Inspired by @2P51 ‘s art threads. Please post battle/reference maps that you’ve created and/or used for your games, or even just cool ones that you’ve found elsewhere.

Here’s one that I just finished up that’ll kick off my next session.

This one may look familiar.

Just MHO, but I think battle maps like these are straight-jackets on encounter management. A normal letter-sized page like the above is great to help set the initial scene, but after that it's almost useless. One of the best pieces of advice I heard early on came from the Order 66 PDF, "The List", which was "Keep it LONG". You don't want to constrain your players thinking they have to stick inside the map boundary, that's a D&D thing. These maps are at most "medium range" (*maybe* long range from corner to corner), and allow for few options. Plus, if somebody jumps on that speeder, and the party gives chase (or even 1 PC, communicating with everyone else by comlink), all that time spent building and printing that glorious tiny-space map is wasted.

Handouts are great, but for encounter management, you're much better off with a whiteboard and erasable markers. It's much easier then to handle long range combat, moving chases that change environments each turn, and splitting the party into as many pieces as necessary.

45 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Just MHO, but I think battle maps like these are straight-jackets on encounter management. A normal letter-sized page like the above is great to help set the initial scene, but after that it's almost useless. One of the best pieces of advice I heard early on came from the Order 66 PDF, "The List", which was "Keep it LONG". You don't want to constrain your players thinking they have to stick inside the map boundary, that's a D&D thing. These maps are at most "medium range" (*maybe* long range from corner to corner), and allow for few options. Plus, if somebody jumps on that speeder, and the party gives chase (or even 1 PC, communicating with everyone else by comlink), all that time spent building and printing that glorious tiny-space map is wasted.

Handouts are great, but for encounter management, you're much better off with a whiteboard and erasable markers. It's much easier then to handle long range combat, moving chases that change environments each turn, and splitting the party into as many pieces as necessary.

All good advice, but not really what this thread is all about.

When I used the cantina map my players did indeed make use of the landspeeder and had a “theatre of the mind” encounter that branched into another location which was handled about half battlemap and half narrative. I simply improvised, because it’s impossible to have a map for every possible situation, but for big set pieces, I try and have a few ready to go.

Then again, I primarily use roll20 and tell the players that there is stuff beyond the edges of the map if they decide to go off-map. When they do, you can either get a bit more narrative, make use of roll20’s rudimentary (sucky) drawing tools (dry erase marker in person), or a combo of both.

I love me some battlemaps. They're part of the fun when GMing.

Created this one directly in Roll20 and pieced it together from screenshots.

It features a disabled CR-90 Blockade Runner and transport. The corvette was finished off by a Tie Fighter squadron as the players dropped out of hyperspace in my game.

And here it is without the ships.

I love battle-maps, and make a lot of custom stuff in Photoshop for my Clone Wars game. However a lot of the time I use assets or combinations of paid-for maps from map creators like Heroic Maps or various guys I support on Patreon so unfortunately I can't share any of it here. However I'll be watching this thread with great interest, and if I do put anything together with free assets I'll be sure to share it here too. Great thread idea!

14 hours ago, whafrog said:

Just MHO, but I think battle maps like these are straight-jackets on encounter management.

@whafrog I am normally on board with your posts -- and I am with you on some of this one -- but, dude, don't be that guy who answers an honest thread question with "up yours for even asking". The only reason I started playing FFG Star Wars in the first place was as a ufck you to the FLGS clerk who, when I asked him if he had "this new game Edge of the Empire" in stock, told me I was dumb and should just play the old WEG game.

Even on that note: I use maps as a GM to _inspire_ weirdness and surprise in my encounters. I have a huge folder of them and plop in ones that seem to have something compelling about them related to the encounter or scene we're entering. I let my players fill in much of the gaps--why the lighting is this way in one place, what that mysterious object is, where that other path leads. A good map can be the grain of sand that makes the pearl.

As for answering the OP, you can't go very wrong with the maps Christopher West makes at Maps Of Mastery . I've gladly forked over money for them and had my players go gaga at the level of detail and imagination.

45 minutes ago, BrickSteelhead said:

but, dude, don't be that guy who answers an honest thread question with "up yours for even asking".

I guess I came off that way, sorry to @AnomalousAuthor about that. I have a ton of Maps of Mastery stuff myself. But I never actually use them in a game...I tried to once and about 5 minutes later the map was irrelevant. That was the only point I was trying to make.

I do find them handy to set the scene, and sometimes just viewing them can spark encounter ideas, so I'm not saying they're useless.

3 hours ago, whafrog said:

I guess I came off that way, sorry to @AnomalousAuthor about that. I have a ton of Maps of Mastery stuff myself. But I never actually use them in a game...I tried to once and about 5 minutes later the map was irrelevant. That was the only point I was trying to make.

I do find them handy to set the scene, and sometimes just viewing them can spark encounter ideas, so I'm not saying they're useless.

No worries, you didn’t come off anywhere near that dramatic to me. One of the great things about this system is that it can easily accommodate all our styles of play without much hassle.

I’ll have to check out these MoM that you guys have mentioned. I’m not really too familiar the whole Patreon scene.

11 hours ago, Kualan said:

I love battle-maps, and make a lot of custom stuff in Photoshop for my Clone Wars game. However a lot of the time I use assets or combinations of paid-for maps from map creators like Heroic Maps or various guys I support on Patreon so unfortunately I can't share any of it here. However I'll be watching this thread with great interest, and if I do put anything together with free assets I'll be sure to share it here too. Great thread idea!

Would love to see some of your stuff someday.

I have a ton of maps for EotE that are from years of collecting and not all properly attributed to their creators. What's the policy on posting links to that sort of thing around here?

And does anyone know when Chris West is next doing a Kickstarter? Because again: more money for that guy is good for the world.

19 hours ago, BrickSteelhead said:

I have a ton of maps for EotE that are from years of collecting and not all properly attributed to their creators. What's the policy on posting links to that sort of thing around here?

And does anyone know when Chris West is next doing a Kickstarter? Because again: more money for that guy is good for the world.

If it’s available via the web I think you’re probably alright. Pretty much the same as the art threads in that respect. I’m not aware of any official policy though.

My maps all use some assets that I’ve either licensed or found on google. For example, the asteroid clusters that I use on my space map are the ones that come with X-Wing. The brushes are ones that I’ve purchased licenses for from a couple of different guys on gumroad. The cantina map is the one that comes with the EOTE Beginner Game with a few custom tweaks.

www.mapsofmastery.com has a lot of useful maps. in print and PDF

On 6/28/2019 at 8:17 PM, whafrog said:

Just MHO, but I think battle maps like these are straight-jackets on encounter management. A normal letter-sized page like the above is great to help set the initial scene, but after that it's almost useless. One of the best pieces of advice I heard early on came from the Order 66 PDF, "The List", which was "Keep it LONG". You don't want to constrain your players thinking they have to stick inside the map boundary, that's a D&D thing. These maps are at most "medium range" (*maybe* long range from corner to corner), and allow for few options. Plus, if somebody jumps on that speeder, and the party gives chase (or even 1 PC, communicating with everyone else by comlink), all that time spent building and printing that glorious tiny-space map is wasted.

Handouts are great, but for encounter management, you're much better off with a whiteboard and erasable markers. It's much easier then to handle long range combat, moving chases that change environments each turn, and splitting the party into as many pieces as necessary.

I find the opposite. Maps give me things to interact with and spark creative solutions. That not having a map hinders. They also give me a far better understanding of where everyone and thing is. a picture is worth a thousand words. it also gets everyone on the same page.

I'm going plug maps of mastery night life tiles, I have 3 packs of the night life tiles and I've gotten so much use out of them. But you need at least 2 packs and 3 packs is better.

Should look familiar to most on here.

Based on Malinz21’s version from swsheets.

On ‎6‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 8:51 PM, AnomalousAuthor said:

Would love to see some of your stuff someday.

Over the weekend I put together a couple of maps of the Galactic Senate for an upcoming arc in the game I run - one for the Senate Rotunda and another two based on sections of the building seen in the Clone Wars TV show (namely the Hostage Crisis episode).

I only used one person's assets (and a lot of Photoshop) to build the maps - a popular map-maker on Roll20 / DriveThru RPG named Gabriel Pickard - so I may try to find out what his policy is on sharing custom works made using his stuff.

Hopefully it will be all good, as with the new Clone Wars books out I imagine some people might get a use out of such stuff (got to give those Senator and Representative universal spec characters somewhere to hang out right?)

I got in touch with Gabriel on Twitter - he gave the go ahead to share these:

Galactic Senate Rotunda:

Galactic Senate Eastern Section ( Version with GM notes HERE )

Not exactly "battle" maps, just floorplans of the Jedi Star, a heavily modified YZ-900.

On 6/29/2019 at 8:38 PM, BrickSteelhead said:

And does anyone know when Chris West is next doing a Kickstarter? Because again: more money for that guy is good for the world.

Agreed. I was lucky enough to win a thumb drive with all of the currently available maps that he donated to this year's GamerNation Con auction.

On 7/1/2019 at 8:46 PM, Kualan said:

I got in touch with Gabriel on Twitter - he gave the go ahead to share these:

Galactic Senate Rotunda:

Galactic Senate Eastern Section ( Version with GM notes HERE )

Love these, may be using these but may change their purpose.

Going to use this one very soon. Still need to downsize it a bit to make it VTT friendly.

I love to just look at maps for ideas.

Finally got our session in so I’m now free to share this without spoiling things for my players if they happen to stumble across it.