This is the third of these Ask-The-GMs that I’m tackling without recourse to my usual allies and fellow-GMs.

Battlemats, maps, and tiles all have a valuable role to play in creating game atmosphere and letting people get on with play. The old adage states that a picture is worth a thousand words; an appropriate terrain tile and figures can save the GM that thousand words, and save the players (and GM) from constructing an elaborate and error-prone visualization of where everything is and how big it is.

Which only makes it double frustrating when you can’t find something you need.

Ask the gamemasters

Krystian, a Cyberpunk GM, contacted Campaign Mastery to report this very problem and ask for help.

Krystian wrote:
“I’m using OpenRPG to play Cyberpunk with my friends. and I have many problems with this. Digital tiles and minis for maps for sci-fi game are almost non existent on the internet and I would like to know where to find them so I can provide better quality visuals for my players. right now I’m scribbling in whiteboard mode and this does not look too exciting.”

Unfortunately, I’m not sure how much help I can offer. I don’t use OpenRPG so I have no idea of the file format required. I can only assume that a standard image format can be converted into the right type of file. What’s more, the situation is certain to have changed markedly since the time the question was asked, due to the high evolution rate of such systems at the moment and the length of time since it was posed.

Finally, to answer the question for the broadest possible group of readers, I need to step away from OpenRPG, and in fact from purely digital resources entirely, and offer a range of solutions for a variety of readers. Some of what follows will be digital images, some may be physical tiles and maps.

Unfinished Planetary Station Map by Michael Tumey, reproduced with permission. For this and more, follow the links near the bottom of the list.

Unfinished Planetary Station Map by Michael Tumey, reproduced with permission. For this and more, follow the links near the bottom of the list.

27+ Unsorted Sources:

Various Google Searches led me to the following:

  • The Tile Collection at Open Game Art – 69 categories; some are tilesets, others are full maps. There is an entry, “Scifi Interior Tiles” near the bottom.
  • Resources archived/indexed at RPG Virtual Tabletop . A mixture of free and commercial maps. The green background indicates free maps, but it’s not as easy as perhaps it should be to distinguish from the blue-background used to denote commercial maps. Some are explicitly sci-fi.
  • Make your own with RPG Maker – The page linked to contains a sci-fi resource pack for making sci-fi maps. There is a free trial version of the software accessible from “Download” on the menu at the top right of the page.
  • Answers to a similar request at Pinnacle Entertainment Group .
  • More resources are listed in this thread at Paizo including links to Sci-Fi Minis.
  • Lots of stuff available in this category at Pinterest .
  • The more general RPG Tiles board at Pinterest is also worth a look.
  • A still-more-general Pinterest Search Results (some redundant results given the above links)
  • Star Tiles from Fat Dragon Games (PDF) [link] – Another not-free set, but they look fantastic.
  • Other Fat Dragon Sci-Fi accessories [link]
  • Sci-Fi Floor Tiles from DramaScape via Wargame Vault [link] – A PDF to print yourself, or print-on-demand physical tiles, all 6×6 in size and designed to be interconnectable. The latter is not cheap, but should guarantee the quality of result – and printer ink isn’t cheap, either.
  • Cityscape Vol 1 from DramaScape via Wargame Vault [link] – a set of 35 unique modular 6×6 tiles that can be used to form a city. Not free.
  • Lunar Battlemap from DramaScape via Wargame Vault [link] – a set of 18 double-sided 8×10″ tiles that combine to form two 48×30″ maps. Not free.
  • Planet tiles by Joseph Knight [link] – Planet images for use on orbital & star-charts. Possibly a little large for the latter application.
  • Sci-Fi Cargo Tiles by Maps Of Mastery [link] – This set of 14 terrain cards includes 167 different pieces of terrain designed to be cut out and placed on existing (physical) maps to add new features or alter the layout. The price is good in comparison with other similar products.
  • Sci-Fi Maps from Maps Of Mastery [link] – The first of three pages of tile products in this category.
  • Other maps & tiles from Maps Of Mastery – Scroll past the large advert and you will find cover-links to featured products, and below that, a drop-down box that lets you browse by category.
  • Tabletop Terrain sets from Worldworks Games [link] – 84 products on 6 pages. Prices are comparable to other products. And note the menu on the right-hand-side which includes “Miniatures” as an option.
  • Star Wars Edge Of The Empire maps by Thompson Peters [link] – A bunch of free resources. Some are obviously Star Wars in nature, some are more universally applicable.
  • Star Wars Cantina blueprints (free) [link] – And, speaking of Star Wars….
  • Star Wars Galaxy Tiles from Amazon [link] – I use these myself.
  • Modern & Near-Future Street Tiles from En World [link] – Lots of free resources here :)
  • Dyson’s Dodecahedron – mostly fantasy maps but explore and look to adapt – Dyson makes it look easy. He usually posts a new map every week. Don’t miss the “Downloads” and “Maps” sections in the menu at the top of the screen.
  • The Traveller-RPG Facebook Group [link] – note that this is a closed group by invite of one of the Group Admins only, so either you already know about it or you may be out of luck. That said, there are currently 2368 members, including 9 Admins, so it can’t be that difficult!
  • Michael Tumey posts some free materials on Facebook, notably within the above group (but not restricted to it) (Disclaimer – he’s been a friend ever since he, Johnn and I collaborated on Assassin’s Amulet. He did the maps and some of the illustrations.
  • …and sells some through DriveThru RPG [link] – 56 items and Michael tends to sell at Bargain Prices.
  • And, last but not least, a search for Sci-Fi Maps on Drive-Thru RPG (1870 items, will include some of the above).

Hope that helps anyone facing a similar problem!

The Broader Solution

“I don’t care what anything was designed to do, I care about what it can do.” – Gene Krantz (Ed Harris), Apollo 13.

I use a lot of Fantasy tiles for my superhero campaign. “That’s not a hut, that’s…
…a Troop Transport.”
…a Freight Container.”
…an Orbital Lander.”
…a Parked Jet.”
…a City Bus.”
…an electrical substation.”

Forest is (usually) forest, rocks are (usually) rocks. I once tossed a whole bunch of small d6s on the table and then used shoelaces in straight lines to indicate where people and buildings were, respectively.

If you need to get more creative, wrap a tile of the right dimensions in Aluminum Foil.

Cut a shape out of cardboard. Or tear one out of scrap paper by hand, if you have to (I’ve done both).

There are lots of things that can be done to get you half-way to the battlemap you want. I listed a boat-load of them in 52+ Miniature Miracles: Taking Battlemaps the extra mile. These and similar techniques can extend the range of your battlemaps enormously.

Most of them are not suitable solutions for a digital game, but still, as I said, Forest is Forest. And there’s nothing to stop you making your own maps with digital photo-editing software.

For a Cyberpunk campaign, most maps for a modern setting will work; you simply need to describe the “distress” that isn’t visible. A number of Western-setting maps would also be appropriate.

It may be too late (one way or the other) to help Krystian with his campaign, but I’m sure that there’s something here of use to someone :)

Postscript

I was reflecting on this article prior to publication and realized that the real heart of the question is about resources being limited.

Of course, you can expand your repertoire by using things for purposes beyond their original intent. This is something reminiscent of classic Star Trek and, more recently, Stargate SG-1, about that process of ‘recycling’; you watch those sci-fi dramas, and this week they are somewhere that looks like ancient Greece, or the Roman Empire, or a medieval castle. Of course, Doctor Who has used this technique throughout its televised existence.

Gaming can be examined in terms of the longevity of the resources it consumes, yielding an insight that you can’t reach any other way. You have one layer of resources that will last even beyond the one campaign; another that will be a consistent part of the campaign throughout its life; some that will recur a number of times within the campaign; but by far the majority are “disposable”, lasting for a single adventure or even less.

The story resources, every GM is expected to supply on their own (even if they are interpreting material that has been written by someone else); but everything else can be a problem. And the one piece of ‘everything else’ that will recur consistently is maps, especially if you are restricted by your ‘gaming vector’ – and anything other than sitting around a table will impose one restriction or another.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how many resources there are for your particular campaign out there, or how clever you are at turning resources intended for one particular genre to the needs of another; eventually, you will run out – unless there are more being created. And that’s the story that this article is, in the final analysis, telling: what was scarce now appears to be widespread. But that doesn’t mean unlimited.

While new materials are being added to the array of possible choices all the time, other resources are lost. Websites go dark, software becomes outdated and won’t run on the newer operating systems, and with that software goes any file created using it… you get the idea. There is a perpetual race between the expanding event horizon that is the cutting edge of what’s available, and the fading from existence of what has been lost. So long as the hobby overall is healthy and growing, the wave front outpaces the growing void; if, as is normal from time to time, there is a contraction of the hobby, the void begins catching up.

From that perspective, this whole question is an examination of the health of the RPG community and the hobby that unites it. And the report card is very good indeed, based on a situation in which nothing could be found by Krystian to the more than 2000 items that can be accessed through the compiled links that I’ve offered.

But nothing happens without the efforts of creative people. So this is dedicated to the creators who have provided the products to which I have linked in this article; the games we play would be much poorer without you.

Next in this series: Debating Resurrection Penalties! Should be be fun…

And, while I have your attention…

A brief announcement: There have been times when I have struggled to get an article finished in time for the usual Monday & Thursday deadlines – which doesn’t make a lot of sense, since I generally have nothing major to do on Tuesdays and Fridays save resting up after my exertions of the day before. So, effective immediately, I’m making two policy changes here at Campaign Mastery: Longer articles will be preferenced at the start of the week, while “shorter” (in theory) articles will be preferenced for later in the week; and, while the intent will be to publish as usual, if an article’s not going to be finished in time, I won’t beat myself up trying, but will finish and post it (or a last-minute filler) the next day.


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