Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Hey all, long time lurker, first time poster.

After running TFT for the first time (just a skirmish on the Melee mouse-pad map with my buddy, and then a little dungeon), I had the thought that a triplanetary-style (and sized) dry-erase map with the 1.5 inch hexes would be a great addition.

It would allow the GM to quickly draw out maps rather than dig around a box full of two-sided tiles, which was kind of awkward during play.

I would love to buy one of these from SJG with all the TFT trade-dress on it, but assuming they have better things to do, does anyone have any ideas about how someone could get something like this made through an online service or something?

Thanks

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Welcome to the site!

Dry-erase battle mats have been available for decades, and are indeed very convenient.

I prefer 1" hexes, but there are 1.5" hex battlemats available too, e.g. from Chessex http://www.chessex.com/mats/Battlema...Reversible.htm

I also like copying hex grids onto plastic transparencies, then using paper to draw battle locations, and laying the hex grid on top. This allows me to use (and to re-use) plain paper for locations.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Oh sweet! Thanks! I think that's exactly the type of thing I'm looking for.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

I play with a huge Chessex mat with 1.5" hexes, on which I place MH tiles as overlays, drawing in additional things as appropriate.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Oh, another tip, is that if you do use a dry erase hexmap, and/or you are interested in recording battle positions, either to save a game for returning to later, or to record where the dead bodies and dropped weapons were lying for a forensic investigation later, or just to remember, and/or to record what you drew a location as before you erase the drawings, digital cameras can do wonders...

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Have you tried using the dry-erase megahex tiles that are included in the Legacy Edition box?

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

I use the dry-erase MH tiles constantly, and, as a 40+ year player of TFT I can tell you their big scale, diversity and quality are the biggest improvement in the game. And the more of them you have the better they 'work'. But there is still a space for a big roll out mat, because it is challenging to tesselate the tiles into large open spaces. Really, anything bigger than about 4 MH on a side becomes unwieldy. For this you need folded or rolled surfaces that can open up on the table. Unfortunately, the paper maps for Melee and Wizard are too 'bendy' and thin, so they don't match up well with the tiles (also, the look on the table is untidy). You can mix tiles and rolled out rubber mats, and this makes a flat continuous surface, but also has an untidy look. For that matter, the big Chessex mat mixed with tiles is 'untidy' in this way, and the tiles you drop onto it are raised up, which isn't very nice.

But I can easily imagine a product that would solve this issue: several roll-up rubber mats of different size that have the same graphic design as the plain white MH tiles and come 'flush' to the edges (i.e., no empty margin). These would lie flat, roll up into a compact form for storage, and tesselate contiguously with the tiles, and they are nearly the same thickness. This would add a lot to the range of spaces you can create.

Also, we need something like MH tiles for exterior spaces and interiors of buildings.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

I need to try this!

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Also, don't some of the new adventures have "keys" that show how to "build" encounter areas using the MegaHexes that came with Legacy edition?

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Yes, they do. I don't have them in front of me, but I think the maps for all of the adventures in the hard-bound adventure compilation from SJG do this. If I'm mis-remembering, then at least look at the Postcard dungeons because they certainly do. I don't think the maps from Gaming Balistic do this.

More generally, I encourage anyone with a set of MH tiles to practice using them; once you get the hang of it your dungeon-exploration style adventures take on a quality sort of like playing with a Dwarven Forge set. The tiles are obviously less swanky than DF, but they still serve a critical function of drawing the player's focus onto a concrete scale representation of the play space. And there is one respect in which the tiles are actually better than DF-style set ups: you can lay them out piece by piece, gradually revealing (and re-concealing) only those things that can be seen by the players as they move through a labyrinth. I have found this to be a very effective way of imposing the constraints of illumination and line of sight without having to constantly make rulings. When the players move I simply lay down the new tiles that correspond to what they can now see and remove those that correspond to spaces they can no longer see. This approach introduces a level of mystery and spookiness when they hear or smell something that is out of range of their vision!

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

I've been making some maps and producing them on actual game boards that have been working well for us. Most are arenas or rooms.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Yes I have, and that's kind of the issue I had. They are a bit fiddly to be setting up on the go while my players are waiting. That's why I thought a big triplanetary-style map with megahexes on it would be cool.

Just a thought. Love the game.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

My personal preference is to not put everything out at once. Reveal bits at a time as they explore, which makes it easier to pull out two or three tiles at a time and place them to extend the playscape.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Yes; that is what I was getting at in my post above. I will add though that it is very helpful to plan ahead by pulling any MH tiles that have terrain or other features printed on them, so you don't have to hunt and peck through the box to find them.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

The megahex tiles are wonderful. The only advantage a big dry-erase mat has over them is that it is more stable. I wish there were someway to make the megahex tiles less prone to shifting on the table. The rubber playmats are superb in that respect, but they are not tiles and they are not dry-erase. I think I'd be happy giving up the dry-erase capabilities of the megahex tiles if that's what it took to make them non-skid.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

If you're not using a tablecloth, tiny bits of poster tack do the job. Just be sure to clean the stuff off of the tiles at the end of each game session.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Good idea. Thanks for the tip, Phil!

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

A thousand times, yes. At least that's how I do it. The big map or play mat showing too much at once is a spoiler, compromising the players' sense of mystery.

The tiles don't have to be MH though, nor do they have to be squares instead of hexes at the combat scale like DF and others, although it's dang near impossible to find rectilinear tiles with hexes printed on them. I know because I searched high and low before publishing my own tile kit, and found only one set (and those were non-uniform pieces which doesn't really help much when planning your map).

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Getting ITL hex grids, particularly those based on labyrinth scale megahexes, to merge seamlessly with rectilinear spaces is notoriously difficult. The only approach that seems to work is to create your map without any kind of grid and then drop it on top of a clear hex grid. But my favorite approach these days is to simply surrender to the MH system, and do your best within that design to create visually appealing spaces. The roll-up rubber mats are a nice example of this approach.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Steve's solution is superb, BTW. His tiles are definitely worth taking a look at.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

How do you get Steve's tiles?

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Thanks for the kind words Shostak! Was it your group was going to try them out in play last weekend?

The PDF with a little preview is available here:
https://www.tradebit.com/filedetail....ors-kit-steven

But if you message me your e-mail address I'd be happy to send you a free copy.

The instructions in the book say to print to paper and then glue the pages to card stock, but if you have a printer that can handle index card/cover stock it's much less work to print to it directly and then just cut the pieces apart. Didn't have my own color inkjet working when I published the book, but just got if fixed and finally printed my own color set directly to 110 lb cover stock. That's plenty heavy and it all turned out even sharper than I'd hoped.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Yes--sort of. I did not get to print them in time for that "away" game, because I wanted to have them at 1.5-inch hex size and could not reformat the PDF to allow printing efficiently on 11x17 inch paper--the margins are too wide to print all the tiles on a page at about 170%. But I did print them at the normal PDF size for my "home" game, and I really like their rectalinearity.

Re: Triplanetary-Style Map?
 

Yeah, the pages are very full so scaling up that large won't work very well. And scaling PDFs isn't always available depending on versions and printers. An edition in Legacy scale is possible, although far fewer pieces would fit per page, and some of the larger pieces (rooms and longer tunnel runs) would become impossible (at least on letter size paper).

If there was really enough interest in the set, I might make it available as separate jpg files for each piece, then the user could resize the jpgs more readily in PaintShop or PhotoShop, and print one at a time from those programs, or copy and paste whatever fits onto one page at the new scale of choice. I'll think on it all some more. I spent weeks getting the book ready at classical scale, and I need to catch up on other projects before I go back to that one.

Actually another idea I had was to shrink everything to maybe 1/4 size as jpgs. Then a full, virtual dungeon map could be created by just dragging the desired pieces around and pasting them into a large, new image. That's how I created some of the illustrations for the book, and found it to be fun.