I have the same question. Gamer Printshop is the one I'm familiar with, but the csts are prohibitive - it costs four times as much to print the maps for one adventure than it costs someone to buy an entire 12 adventure campaign path. I worked out it would cost a DM $3000 at their rates to print out all the battlemaps from the $49.99 War of the Burning Sky 4E campaign saga. Not a realistic option for non-millionaire gamers.
If anyone knows of any other options, I'm all ears!
I have the same question. Gamer Printshop is the one I'm familiar with, but the csts are prohibitive - it costs four times as much to print the maps for one adventure than it costs someone to buy an entire 12 adventure campaign path. I worked out it would cost a DM $3000 at their rates to print out all the battlemaps from the $49.99 War of the Burning Sky 4E campaign saga. Not a realistic option for non-millionaire gamers.
If anyone knows of any other options, I'm all ears!
How many are there and what the heck were they planning to print on? I work at a large format printer in Canada but we deal with photo paper and other high quality inkjet stocks for museums and other exhibits. While I've looked into starting something up for map printing, we'd be on the pricey side.
How many are there and what the heck were they planning to print on? I work at a large format printer in Canada but we deal with photo paper and other high quality inkjet stocks for museums and other exhibits. While I've looked into starting something up for map printing, we'd be on the pricey side.
Not $3000, mind you.
10-12+ battlemaps per adventure x 12 adventures x $20-$25 each map plus shipping.
Oh, wow, ok, yeah. That sounds right then. Although a bulk order should see a more dramatic decrease in price, but I'm not involved in sales at all. It does seems like there's no bulk discount at all.
Would that be double-sided? Gamer Printshop does strike me as a small-time print shop with a big internet presence, but quite a few places offer a smaller price for double-sided work as it uses less stock.
Sounds like an ultimate prize for the ultimate fan. $3000 worth of full-colour battlemaps is one hell of a collection.
Oh, wow, ok, yeah. That sounds right then. Although a bulk order should see a more dramatic decrease in price, but I'm not involved in sales at all. It does seems like there's no bulk discount at all.
The discount that would bring it into an acceptable range for the average gamer down from $3000 would have to be pretty hefty! We're talking 95% or so!
Quote:
Would that be double-sided? Gamer Printshop does strike me as a small-time print shop with a big internet presence, but quite a few places offer a smaller price for double-sided work as it uses less stock.
No, they're single sided. To their credit, they are beautifully done.
I have the same question. Gamer Printshop is the one I'm familiar with, but the csts are prohibitive - it costs four times as much to print the maps for one adventure than it costs someone to buy an entire 12 adventure campaign path.
I think Gamer Printshop is setup more to deal with individuals looking to print campaign maps and cutom battlemaps for home use, as opposed to publishers looking to mass produce books for sale, hence the pricing. If I were you, I'd try a commercial poster printer like Print Direct or a commercial map printer like Eureka.
I think Gamer Printshop is setup more to deal with individuals looking to print campaign maps and cutom battlemaps for home use, as opposed to publishers looking to mass produce books for sale, hence the pricing. If I were you, I'd try a commercial poster printer like Print Direct or a commercial map printer like Eureka.
Agreed. Gamer Printshop sounds like they use equipment similar to ours (though not as large) and they are not fast printers. Nor is the stock necessarily cheap either. It takes 10-15 minutes just to run off one row of maps that size and each row could only have two or three (depending on it's set up).
Find a shop with 4-colour presses, not printers. Any decent press shop will have a machine big enough to produce your work, it can be done faster and cheaper. Battlemaps can be done easily by the right place and that would be your best bet. If they have a press big enough to gang up two or more at a time, you'll be laughing.
I think Gamer Printshop is setup more to deal with individuals looking to print campaign maps and cutom battlemaps for home use, as opposed to publishers looking to mass produce books for sale, hence the pricing. If I were you, I'd try a commercial poster printer like Print Direct or a commercial map printer like Eureka.
Tried to find the pricing at Gamer Printshop and when u click on the order page, Page Not Found comes up. Same for the Contact Us Page. :/
I think Gamer Printshop is setup more to deal with individuals looking to print campaign maps and cutom battlemaps for home use, as opposed to publishers looking to mass produce books for sale
That excuse doesn't work. Morrus' example is for an individual who bought one adventure path and bought one copy of each map. So whether they are good at mass producing or not isn't an issue -- the pricing is not individual-friendly either.
That excuse doesn't work. Morrus' example is for an individual who bought one adventure path and bought one copy of each map. So whether they are good at mass producing or not isn't an issue -- the pricing is not individual-friendly either.
Yeah, exactly. My example was of an individual, who had spent $49.99 on a 12-adventure path, then spending a further $3000 on battlemaps for that path. Clearly, that's never going to happen in the real world.
If you want to save yourself some $ in the long run, pick up an old 800x600 projector and display the maps through rpmaptool or battlegrounds.
Most projectors will come with enough keystone ability to produce 4:3 40-50" maps on a table using a simple, portable stand.
Just a suggestion.
I was going to suggest that, too. And you'd be saving even more money if you use digital tokens instead of painted miniatures.
__________________ Battlegrounds: RPG Edition is new virtual tabletop software that allows you to play any RPG online or offline. It's cross-platform and very easy to use.
Send me a PM, and I'll give you my Email address so we can talk.
However, while Morrus is right, large format printing is cost prohibitive if you want all the maps printed for an entire adventure path, my cost for printing is still cheaper than any other source.
I charge $2.99 per square foot, thus a 24" x 36" map is $17.94 + shipping. Anywhere else online (look if you don't believe me) is $5 to $10 per square foot, so $2.99 is extraordinarily cheap compared to them. Yet its all relative.
I also charge $1.80 per square foot for a black and white print, so I do have cheaper alternatives, but then its not color printing. My prices are set up to offer RPG gamers the lowest price I can afford, but I can't afford to give the maps away - I really wish there was a cheaper solution. Believe me I'm not trying to gouge anyone.
The website is setup to print existing maps from publishers for customers to order for printing. If you want me to print an individual map, you need to send me an Email. I print and ship maps worldwide.
I guess what Morrus, doesn't want to understand here, is that most gamers who need large format printing for maps go to Kinkos, Staples and those kinds of office suppliers for printing. Compared to them, I am dirt cheap - it is they who are my competition, and in that market I am the most affordable. While I could charge more money and get away with it, I want to provide a cheaper alternative to gamers, because that's what I am.
So compared to where one would normally go, I am the cheaper solution.
At the same time, I am not a cheap solution. The old days of a publisher going to a large commercial printing house to get 10,000 maps printed to supply in a boxed edition are gone. Publishers don't get mass produced maps anymore - the risk too great (to end up being stuck with 9000 maps in inventory that didn't get sold - publishers go out of business doing that.) While the inidividual map in a 10,000 print run is significantly cheaper than the one map at a time method I do. Someone still has to buy the 10,000 cheaper maps and the cost for that is prohibitive to all but the largest publishers. For example though a map may cost $4 each, with an order of 10,000 maps, that's $40,000 up front.
In this day in age publishers can't afford to do that. But before you start saying "Gamer Printshop" is charging way too much money with the excuse being "look my entire campaign only costs $48." We're talking apples and oranges here, as either you're talking about a downloadable PDF that's free to produce and distribute, or even a single hard bound book ($35 to $50) - those were mass produced.
If a publisher wants to order 10,000 maps, I've got avenues for getting that done and individual maps would be much more reasonable, but you still have to order 10,000 maps.
If a publisher is unwilling to risk that, while I understand, they are doing much more of a disservice to the individual gamer, than the small shop (me) trying to come up with the least expensive way to get a map in a gamers hands, while not losing money in the process. This is where I am coming from in my pricing.
I am not the bad guy, I am offering the best price I can afford - most digital print shops don't think like that, they want to make more money.
So I think, Morrus's point of view, while honest comparing to the price of their product, its unrealistic to expect me or anyone to have a "cheaper" map, when the industry is unwilling to buy in bulk, yet consider $3.00 per square as expensive.
You can't have both. Thinking so is pure fantasy, and not the D&D kind.
GP
PS: in every previously created box set with maps provided by TSR or other companies in the 80's and 90's nobody ever created a 5 foot x 8 foot map, yet the Banquet adventure in WoBS includes one - on what planet would a map of that size be cheap (answer none), so the fact the maps are so expensive to produce is not the printers problem, its the publishers fault. The word "reasonable" never came up in the design of that map.
Although a bulk order should see a more dramatic decrease in price, but I'm not involved in sales at all. It does seems like there's no bulk discount at all.
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