from Craig’s List. The lady selling them didn’t know they weren’t real whiteboards (neither did I). Anyhow, they were cheap and these extra pieces are damn handy. Oh, the easel is my wife’s, but I long ago commandeered it for my own twisted purposes.
Various uses:
- Mapping - I stand in front of the whiteboard and draw an overview dungeon map as the party explores. This makes me feel like some strange, Gygaxian weatherman, but it works very well. It makes the mapper’s job easier and gives all the players a sense of where their characters are. It may sound like extra work, but it actually speeds up play because the players don’t need to question me as much about dungeon details.
- Initiative Tracking – I often write the initiative order on the board so that everyone in the group has a clear idea of when their turn is coming up.
- Extra Battle Room – I bust out these pieces when the battle spills over the area on the large battle map. It happens more than you’d think in a dungeon the scale of Rappan Athuk
[especially if the DM (uhm, me) doesn’t start drawing at a good point on the large map].
- Artwork – My girls love to draw on these surfaces.
Cool stuff!
ReplyDeleteI see you have the DCC DM screen, that was my favorite 3.5 screen!
The stuff you're using is pretty indestructible. My group has been using it as a game board for many years.
ReplyDeleteIf you want grid marks, you can do what one of my players did, carefully score the surface with a razor-knife in a grid pattern. The scoring picks up the marker dust and quickly becomes a faint grid.
Good to know. I actually did score my large map after learning that even industrial-strength permanent marker won't stay on this surface.
ReplyDeletehttp://thedungeoneeringdad.blogspot.com/2009/05/upgraded-battle-map-1.html
You're right, the scoring darkens nicely with use.
I've been using MapTools from rptools.net for my RA maps. I've been drawing them in and then we have the 'player view' up on the big screen tv in the room. Either a player or I can move the tokens around on the map to explore it. When we have any sizeable battles, that's when I break out the battlemap, markers and figs.
ReplyDeleteIt's so important to have something to map with when you are dealing with such a massive dungeon like RA. Simply drawing stuff out on notebook sized grid paper doesn't do it justice.