Maps and Minis...

[garhkal]

First off, who here uses maps (light chessex) and Minis/figures for their games?


Second, for those who do. What do you do for characters (or npcs) who are 'stealthed' or otherwise unseen/un noticed....
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[Esjs]

My friend that I used to RP with had a nice collection of the Star Wars Micromachines toys which always proved invaluable for setting up combat positioning. Usually we used other "props" (dice, cups, coasters, whatever we could find lying around) for buildings, furniture, etc.

In another, non-Star Wars game, we used a crumpled Reese's Peanut Butter Cup wrapper (nice bright orange) to indicate a building that had exploded into flames. At some point somebody coined the phrase about the "building that had gone Reese's." The term "Reese's" kinda stuck for other things that got spectacularly destroyed.

Later on he bought himself a nice roll-up hex map for use in space or vehicle battles.

If one of the PCs was "stealthed" (I like the word), we still had a token on the map to show where s/he was hidden. I don't think we would have a "stealthed" NPC token unless at least a couple of the characters had detected the hidden NPC.
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[entropy]

I don't use minis in star wars, but in D&D my solution is to use a numbered hex grid. I can just keep a note with the stats for the creature as to which hex it is in. Unfortunately, if you're dealing with more than 5 or 6 invisible characters, it can get a little tedious, but that doesn't happen often.

[Lord Aramus]

for starwars, mostly I use hex paper with pre-drawn maps.. and then I assign a counter to each player (something different colored or similarly identifiable) and track their position in a battle scenario with that. Npc's I usually mark with dice.. and I set the number on the dice (face up) with the npc's average skill die for easy reference.

but if anybody has ANY idea where I can get a scale comparison of most of the common starwars vessels (inasmuch and up to stardestroyers) I would be profoundly greatful. I am testing out a fleet battle system to make space combat more fluid and would love to have some paper starwars miniatures to use in the battles. especially to scale.. to heighten the feel of the epic battle.

In D&D I use butcher paper rolls and standard miniatures to track combat (butcher paper works pretty well as a scale comparison)
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[Orgaloth]

If we have to make note of party order, or where we are, we usually mark it on a mud map the GM draws, or we use the old SW figures.
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[Sabre]

I use a dry erase board, and when people are hidden, I don't draw them.
I used to use minis and a board and dominos for props, but it took too much time. People do like to play with those minis, though.

[KageRyu]

I rarely use miniatures in my role playing except to show a representation of what something might look like. Otherwise I have found it to be too much trouble, time, and tablespace nescessary for handling a combat. Often times, when I tried, I found miniatures just bogged down the game. Now I mostly use descriptives.
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[Vanion]

I make paper counters using custom character art and art I have found on the net, just shrunk down, placed onto small "front & back", folded-over, paper stand-up counters. (I used to own a bunch of the WEG metal SW miniatures, but they are gone now and I refuse to spend my hard-earned money on the "collectable" WotC minis... what a scam!) I have also found a few sheets of such stand-up counters available online.

I own a double-sided Chessex "Megamat" (approx. 30-40$) that we use for personal and space battles. It works perfectly... making each square 2 meters. I use water-based markers on the mat to draw out the character's surroundings. This mat also comes in handy when I need to draw out something that the characters see, that I might have difficulty describing.

IWhenever I need to make a note of anything the characters can't see, I just write down the location on a scrap of paper, using objects I have drawn on the map as reference.
Example: Bob is hidden 3 squares left of the pile of crates, and 4 squares down.
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[Lord Aramus]

thats what I am thinking.. there Is a Homeworld 2 mod which incorporates nearly 100 starwars vessels.. those are reasonably on scale with most of the literature, so I think I'l start taking screenshots of all the ships side by side from the top and then removing the backgrounds. printing the ships and using them as scale accurate tokens.

this should allow for some epic sized combat with reasonably accurate scales.

although I will be zooming in on the fighters and small vessels for obvious reasons. or making squadron tokens.
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[KageRyu]

For good scale comparisons and scale acurate ship images, check out Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions. An ivaluable website. Not sure of the current URL, it keeps moving.
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[Lord Aramus]

thats where I found all the side views. but he doesn't do top views of anything

so limited in usefulness for tokens.. unless you are making 3d paper models
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[Gry Sarth]

We use miniatures extremely rarely in our games, most of the time a simple drawing and some dots to identify where everyone is is enough. The danger with miniatures, as we found out, is that you run the risk of turning your combat into an actual miniature game. You stop thinking about your character, you stop ROLE-PLAYING and concentrate simply on the strategic combat, and in my eyes this weakens the game considerably.

[Lord Aramus]

I use miniatures as visual aids.. line of sight, etc..


but I usually just use tokens for character combat.

I use miniatures for ship combat... and right now.. the ship combat in SW is lacking.. at least when large ship are involved.

I don't reeeeeeally want to roll individually for 70 turbolaser batteries every time somebody makes a suicide run on a star destroyer
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[KageRyu]

[Lord Aramus]

wow.. my game group is exactly opposite of that. They tend to get unfocused if they don't have a battle layed out in front of them. I get alot of "describe my cover options and what can I see from this position, etc when I have the figures out

mostly I do token style figures.. that way when something gets downed I replace it with an obstacle counter instead of removing a figurine from the map. that way the players know they'll have to circumvent a square where something is incapacitated or they'll have to interact with it somehow.

If I get my ship tokens... I'll have to do destroyed versions of them to, to represent debris fields
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