Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nytmare" data-source="post: 6055557" data-attributes="member: 55178">The evolution of my preferred battle mat mapping style started with a wet erase battle mat, and progressed to include pre-printed and cut out maps, sometimes under a sheet of plexiglass, that I'd lay out on the table as people explored.  I found however, that the time needed to prep and lay out chunks of map took more away from the game than it gave, so I started looking for an alternative.From there we fumbled around with a couple different projector setups, but unfortunately, once I found a reliable rig, I ended up moving to a house where the game room was also the dining room; and I wasn't allowed to hang things from the chandelier.Continuing to build off of where I had ended up with the projector, I built a DM screen around two back-to-back flat screen monitors.  The computer they were hooked up to ran them as one extended desktop, so that the far left of the desktop was the monitor facing me, and the far right was the monitor facing the players.  Using this, I could drag images, or handouts, or maps directly to the players' screen and didn't have to print anything out.  When the players would explore, I'd have the map open in Photoshop on my monitor, with the saved image showing on theirs.  As they'd wander around, I'd erase a mask layer of fog, re-save the image, and it would immediately appear on their screen.  When it came to combat, the players would take turns copying whatever section of the map where the fight was taking place onto the battlemat.  This had the added benefit of giving me a few moments to gather and prep for the battle, while keeping my players involved and actively participating.  I could spend more time, before the game, prepping across the board; and the amount of time I allotted to map making could be spent entirely on making that 1 map pretty instead of making the map, printing the map, cutting out the map, organizing and making sure that I had all the cut out pieces, hiding the pieces off to the side of the game table, getting the right piece, taping the piece to the growing mess on the table, saving the map for later use...In retrospect, the one thing that I did really really like about the printed out maps, was that after we were done, we'd tape the map to the walls or ceiling of the game room where they could be referenced or reminisced over.  That's not really something you can do in every game room, but it added something to ours, and made it feel more like a club-house.</blockquote>

Verification