How much detail do you put into drawing on your battlemat?

[Shadowslayer]

Depends. I pretty much used the amount of detail that Agent Oracle described...when I'm drawing something up on the fly. I use a laminated D&D skirmish map for that.

Since they came out with the Fantastic Locations maps, I've been playing with terrain maps a bit. I'll draw them out beforehand on 1 inch easel paper and give them a reasonable amount of "functional" detail, as well as a little extra to make it look pretty. I recently spent about 20 minutes drawing up Eralion's Keep from the Crucible of Freya, and it ended up looking pretty nice. (Just sketched it out then drew it all with a box of Crayolas I had laying about.) Its not real detailed, but the walls are there, as well as the palisaides, ruined walls, a chapel and some rubble.

Basically, I only sketch details that have some in game reason. My guys know that rubble, shrubbery or water drawn in means that square costs 2 to enter. If there's a wall, I'll write in somewhere along it that its x feet high. If its a tree, I'll write in how much cover it affords, and if its a slope, I'll add in how many each square is worth.

My players appreciate the details, and it adds an extra tactical element to encounters.

Plus you can keep them and use them again. Just make yourself a sleeve out of a large cardboard box and they're good forever. I'm starting to amass quite a collection of battlemaps.

 

[Hussar]

Since I play online, my background maps are usually lifted straight from the adventure. As such, I tend to really focus on artwork when I choose adventures. If I make my own, I raid WOTC's Map a Week archive or the Dunjinni forums for some cool maps as well.

Since I can't use many of the tricks that DM's use to keep players interested - voice, gestures, etc - I only have art to draw them. (No pun intended) Using interesting backdrops can really make or break an online session.

 

[Glyfair]

My skills are pretty low, so it's rough outlines. Someone I have buried some "flextiles" that were tied into Champions ages ago. They were basically terrain pieces printed on transparency material. I would love to find some more of these (even PDF materials), but nothing I've found is quite that good.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Our battlemaps are pretty rough but they work OK. Blobs and lines as Agent Oracle described above except I use different colours (black, red, blue, brown and green). We have a ton of miniatures so that ends up being our focus; meaning a basic battlemap is good enough. We've looked at the dwarvenforge stuff but thought it would be too fiddly - although it does look excellent.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[pogre]

When I use a battlemat (when gaming away from the game room) I get way too artistic. It takes time, too much time. Invariably one of my players calls out, why don't we use the game room so we can pull out the mastermaze - it would be so much quicker!

 

[ChristianW]

I think my maps are rather primtive, but they work. See below.

 

[Oryan77]

I think my maps are rather primtive, but they work. See below.

I see that your group has been fighting Canadians down on the bottom right side

 

[wedgeski]

I am all about environment in my encounters - so I work hard to make things like elevation and amount of cover clear, jotting marks of heights/depths and the number of concealment or cover standing in area gives you, etc. . . even when just making up an encounter and its site on the fly I still include this kind of stuff (what is the point of climb, jump, balance and tumble if you can't use them mid-combat - or aren't forced too )

Now THAT makes so much sense that it makes me wonder why I've never done it before. You can consider is yoinked.

 

[wedgeski]

I think my maps are rather primtive, but they work. See below.

Looks great to me! At least your corridors are moderately straight.

 

[Baroness]

Since our 'battlemat' is currently a tablecloth, we don't draw on it, but the DM uses lego blocks to make walls and elevations. They're usually pre constructed and pretty much everything that could be of use during battle ends up being on the cloth, so I'd say it's pretty detailed for something made of lego. And it looks cool when you blast a hole through a wall and scatter lego blocks all over the place.