Preparing battle maps

[UndertakerSheep]

Hey playground,

I always have awesome ideas for battle maps, but I always end up drawing them last minute, as the players enter the encounter area. My 'quick' drawing skills are enough to make the maps seem realistic, but my maps sacrifice immersion for simplicity and time.

Lately I've been practicing my Map Fu and found I can draw immersive maps ahead of time. The big problem is I don't know what to draw those maps on.

I have a wet erase chessex battlemat and paizo's blank gamemastery flipmat (dry/wet erase). I have to draw the maps at least a day before the session. I haven't tried leaving the marker on either of the two maps in fear of staining my precious maps.

My question is: what do you guys use to draw maps ahead of time? I live in the Netherlands so it's hard to find anything with 1inch squares without ordering internationally.

[Gnomish Wanderer]

I once used Gaming Paper to run a Tomb of horrors game at a convention. It worked wonders being able to have my rooms all mapped out before I even sat down at the table, and allowed me to detail the maps like never before. I'd highly recommend it.

[Iceforge]

Going to second Gaming Paper, it works quite well and easy to store away and bring along to sessions as long as a suitable big surface is free at the location the game goes on at.

[Kasbark]

You can leave drawingson the pathfinder battlemaps for weeks without any color leftover, if you use the right tools.

I use whitebord marker (they are dry erase) and dryboard cleaning fluid (a spray) and have never had any problems, despite once leaving map drawn on it for well over a month.

[Grod_The_Giant]

If you have the time, you get big sheets of paper (I usually used that cheap brown paper people use for package padding) and draw on a grid yourself with a ruler. I did that for awhile. (Yay, starving college students!)

If the maps you need are small enough, you can make a grid using Paint or Word or Photoshop or something and printing out on a normal printer, then hand-drawing in details. I've also done that, which works well if the maps are small enough/can be illustrated one "room" at a time.

[W3bDragon]

Our group made some mats by making a file on Excel with a grid, then taking it to a printing shop and printing it on A1 size paper (or was it A2? can't remember.) We made about 10 copies, then took them all to get laminated.

We've been using them with dry erase markers for many years now and they work like a charm. Too a bit of running around, but wasn't expensive.

Having extra mats is useful for drawing stuff on them before the game if needed while still having plenty of mats available for drawing stuff on the fly.

[Gralamin]

Here is a cheap, Do it yourself method:

Materials:
1x Large Cardboard sheet (or similar backing). Check if anyone you know has boxes to get rid of first - you could get it for free.
1x Large piece of paper matching the size of the cardboard - Part of this would be an example. Check if Artist friends have any sitting around, they'd probably be happy to give you a bit.
Some Glue ($5 for a pack?)
1x Large, clear, Plastic Sheet ("Acrylic Plastic". Check home depot type stores, shouldn't be more then $15)
Some Wet Erase markers (Probably about $8 for a pack of 8 different colors)
A Sharpie and maybe a ruler. ($6 maybe? You probably already have these)
----
Total costs: ~$25 plus the cost to get the cardboard/backing and the large sheet of paper.

Procedure
Draw 1 inch squares on the Sheet of paper with a sharpie, using a ruler as necessary. The goal is for the squares to be cleanly visible.

Glue the paper onto the cardboard. See here for some decent tips.

Cut the plastic sheet to match the paper size, if necessary. Surprisingly, this Yahoo answer has good information on how to do so.

Lay the plastic sheet over the cardboard-paper. Draw on top of the map ontop of the plastic sheet. Possibly put a simple indicator to indicate direction, correct side, and a square for lining up. (I like a squared compass)

You could glue the plastic sheet to the paper, but I don't see much point in doing so personally. This also lets you buy multiple plastic sheets, draw maps on each of them, and swap them out with minimal effort.

[Firest Kathon]

I found that standard flip chart paper has convenient 5-inch squares.

[shizukanashi]

The wet-erase MEGAMATs I have work great. I have had wet-erase VIS-A-VIS marker on them for months at a time. DO NOT USE DRY ERASE MARKER ON WET ERASE MATS I grabbed the wrong marker once and ruined the backside (Hex-side) of my smallest mat.

[valadil]

I've left marker on chessex maps for 2+ weeks. As long as there aren't any big blobs of color, they usually turn out fine. Some colors stain worse than others though. In my experience black comes off pretty well and red doesn't. You can always mark up the edge of your maps with each color and see how permanent the mark is a few weeks later. Nobody really cares if the edge of the map is hideous.

For big battles I like drawing things in advance. The night before works well for me since it helps me get my head into the combat. I also like having a blank map lying around in case we need to improv something.

[AntiTrust]

I've left marker on chessex maps for 2+ weeks. As long as there aren't any big blobs of color, they usually turn out fine. Some colors stain worse than others though. In my experience black comes off pretty well and red doesn't. You can always mark up the edge of your maps with each color and see how permanent the mark is a few weeks later. Nobody really cares if the edge of the map is hideous.

For big battles I like drawing things in advance. The night before works well for me since it helps me get my head into the combat. I also like having a blank map lying around in case we need to improv something.

For that and permanent marker I leave my mats outside in the light. The sun actually breaks up the pigments in the ink. After a few days I can literally wipe away the permanent marker with a wet paper towel.

When its something impromptu I use my wet erase map, but for all the other times I use the flipchart with 1in squares. You can find them at office supply stores like officemax. It's a little expensive running me about $25, but it comes with 40 sheets that are big so I don't buy them, but maybe once a year. As for mapmaking in general I'm not very creative, artistically speaking, but I can find good maps from modules and I just start counting out squares and I trace it. I get a box of crayons which is like $.99 and I just match it as best I can. Thankfully my players appreciate effort.

[valadil]

Incidentally, I've also had a ton of fun recycling part of my childhood for gaming. I pulled several pounds of Construx out of my parents basement and slapped a grid on the panel pieces. They allow for pretty easy 3d modelling. If I do these in advance I can use them as set pieces and put them on top of the map without ever having to draw.

Example:

Spoiler

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[UndertakerSheep]

Thanks for all the ideas everyone!

I was going to go for the Gaming Paper solution when I discovered something by accident. A few days ago I bought a collection of 4e adventures and maps from a guy who doesn't DM anymore, and with it came the basic Paizo Gamemastery flipmat. I gave it a quick inspection at the store and thought it was completely clean, but when I came home I realized there was a small room drawn in red on the inside of the flipmat.

Realizing the man hadn't played a RPG for more than 6 months, I thought it would never come off. I decided to try and rub it off with a paper towel just in case. It took a bit of effort, but everything came off.

I think I'm going to stick with my chessex mat for on the fly map drawing, and use my two paizo flipmats for drawing maps before the session. If I can get red marker off that has been on it for half a year, surely I can get black to disappear after 2-3 days as well.

Edit: valadil, that looks awesome!

[Pink]

Well, seems you have a bit of a solution, but I figure I will mention my two cents anyway.

If you have access to a good office supply store, you may be able to purchase 50-page pads of flip chart paper that already has a one-inch grid. I've used them for years for my mega dungeon, they're quite wonderful with most pages large enough to fit even the largest rooms. I recommend buying flip chart markers for it so that it does bleed into the next page while you draw.

Something like this

I've tried using gaming paper (one a roll in an iron GM competition), and quite frankly I don't like it. I've tried different types of markers and they kinda bead up on it instead of going down proper, and if you want to draw several rooms in advance it is a bit unwieldy to unroll and reroll.