I was considering picking up a poster of space with stars in the background maybe a nebula for space battles as a visual aid. I found that using the beginner box with the maps was helpful in keeping track of relative position for more forgetful players. Not using exact distances but more or less to keep track of who is where. Ideally id like to get one of stars with no planets and one with a planetary background. For my pathfinder maps i use GIMP and PosteRazor might be able to do something similar for star wars maps.

What I find works though: Use a simple image for stuff that doesn't need a map. If you have an encounter in say... a warehouse? Just go find a picture of a warehouse and when the encounter starts put out that picture. (not a map, just a picture). It's easy to do, and establishes the look and feel you want, without setting any "hard" facts about the environment.

This is kinda what FFG did with this same narrative system with Warhammer Location Cards. These were sets of cards with a picture of a general location, some flavor text, and sometimes a game mechanic.

For example, a Cursed Forest card might be flopped down while you chased someone off a road. It would have flavor text describing the darkness and chills you receive when entering the darkened, evil forest. It would also have game mechanics such as suffer 1 strain due to the scariness of the forest and all tasks requiring vision suffer 1 setback due to the darkness, but all hide checks receive a bonus.

You might have cards that were very broad (Country Road, High Mountains, Deep Desert, Small Keep, Tavern), but also very specific (Throne Room, Prison Cell, Clifftop, Huge Gnarly Oak Tree).

There might be more then one card flopped down on the table for when there was a fight in the Throne Room, but some of the players ran out into the Large Vaulted Hallway. I would simply move minis to the appropriate cards. Some of us made enlarged versions of the cards for this purpose, allowing minis on the cards to indicate range (touching mini bases Engaged, on card together Close, on edge of card Medium, etc).

I had thought of making such cards for Star Wars but have never got around to it. If someone wants to start a thread with ideas on locations then please get it started!

For example...

BUSY HANGAR. The large hangar is full of activity as workers, speeders, and spacecraft move about at an almost dangerous speed. Characters suffering a Despair while engaged in a chase or combat may get struck by a passing person (Knockdown) or vehicle (10 damage plus Knockdown). Getting lost in the crowd is easy, 1 Bonus to any Stealth actions.

Just get a thin piece of plexiglass. You can write on them with dry erase and they wipe off just like a dry-erase board. Anything you slide underneath is protected and can be used. Place a piece of 'butcher-block' graph paper under it and you have a reusable grid. If you put the Beginner Box poster maps under it, they can be drawn on without being damaged. Even if you are only using a 8x11 print of something, you can slide it under and write on it. If you want a white board effect, just place the blank side (usually white) of a poster up and you have a white board.

At my FLGS the plexiglass is large enough to cover about half of the table so the GM can also use it for quick notes.

All in all for a narrative game it is a handy way to go.

When I ran D&D 4e games at my FLGS, I used the round Alea Tools magnetic markers and the magnet-ready battle mats from Dark Platypus. For monsters, instead of minis, I just printed up some small portraits that were a bit bigger than 1" square, then punched them out with a 1" round hole punch (Aleas sells them as well). A little dab of non-permanent glue stick on the back would hold them to a marker. Along with numbers on the side of the markers, it worked great for keeping track of which mobs were where, and still provided visuals. Arguably not as cool as minis, maybe, but a whole lot cheaper, plus you could print up exactly what the characters were fighting, rather than saying "These skeleton archers are really orcs".

For EotE, I've been utilizing the same concept for the markers. That is, I'll print up 1" portraits of Stormtroopers, or Rodians, or whatever, and gluing them (non-permanently) to my Alea markers. Each character has their own token with their own portrait printed on it as a magnetic disc so they can be stuck on top of condition markers, if that's important for the fight. For ships, I've been using the 2" markers and a 2" punch with the exact ship printed and punched. I'll also print up and cut out pertinent scene elements (such as the grav sled, escape pod, and Jawa skiffs from Beyond the Rim), just to add flavor.

I started to use my Dark Platypus battle mat last session, since my markers stick to it, but as soon as I started to draw on it, someone asked "So, are the squares 5 feet?" Doh! Some people have tactical combat ingrained in them from all of their D&D and Pathfinder gaming experiences, so I had to explain once again that no, they're not 5 feet, just ignore the grid and use the map only for visualization. So... SSand is right on the money using clear plexiglass for a battle surface. Any sort of erasable battle map WITHOUT grid lines would be great in order to emphasize a more cinematic, rather than tactical, approach to combat. For me, I'd like to find a metal-permeated non-gridded battle map so my Alea markers would stick to it. Also, without grid lines, you can make the scale anything you like and just use your markers to show relative positions in the scene.

Also, I tend to run battles with and without the markers, in about the same numbers. It really depends on how complex the scene is, or whether or not extra visual elements would enhance the cinematic feel of the scene or hinder it. For instance, at the end of Long Arm of the Hutt, I printed up Teemo's palace, but since I didn't want to drain my ink cartridge, I just made it on a standard letter-sized sheet. For that fight, we didn't use the markers, but just kept track of where we were in the palace. The climactic end was on the landing platform with the Nova Courier coming in for the rescue as one of the characters was blasting the turret at the stream of Gamorreans coming out the door. For that encounter, having markers would have slowed things down too much and would not really have aided in the visualization of the scene.

But, for the escape pod scene in BtR, I actually drew out the swamp and pond, stuck some trees on the mat (you can buy them at model train stores; just use spray glue and add green flocking to the plastic trunks. I also stuck magnets on the bottom so they don't fall over all the time) to help give it a jungle feel, scattered a few rocks around, and added my printed escape pod propped up on a die. When the octopuses dropped from the trees, they could actually picture them coming down because of the scenery and it totally freaked them out

For space battles, you can just buy a sheet of black felt or cheap black cloth, then put dabs of white paint or liquid paper on it for a star effect. As I said, I use the 2" Alea markers with the actual ships printed on them, but if you really want to get fancy, spend your next paycheck getting all of the FFG X-Wing mini figures you can and use those. Oh, and rocks from your garden make great asteroids

OggDude, I used to have a similar setup for my 4e games before I started to build my collected of minis, but instead of using the Alea markers, I would go to my local craft store (Hobby Lobby in my case) and pick up a package of these:

And glued my tokens on there with a more permanent glue.

For the larger creatures I would go to the hardware store and pick up a handful of these as my base:

Yeah, I considered getting the washers as well. They're a lot cheaper than the Alea markers. I got Alea because of all the 4e conditions, and the fact that they had number and condition stickers for them all, and they can stack easily, and stay put on metal-infused battle mats, etc. Also, I used red for bloodied, black for unconscious, etc. Those aren't as important in EotE, but at least having different colors can help differentiate between different states for different mobs, whatever those might be.

Instead of getting those metal stickers they sell, 1" and 2" washers would work just as well, though, regardless of whether or not you have magnetic discs to put them on. When I run out of my supply, that's probably what I'm going to do.

A cheaper alternative to Alea Tools (which are sweet, no doubt) are Dungeonwerks Condition Markers - not magnetic but still quite verastile.