If you play tabletop RPGs, you probably own a bunch of adventure maps. Having a visual layout of the terrain you’re playing on just makes games flow a whole lot smoother. The big problem with maps is, they’re really easy to lose and misplace, so you frequently end up not being able to find that dungeon, forest, or mountain trail map just when you need it. Epic Battlemaps offers what could be a more sensible alternative.
Instead of coming with individual maps, it compiles a bunch of maps together in a foldaway book. This way, you’ve got a bunch of maps all collected in one place, with each one ready to roll out as soon as it’s needed. No more sifting through drawers and boxes and cabinets just to find that pirate ship map to start a new quest – just keep this book within reach and you’ve got a bunch of maps ready to serve all your fantasy adventuring needs.
Epic Battlemaps looks like a regular book, albeit with a ring binding that makes it look like a notebook or an office document. That ring binding is necessary, by the way, since it allows each map to be laid out perfectly flat, without the rest of the pages or the covers getting in the way. It contains a total of 24 maps: 16 maps that fold out to a whopping 33 inches long and six maps that fold out to a shorter 25 inches long. Each map has been thoughtfully designed with large combat areas, so you can have your characters fighting epic battles, as well as multiple smaller zones for players who prefer sneakier gameplay.
What kind of maps are included? Pretty much, the standard fantasy RPG fare. There’s a castle keep, a tavern, a stone bridge, a sewer tunnel, a market, a city street, an abandoned road, a dock warehouse, a dockside, several ships, a beach landing, a river, caves, a temple, and various outdoor landscapes. Basically, all the settings you typically use for most of your tabletop RPG games.
Each map included in Epic Battlemaps come printed with standard 1-inch square grids, making them suitable for any type of tabletop RPG campaign. The maps also come with a dry-erase coat, so you can use dry-erase markers to add objects to the map, whether to add extra obstacles to the campaign or to mark the effects of the events that happen there, then simply wipe them all clean once you’re done playing. It’s very convenient.
The notebook, by the way, measures 8.5 x 11 inches (width x height), so they should easily fit in any shelf or drawer at home, all while easily squeezing into your backpack when you’re playing over at a friend’s house or a local hobby shop. In case maps measuring 8.5 x 11 x 33 inches are not quite big enough to your liking, you can, of course, use two notebooks or more, laying out the maps side by side to give yourself a bigger playing area.
A Kickstarter campaing is currently running for Epic Battlemaps. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at $47.