Dungeon Tiles or New Maps?

[Vael]

I like both. Evocative cool looking maps are very nice to look at, and can spark the imagination. But attempting to recreate them on the table can often be frustrating. I much prefer that I can use the Dungeon Tiles with these encounter setups.

This is one reason I love DMing Dnd Encounters. The poster maps are made of tiles, giving me interesting bases on which to add additional tiles to. Tiles or maps alone cannot do this.

 

[Riley]

I posted this comment in the Really, outdoor tiles should all come with a double-sided poster that shows different sides of mostly featureless terrain that matches the tiles (fields and forests, sandy and rocky desert, cavern and carved stone). That way we can create interesting and large terrain by putting the tile features we want down without having to organize a zillion semi-featureless terrain tiles of various sizes and shapes.

-KS

I suggest buying this:

http://www.worldworksgames.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=4&products_id=329

and printing out a bunch of generic tiles and gluing them down to a couple sheets of foamcore. Then you can lay down whatever you want on top of it.

Worked great for me.

If you want your base sheet to look more like WOTC's tiles, you can always scan some large, plain grass tiles, and print those out and glue them down to a piece of foamcore.

 

[Ahrimon]

A cheap peice of colored felt works. Mark it with a pen if you really want the lines. Or you can find PDF's with gridmarks that you can just print onto colored construction paper.

I tried the construction paper thing with a room that was supposed to be full of blood. Printed out several sheets and glued them down onto cardboard. Made a perfect room.

 

[acemdq]

Well drawn maps all the way.

Tiles are to be used at the GM's discretion. It looks too cheap and out of place when reading an adventure. The same goes for the VT.

 

[DMZ2112]

Also, folks are indicating that Dungeon isn't telling you from which packs the tiles come, which seems like an oversight in the product placement (which I agree that it is).

What? No way, man, that just means you have to buy them ALL!

 

[Aegeri]

I know "olol internet polls" and such, but I am pleased to see a solid majority in favor of actual cartography in Dungeon.

I view DT maps as basically the same thing if they decided to put stick figures in for NPC art. I mean sure, I can easily draw a stick figure of an NPC at the table if I have to do so - but I'm not wanting to pay for a magazine to give me stick figures instead of art that I expect.

 

[MortalPlague]

I view DT maps as basically the same thing if they decided to put stick figures in for NPC art.

Not quite. The NPC equivalent would be using D&D Miniatures rather than art to show what key NPCs look like.

 

[avin]

Having a vast resource of official D&D Dungeon Tiles I'm proud to say that MAPS is what I want.

Using tiles is a mess... A waste of time assembling them and a waste of time fixing them when they go out of place during battles...

I bought myself a hex/squares flip map so I can quickly draw what I want. I'm also using some Paizo maps and a few Wizards tiles for more specific situations.

 

[Kerranin]

I prefer to use good quality printed maps.

I am currently running scales of war, and there are a number of problems with the maps provided, not least of which is the way WotC have provided maps without the monster start positions but forgot to remove the traps & secret doors! DUMB!

I have to take each of these maps, use Paint Shop Pro to remove these features and rescale the images, all of which takes a fair amount of effort. (Especially to make it look the same as the rest of the map)

At the end of the day though, I found a place online which will print these maps full colour and at the right size. The players love-em and other GMs look on with Jealousy.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Having a vast resource of official D&D Dungeon Tiles I'm proud to say that MAPS is what I want.

Using tiles is a mess... A waste of time assembling them and a waste of time fixing them when they go out of place during battles...

I bought myself a hex/squares flip map so I can quickly draw what I want. I'm also using some Paizo maps and a few Wizards tiles for more specific situations.

Blue-tac is a life saver if you want to build anything using tiles. Once I got that it is the matter of 5 minutes putting a map together and having it stuck in place but still easy to pull apart. I put a clear sheet of plastic on the table to prevent any chance of staining the finish of the table.

That said I am loving the paizo flip-mats. The ability to write on them in dry-erase marker is huge in their ease of use.