Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 mhuggies Oct 22, 2010 16:09:16	Hey gang I am officially reaching out for assistance. I am in the process of setting up to run Marauders of the Dune Sea. The map how ever presents a challenge for me in trying to get my dungeon tiles to work. I know several of the tiles are from Caverns of the Underdark and Dire Tombs, which I have but my problem is I can't seem to pin down exactly which tiles go where in order to make the cavern portions of the map. If anyone can help me I would sure appreciate it. Not sure exactly how you can explain to me in a forum how to put which tile where in order to get the map correct, but if someone knows a method that would be great. Thanks.
#2 Alphastream Oct 23, 2010 12:50:43	That's a tough one. It would be a fair amount of work to analyze and explain. What I would suggest is picking up a vinyl battlemap. Sketch the outer border of the room, and place the tiles you have on it. Don't be afraid to overlap tiles if it works for you - they very well may have done this in some of those adventure maps (which makes it hard to figure out what is what). Anything you don't have, you can cut out of paper or use something like moulding clay. You can do as little as you want or a lot based on how much you want a real representation, an accurate one, and/or a fun one. My advice is always (and I have to tell myself this all the time) to spend your time first and foremost on fleshing out the adventure. Any given hour is much better when spent on how you will run the adventure than on the battle surface. If you have extra time, then use it on props/tiles/etc. One more bit on accuracy - an accurate representation may not be best. Often a room is the wrong size/shape/terrain for the battle. Do the PCs have room to operate? Do the monsters? Is the encounter better in a larger/smaller/different shape? Feel free to change it to what it should be and to what you have on hand.
#3 kikuhime Oct 26, 2010 21:51:33	I know this isn't the most desireable method for the set, but I ended up using large sheets of paper and I sketched out the maps for the dungeon portion of this encounter set. Personally, I like drawing out maps myself, it's my favorite aspect of preparing for our weekly session. But doing this either requires large sheets of paper, or a lot of small paper linked together. To give an idea of what the sketching was like, the Marauders of the Dune Sea dungeon maps took a total of 4 sheets of 24" x 18" paper.
#4 Alphastream Oct 26, 2010 22:53:46	Completely valid. I like battlemaps over paper just because it reduces waste, but I really love mixing drawn maps with specific tiles for certain terrain features. To me the best part of tiles is the capture of interesting things like chests, tables, urns, etc. That's the part I have trouble drawing.
#5 mhuggies Oct 28, 2010 10:30:49	All very good ideas. I ran this last nite and what I actually did was take dugeon tiles and create a very close representation of the map as given in the game and used poster putty to put it all together on a board, it actually turned out rather well.
#6 khorne37 Oct 28, 2010 10:41:58	What about token where is a good source for both player and monster tokens?
#7 Alphastream Oct 28, 2010 11:04:40	KJordan posted very cool stand-up tokens for the Dark Sun season of D&D Encounters. Some other peeps did so as well. You can find them here as part of my DM Tools thread. Otherwise, there are token kits out there for various D&D editions (tons of pdf download products), but none that I know of just for Dark Sun.
#8 khorne37 Oct 28, 2010 11:21:05	Well I think that WotC should put out packs for each manual. I mean how hard can it be. I really like the sheets they have put out for there say soft cover adventure packs or the new monster vault.