Dungeon Tiles or New Maps?

[KidSnide]

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.

I like the Paizo flip-mats in theory, but in practice the creases drive me nuts. Plus, for a number of the mats, both sides are unhelpfully similar. (Desert map, I'm looking at you.)

Sometimes I think I need to invest in a very large thick clear plastic board to place over whatever maps I want.

-KS

 

[Aegeri]

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

That's actually a far better analogy.

 

[fanboy2000]

Both

Dungeon tiles are great, so I'm glad Dungeon is using them. But I also like new areas and new maps. Overall maps of the area are nice to, and it's something that I think gets left out of to many published adventure.

Generally speaking, maps are one of the first things I steal from a published adventure. I have a lot of tiles, and a very large battle mat, so a nice mix of both would be very nice.

 

[Ramius613]

While I did vote for new maps, I do feel the need to qualify the reason for my vote; that being that I primarily use Maptools when I DM.

When I took up the helm as DM for my group, I was always disappointed in the fact that I had these really cool maps in Dungeon, and no easy way of printing them off in Battlegrid format. I had purchased all of the DT sets, some above MSRP due to them being out of print, and had started picking up 2 set of the DU tiles as they came out.

This really didn't help my situation, because as convenient as the tiles are, I was really unable to use them without some serious time investment to match up the tiles to the corresponding Dungeon adventure. Dungeon Delve was great, because it told you what set you need for each adventure.

That is when I discovered Dundjinni, which allowed me to make my own maps, but again it proved to be time intensive, and resource heavy (mainly printer ink). Maptools was a godsend imo. I was able to copy the maps right out of the PDF (and later use the ones from the archives), make some adjustments, and voila my players had the exact same map that I, as a DM, was looking at. This also cut down on wasted gametime, because I didn't have to draw out the new map on the battlemat, or sketch out maps on large graph paper, and risk inaccuracies. It also saved on space because our map took up the table space of a laptop, irregardless of how big the dungeon was.

In the end, WotC is in a tough predicament. Yes they could put out really cool maps, and provide files that would allow you to print the battle mat out, but that would be very resource heavy, both on their end for the storage, and on the consumer end for printing out said maps. Their response with Dungeon Tiles (the DT & DU series) was a good one at the time. They allow for a detailed Dungeon experience for the players, while being cost effective. They also allow for some degree of customization.
The problem was the limited amount that one got in a pack, so you could only make the dungeons so big.

Now with the effort being pushed to a digital format with the VT, I think that a happy medium could be reached. Leave the tiles intact for the more generic parts of the adventure, but throw in a map or three for the big/key encounters. Something like what they did for the Adventure series.

The other option would be to leave the tiles, and put in more objects that can be placed, which would allow for even greater customization. I think if they took the objects that are currently on the tiles (I am speaking digitally here) and made it so you could place them on a floor tile as you like that would be possibly the best route.

In conclusion, I like the tiles, and seeing maps in Dungeon that make use of them is reassuring that my purchase is validated. However, I do like maps that depict exotic and extravagant encounters, so I also would like those as well.

Ramius

 

[Riastlin]

I went with "Doesn't matter".

I have a number of the Dungeon Tiles, and I do like seeing how different authors use them, but generally, I use the adventures for the story and the encounters and will just draw rough approximations of the maps. One nice thing about tiles though is its easy to set out the difficult terrain with little to no explanation (the big rock is obvious -- not so much so with my freehand skills).

At the same time, new art is always nice too. For actual use though, as I said, I'll generally just draw an approximation so the type of map doesn't matter too much to me.

 

[BobTheNob]

Maps Maps Maps.

Tiles is ok and all for putting together a custom dungeon. But sometimes I dont have time, and all I want is a nice map and I will fill in the sotry around it.

What I really want is a book of "generic" maps (the "Dragons Lair", the "Undead Tomb", the "Goblin Caves", the "Temple of ultimate evil and pain and woe" yada yada) that I can take and fill an adventure into, thus giving me a quick map and "with high enough production values" something reall pretty to look on into the bargain

 

[Black sneak]

I love well-drawn maps that spark the DM's imagination, but that's my problem: only the DM sees them.

Unless the DM prints the map or somehow gets it to the players, the players never see it. Usually I end up drawing the map on a whiteboard or gaming paper, in which case it only features the walls and important features in one or two colours. It takes time to draw the map (nothing slows down an epic combat like having an epic combat) and while I'm doing so the players twiddle their thumbs.
Sometimes copying from a well-drawn map makes this even worse, as I want to show my players how cool the dungeon is and so take even more time to draw it!

Due to all that, I prefer to use Dungeon Tiles. They're quick to throw down, and look far better than anything I can draw.
When the adventure has been specifically designed to use Dungeon Tiles it means I can quickly and easily get the combat started.

 

[Bongo]

I'd like to see dungeon tiles in the short delve/chaos scar type adventure. For longer adventures, I like full maps.

I have to agree with what a previous poster said about saying what dungeon tile sets an adventure uses at the start of the adventure. I tried to recreate an adventure using my D&D essentials dungeon tile and realized halfway through setup that it was based on a different tile set, that my current set only reprinted half of. It was pretty confusing.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I'd like to see dungeon tiles in the short delve/chaos scar type adventure. For longer adventures, I like full maps.

I have to agree with what a previous poster said about saying what dungeon tile sets an adventure uses at the start of the adventure. I tried to recreate an adventure using my D&D essentials dungeon tile and realized halfway through setup that it was based on a different tile set, that my current set only reprinted half of. It was pretty confusing.

That is a good question.

For those who have seen the latest Dungeon, did they change the maps to more closely match the Master Set: Dungeons? Or is it still tiles from all Dungeon Tiles sets?