Friday, June 25, 2010

Old School Gaming - DIY Battlemat(thew)

Just like a Jedi needs to build his own lightsaber -- any old school player needs to make his or her own battlemat.  There was a time when you couldn't buy these things pre-made.  I experimented with a lot of materials, but when Chessex came out with their Battlemat (and Megamat) I adopted the use of marine vinyl.

I have a white one and a grey one.  My grandson wanted one of his own, so we made a tan one today.

Here are some pics --

  

It was great fun working on this together.  He has plans to play a modified version of Heroscape on this with his friends.  He wants to play our regular Savage Worlds game on his new mat as well.  

I also printed him a couple of copies of Swords and Wizardry Whitebox.  He is planning on giving that a try too.

Fight on Matt!  Fight on!

4 comments:

Daddy Grognard said...

When my office closed down due to a buy-out and relocation, I unscrewed the whiteboard from the wall and took it home. Great for wilderness adventures and caves. For dungeons, I've got inch-grids on cardboard sheets that I can then cut out as needed and arrange.

bliss_infinte said...

Awesome!

You're right about the battlemats. Back in the day they were pretty much non-existent. I think most folks tried to come up with something along those lines - all home-made, of course.

L0VELESS said...

I was searching google for "diy battlemat" and get to your site. I'm curious as how the template in the picture works.

Jim said...

@L0VELESS -- I took two index cards and punched out holes making the corners of about 1.5 inch squares. We started in the corner making nine dots -- then we overlapped three dots and made six more -- keeping the rows straight. It takes time, but it works.