Book of Battle Mats: Alternatives to the Original Game Board

[BStewart80]

Has anyone taken a look at Loke Battle Mats? Particularly the 2 volume Dungeon versions? These are amazing. I have purchased these twice and possibilities are endless. Check out the link and comment on what you think.

https://www.amazon.com/Dungeon-Books-of ... 969&sr=8-3

I have been using these since August of 2020 and the game has been enriched. I take an existing quest and remap it using these books and the appearance and gameplay has been well received by my players. I'll spend some time a little posting some of the quest designs as examples so that everyone can see what I mean. The maps really look good and mix it up from the original appearance. To be honest, we find it hard going back to the original board. The only reason we use the original board now is because we get on a gaming binge in one day and I have remapped a quest to the new board.

FYI, they just released a Town and Tavern volume, too. They are awesome.

https://www.amazon.com/Loke-Towns-Taver ... 373&sr=8-1

[BStewart80]

See the attached example I created using the Loke Battle Mats for Quest 8 in the main questline for HQ.

[BStewart80]

Also, I'll set this up on the actual map and take some photos to post. It really looks very cool. Photos coming soon.

[BStewart80]

Here are the pics for Quest 8 as an example. Like I said, I think the maps are really awesome. Plus, they are good for other games, too.

[Poctuk]

I bought these and they are great.

Would be awesome if you made a quest book for them!…

[Stig]

Looks amazing! Wow. Thanks for posting the quest, I can see you it's possible to redo the maps in Excel. I checked their website and they seem out of stock. Boo.

I wonder if these battle mats would work well with AHQ: When going through a door, instead of rolling a dice to determine room/passage, it's just displayed on the battle mat. All you would need to do is determine what's in the room using the random generator: either rolling the dice as per rulebook or drawing cards as per some homebrews.

[lestodante]

I think the artworks is very good, I just hate the rings in the middle because it will be uncomfortable to place a door exactly beetween the two pages, so I would prefer a independent tiles sheet.
Also with closed walls would be even better, actually the rooms have an open door already set.

[Davane]

Having these in a clip binder with polypockets (the plastic document protectors) might work. Something similar to some books of knitting patterns is also possible.

Although, if you are int using things other than the HeroQuest board, couldn't you just print out some cool geomorphs or something?

[iKarith]

I wonder if these battle mats would work well with AHQ: When going through a door, instead of rolling a dice to determine room/passage, it's just displayed on the battle mat. All you would need to do is determine what's in the room using the random generator: either rolling the dice as per rulebook or drawing cards as per some homebrews.

They ought to from the explanation of AHQ's rules that was given to me. I've got my AHQ set now and could look them up, but what was explained to me was a slightly modified rule set that capped out how long a corridor could ultimately be to make the dungeon sprawl a little less and fit on more reasonably sized tables.

AHQ is also played with dungeons whose layouts are known beforehand, so they'd work well for that. Choose the tiles you wanted and set up the doors and blocks where you wanted them. I believe those books are dry-erase too, which increases your options a bit.

I think the artworks is very good, I just hate the rings in the middle because it will be uncomfortable to place a door exactly beetween the two pages, so I would prefer a independent tiles sheet.
Also with closed walls would be even better, actually the rooms have an open door already set.

The dry erase helps there too, but for HQ that does reduce their utility a little. I think the idea there was that it made them easier to just have closed doors and pull the closed door away when it's opened.

Putting them in a binder would make a lot of sense, but if they're 1" grids … the pages are 9"x12". There are folders at least for 9x12, but this one I've linked would only hold 24 boards. If that's what's in the book, it might be all you need, but if you need multiples of the books you're going to need more than one of these art folders. That's literally the second one I found though, since it was almost half the price of the first.

I do like these. I saw them as a sponsored bit on a crafting video and I liked them then. Not intended for us, but they would work well enough with just a little adaptation. Easier to use than those DragonStrike boards, probably.

[Davane]

I wonder if these battle mats would work well with AHQ: When going through a door, instead of rolling a dice to determine room/passage, it's just displayed on the battle mat. All you would need to do is determine what's in the room using the random generator: either rolling the dice as per rulebook or drawing cards as per some homebrews.

They ought to from the explanation of AHQ's rules that was given to me. I've got my AHQ set now and could look them up, but what was explained to me was a slightly modified rule set that capped out how long a corridor could ultimately be to make the dungeon sprawl a little less and fit on more reasonably sized tables.

AHQ is also played with dungeons whose layouts are known beforehand, so they'd work well for that. Choose the tiles you wanted and set up the doors and blocks where you wanted them. I believe those books are dry-erase too, which increases your options a bit.

They should work fine with AHQ, and you can just use the same rules in AHQ for using your HQ board as a maze-like level. They are already pretty much as you describe - with the exception that dungeon generation for corridors can include whether they are blocked or not (and in my variant, just where that blocked square is), which is useful for boards that contain a lot of corridors, and have multiple paths through them.