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

[Oryan77]

Occasionally I see peoples sketches on their battlemats when they post pictures. It seems like most of the time they are really detailed, with colored ink drawings to represent trees & bushes. Not just an outline either, fully colored in!

I never pre draw anything on my mat. I draw out the room as they enter it. Therefore all I draw is a black outline of the room, a rectangle for a bed or desk, a blue outline if it's a pool of water, or a red outline of flames if there is fire in the area. I'll make drafting marks for doors and windows, but that's about it. I have never actually colored in any shapes. I might draw some quick slashed lines in the shape so they know it's supposed to be a pool of water or something. But it's nothing that looks like I spent time on at all.

How much effort do you put into drawing information on your battlemats? As a player, is it more interesting to see a layout of an area that looks pretty, or does a rough sketch do the job just the same?

 

[Agent Oracle]

Paraphrasing my battle-mat artestry:

"Okay. (circle circle circle) These are trees... and this (blob) is a big rock (writing in the words "Big Rock" for effect), over here, this (Elongated oval, kidney shaped) is a small pond. These (line, line) are the sides of the road you've been travelling on. Now, place your minis in standard walking formation."

 

[Mallus]

When my party was staging a daring assault on a island shrine full of prostitutes that had been overrun by barbarians, I drew a map of the main dock that looked suspiciously like a penis.

It was the Shrine of St. Tarte's Bodice, BTW.

Other than that, I'm known to frequently mutter, "Why did I have to make the damn building octagonal?".

 

[prosfilaes]

Funny; my players can find genitalia in just about any illustration, I think.

My stuff is pretty rough; it's not predrawn.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Funny; my players can find genitalia in just about any illustration, I think.

My group is like that too!

 

[el-remmen]

The level of detail depends on how prepared I am.

But when an area is important I will do one or more of the following:

a) pre-draw it on the battle mat and then lay another over it to hide the first and to use of any intervening encounters.
b) i use a guide of numbers running horizontal and vertical on the battlemat and on my own version of the map on graph paper, so I can use coordinates to figure exactly where intricate or odd portions of the landscape or architecture are supposed to go
c) pre-draw it in as much detail as my limited artistic abilities will allow on those big 1" box graph paper pads they sell at Staples (I did every room of the final adventure of my 'Out of the Frying Pan' campaign this way)

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 )

 

[Umbran]

"Okay. (circle circle circle) These are trees... and this (blob) is a big rock (writing in the words "Big Rock" for effect), over here, this (Elongated oval, kidney shaped) is a small pond. These (line, line) are the sides of the road you've been travelling on. Now, place your minis in standard walking formation."

Given my artistic abilities, this is basically what mine end up as, whether I draw beforehand or spur of the moment...

 

[Steel_Wind]

Using a projector, I can put a lot of detail on the map via the NWN toolset quickly, or simply use the maps in Age of Worms from Paizo's site out of the .pdf.

When it's a hand drawn battlemat - the detail varies with the nature of the room. In general - the less wet-erase ink to clean up the better.

Note: I have lately discovered baby wipes (huggies) make excellent wet-erase wiper-uppers. Pre-moistened too!

 

[The_Gneech]

I usually do pretty rough outlines -- but then I'm a cartoonist, so my idea of "pretty rough" may not be the same as other folks'. I love using props and scenery bits whenever possible, tho. I have a box o' trees and rocks for wilderness encounters, HO train cars and Hot Wheels for modern/supers games, etc. An ERTL Millenium Falcon used to make regular appearances on the battlemat in my Star Wars campaign...

-The Gneech

 

[arwenarrowny]

"Okay. (circle circle circle) These are trees... and this (blob) is a big rock (writing in the words "Big Rock" for effect), over here, this (Elongated oval, kidney shaped) is a small pond. These (line, line) are the sides of the road you've been travelling on. Now, place your minis in standard walking formation."

I'd say that about covers it for me, too. I put more effort into things that are really important, but often I'll just put down a couple sheets of paper rather than even bothering to go to the effort of drawing and erasing.