Gentleman and the occassional Lady,

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to produce a good looking Hive Map. A significant portion of my campaign is going to take place in a Hive and Id like to be able to provide my players with more than circles on a paper with my chicken scratch in them. I am working on my artistic abilities but they are no where near up to snuff. I'm not really worried about format at this point so feel free to offer up literally any idea you have. Digtial, analog, anything and on any scale. Thanks in advance for the assistance.

Best way to draw a hive map? Don't draw one.

I just put my players through an abandoned hive, and the thing to remember is that these places are huge. It would take several hours to walk from one end to the other, assuming everything was in working order and there weren't any crowds. I struggled for a while to come up with a way to have them move around the hive and visit some of the points of interest, but I didn't want to lose out on the feel of how massive the place was.

Instead of trying to draw a giant map to scale, I narrated it all. I wrote up descriptions for the exterior/interior of each of my 10 locations, then I wrote 10 "travel descriptions" to narrate the amount of time spent just moving through the hive and continue the themes I was trying to evoke. It worked out well - and besides the amount of writing, was probably less work.

Instead of trying to draw a giant map to scale, I narrated it all. I wrote up descriptions for the exterior/interior of each of my 10 locations, then I wrote 10 "travel descriptions" to narrate the amount of time spent just moving through the hive and continue the themes I was trying to evoke. It worked out well - and besides the amount of writing, was probably less work.

I tried that with a series of Deathwatch missions I ran were the Killteam was sweeping a Genestealer infestation out of a Space Hulk. I found it really unsatisfying, and half-way through the series of missions I had to switch to D&D -style graph paper maps...

How would mapping a hive even work?

Hives are gigantic in scale, with billions of residents, and almost always are built in three dimensions. I can see how you might do the small-scale stuff for a battle map, but drawing up a full on hive?

I just don't see how you'd adequately reflect that in a two-dimensional map. The average hive basically looks like a really built-up urban area, only it's dilapidated, full of gothic architecture, really densely populated, the streets vary and change in height, are built over or blocked by buildings and ruins, and so on, and there's kilometers of architecture upwards and downwards as the hive has been built up for millennia, new buildings just placed on top of the old. It also covers hundreds of square kilometers in surface area.

I suppose I could see drawing up general districts in a side view, adding locations of interest and major travel paths, and using that to keep track of things. And that's basically just making a visual aid for cpteveros' method.

Instead of trying to draw a giant map to scale, I narrated it all. I wrote up descriptions for the exterior/interior of each of my 10 locations, then I wrote 10 "travel descriptions" to narrate the amount of time spent just moving through the hive and continue the themes I was trying to evoke. It worked out well - and besides the amount of writing, was probably less work.

I tried that with a series of Deathwatch missions I ran were the Killteam was sweeping a Genestealer infestation out of a Space Hulk. I found it really unsatisfying, and half-way through the series of missions I had to switch to D&D -style graph paper maps...

Well there is the problem: it doesn't really work for combat situations. 40k RPG practically necessitates using graphs and combat maps, so any sort of combat will require such. My mission in the Hive had no combat, so it worked really well as a way to explore the massive structure.

One thing I did, though, was with the really significant buildings (palace, etc) I actually generated a map of, and then wrote descriptions of each room. You could easily combine that with combat maps, like so:

Say you have three locations you want to detail in your Hive. Perhaps they are a hab-block, manufactorum, and a side-street black market. You write descriptions of each location, with info for all five senses so the players really get an idea of what the PCs are finding there. You have a small combat map of each location, too, in case you decide to run a combat encounter. Then, when they have killed/found/explored everything in the location, they decide to move on to the next one. You read the "travel description" of their journey to the next location, but since you've made a handful of random combat maps for these travel situations, you can have combat there as well.

The idea is that instead of trying to cover every possible situation, you run the scenario as a bunch of linked encounters. Making a flowchart could help you visually organize the information, but I just used a list of locations and a list of travel descriptions. If I had made combat maps for the locations and travel descriptions, I could have made things more combat oriented.

EDIT: It is worth noting, too, that my way works only in some situations. I wouldn't personally use it for every single session, nor would I recommend anyone else do so. It is just a different way of structuring things to add some variety or ease the GM's workload.

Well we all seem to have a slightly different opinion of whata a hive looks like. With that said....... come on guys. Use some common sense. Clearly I am not asking for a street by street hab block by hab block method of mapping out a Hive. That would be nearly impossible. What I am looking for is a Top down view of the hive that serves simply as fluff and looks nice while perhaps pointing out any features on the exterior of the hive that are worth noting. Next a side view would be nice so illustrate a very general view of level status ie: where the under hive begins, industrial area, ect ect ect. But most importantly it would be great to be able to map any pertinent area within a hive from a top down view. Since my players are going to be spending a great deal of time in the Hive and the different areas will be effecting one another it would be nice to have a visual representation of it.

Props to the man with the winning answer:

I am planning to start a new OW campaign soonish (after my group finishes our current campaign in a different game) and have been thinking about maps.

My first thought was to use Google maps and have them attack the 40k version of their hometown... Which in this case be the suburds around some tactically important Hive city or one of the levels inside the hive (there would be a roof overhead and some of the taller buildings would cut off when they hit the ceiling.) Then I realized that I could also use some aerial pictures of cities like Berlin or Stalingrad during WW2 give them an old map of the area before the bombings (which they get from Munitorium) but use the aerial picture after the bombings as the real game map... This is to simulate the damage from the fighting between Imperial Guard and their enemies.

And then I realized that at some point the campaign would have to use the map of Hiroshima. Which in this version has been struck by an orbital bombardment. "Does my character recognize any of the land marks on the map?" "Not really, you see ashes, a stream ...more ashes ...Chimney without the building etc." I know this is black humour and not everyone would do this but I guess I am a horrible person...

aerial pictures of cities like Berlin or Stalingrad during WW2 give them an old map of the area before the bombings (which they get from Munitorium) but use the aerial picture after the bombings as the real game map...

Do a particularly battered city: use pictures of Dresden in '45.

Don't draw a detailed map, just draw locations, lines representing roads between them and then write what kind of obstacles they have to pass to get to the place. More important question is:

What kind of locations hive city should have?

Locations like housing blocks, mushroom farms, life support stations, elevator shafts and staircases.

That would surely be narrow, heavily populated rooms with low light, lots of vents, cables and channels... There shouldn't be any open spaces, at least on the lower levels. All the space should be well organized. Open spaces would be a luxury, so they should be well guarded.

What kind of problems I'd encounter while traversing such a place?

That would surely be 3D structure of the hive. Climbing up a long road, going down etc. Utilizing Tech-Use ability - every hive is one big machine, so you'll need tech skills to move around it.

What kind of advantages one could have in a hive?

PC or NPC can benefit a lot from a fact that hives are enormous, entirely controlled systems. Those who know it should use that fact. Changing the atmosphere within rooms, moving of the walls and floors, closing and opening doors and hatches, all remotely - imagine a villain who can do that and your players will **** their pants in fear. On the other hand if you give them such power, they would be able to face much stronger opponents which is always a cool thing.

Luckily one squad does not have to take over an entire hive.

You need detailed maps on the locations that have the PCs taking part in firefights and less detailed map or some general "this is residential area, here factories, the roads you will take go from here to here etc." will do. A proper map might be more to the liking of the players but you if all else fails you can always say that the platoon leader simply drew a simple map on the dirt and the squad leader copied it off to his notebook and only the higher ranking officers have REAL maps of the region.