How many maps/visual aids do you use?

[Wookie-ranger]

hi there,

most people here have played for years, and in many different groups, and as both player and DM
I was wondering;
-how many visual aids did/are you using?
-what kind did you use? (maps, grids, pictures/drawing of npcs/items/locations, 'fake' documents,etc)
-can they be distracting, or are they usually a good thing?
-do you like to 'see' more or do you like the use you imagination?
-what do you consider the basics?

i have been playing for a while, but we never really used more then maps, and grids. i was wondering how much they would improve the game, especially for new players (as i am starting to DMing a group of new players, right now).

[Mystify]

I always use a battlemap.
Beyond that, I will use other documents. I frequently have maps that I give the players, as well as keeping a master version for myself with everything marked on it and the player's precise location marked. There have been times I write up a document for the players to read and refer to. Some of the DMs I play with will put a map on the projector, and hand out summaries of what is going on. A few times I've had my friend draw pictures of interesting enemies, and if applicable I'll show the monster manual picture for a monster.

I consider having a battle grid the basics. It really helps to be able to see what is going on, and new players can more easily look at the board and understand the situation. It also helps facilitate tactical combat, which gets rather hazy without a grid. Everything else is just fluff. It doesn't even matter a whole lot what you use for tokens. I've played in games with everything from scraps of paper to dice to cardboard tokens to official minis. As long as friend and foe is easily distinguishable and you can tell enemy types and player apart, it works.

[SilverLeaf167]

I usually use a grid as a battlemap, one of those erasable... plastic... things.
I also make maps about the setting in general, and if I have the energy and find it necessary, even specific major cities.
I haven't used any other documents before, but I think it would be cool and I intend to try it sometime.
I also have the aforementioned habit of showing pictures from books, but only if the players can't understand my description for some reason.

Whether they are distracting depends on what the visual aids are for and how they are made. For example, throwing a pile of paper at your players at every turn will definitely get messy. Do they seriously, actually need to read through the whole library when they're just researching a specific subject? Probably not.

[Templarkommando]

There are only a couple of visual aids that I can say that I really use. I fear I'm going to reiterate some of what has been said.

1. Battle map - this is extremely useful in my opinion. There was a point when I tried to go without one because I was trying to be economical about the situation. I figured my players were friends, so I could trust them with their players. Turns out, yeah I can trust them, but they don't remember things so well. I distinctly remember a player went from the crows nest then thirty feet down to the deck, and thirty feet back up to the crows nest during the course of one round. It's just a pain for some people to keep track of where their character is relative to combat.

2. Miniatures - I have a few plastic miniatures that I use to represent my PCs. Occasionally I'll use some of the others to represent other odds and ends, but I really like sticky notes that are cut to fit squares with numbers or maybe names on them. They don't go anywhere when you breathe on them, and it makes it easier to keep track if that's orc 2 or orc 5 that just got hit.

3. Letters - I don't do a whole lot in the prop department, but I can usually print off a letter that the party intercepts or receives. There are a few tricks that you can use to make it look more official/older/more medieval etc. I'm a big fan of wax seals for example. Candle wax isn't ideal, but if you're running on a budget you can pour candle wax over a fold in a letter and seal it with the tails side of a quarter. The eagle imprint makes it look vaguely important imho. Other coins can work as well. Irish punts (or however you say it) have harps and they may have animals on them too, i forget. Canadian coins are pretty good about having animals on them.

Anywho... you can bathe a note in coffee or tea and then dry it out to give it a faded look. You can burn edges, or you can even blot ink or burn parts on the text of a letter. Finally, (or maybe you should do this before you destroy the paper by aging it etc.) you can pick out a medieval-looking or calligraphy style print font for your letters.

That's about the end of my visual aids for the time being. I'm looking into physical representations of coins, but I haven't gotten that far with it yet.

[Mystify]

I also had a group that liked to use physical money. they printed out fake bills of various denominations, and each player kept their cash is their "wallet", which was just a folded index card and a paper clip. I'm not sure if it really helped the game that much, but there is a bit more of an impact for handing over a wad of cash to buy something instead of just writing down some numbers.

[Ozreth]

I aways like to make maps for my players. Heres one I did for my Greyhawk game: http://yeoldblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/photo-5-e1285881220660.jpg

Other than that...sometimes we use minis sometimes we don't. Sometimes I'll use physical terrain. Letters from NPC's. My girlfriend wears elf ears. I wear a giant gray beard when I DM. I always have music playing in the background (a solid mix of final fantasy, conan, and diablo soundtracks with playlists made for town, battle, dungeon, and frontier exploration).

It really just depends on the game, players, and situation. I think the more props the merrier. It only bogs a game down when you make everybody feel like those props are necessary to run the game well. Finding that balance is the key.

[Kol Korran]

what we have used this far:
- battle grid- kind of a must.
- letters found as such (one of the DMs really likes them as clues. i do not.
- PC images. (some more... some less)
- maps of important places. (a tactical battle ground, a crypt and it's surroundings, an island, a mansion)
- sometime i've used illustrations (very very basic with my artistic capabilities) of various elements- mysterious signs. parts of a riddle, and so on.

all of these have been welcomed either luke warm or warmly. we haven't found them distracting yet. an important lesson was to provide each member fo the group with the visual aid in case it needed careful studying (so as not to leave the others out of the loop)

what i plan to use:
- images of NPCs and perhaps unique monsters (not of my own doing, but from the web). i'm hoping it will give them more presence at the table, and ingrain them into player's consciousness.
- images of special sites and places (just to give a better fill and immerse more)

i'm not that of a good description giver as DM, so i hope this will help.
:smallwink:

[Psyren]

I've heard good things about Infrno, (http://www.infrno.net/) though I've yet to play a game there.

Here's a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0pKqVDlOdU) too.

[Wookie-ranger]

I've heard good things about Infrno, (http://www.infrno.net/) though I've yet to play a game there.

Here's a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0pKqVDlOdU) too.

hmmm, that looks really neat! i will give that a try..

[Wookie-ranger]

I've heard good things about Infrno, (http://www.infrno.net/) though I've yet to play a game there.

Here's a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0pKqVDlOdU) too.

hmmm, that looks really neat! i will give that a try..

[Fitz10019]

This tool is neat, too. My group has just started using it. http://rptools.net/

[Wookie-ranger]

thank for all the replies, keep them coming.

I tend to really like maps. for me they make things a lot easier to visualize (since you don't really need to visualize much). for my group with 1 timers i recently made a full set of maps for The Sunless Citadel; all on a 1" grid. They liked it a lot. and people ted to not get hung up with the details.
inducing

other then that i like to use miniatures. that's also better for beginners in my experience. obviously (and unfortunately) i don't have every miniature there is. things we have used: coins, bottle caps, altoids and most importantly Legos!
they work really well, and we had a bunch of them with my old group. it was really fun. "oh loot, there is a nice magical sword in the treasure pile" hand over orange translucent chainsaw good times.