Advice for printing deckplans for miniatures

[Dr_Skull]

I'm about to start up a new Traveller campaign with my game group. We are accustomed to use a lot of miniatures in our games, and when we play Traveller it can be a bit awkward.

I had a old copier/printer that had a "poster" button on it and managed to make a large-sized scout/courier and subsidized merchant deck plans for my last campaign, but that printer has now given up the ghost.

Does anyone have practical experience in making copies of plans larger enough to use with miniatures?

 

[CosmicGamer]

Smaller full deck plan for general use.

Combat usually takes place in a specific small area of the ship and can be drawn out on plain hex paper as needed. Allows some "fog of war" as things are added as needed.

 

[nobby-w]

I'm about to start up a new Traveller campaign with my game group. We are accustomed to use a lot of miniatures in our games, and when we play Traveller it can be a bit awkward.

I had a old copier/printer that had a "poster" button on it and managed to make a large-sized scout/courier and subsidized merchant deck plans for my last campaign, but that printer has now given up the ghost.

Does anyone have practical experience in making copies of plans larger enough to use with miniatures?

If you can get PDFs or other representations of the plans you could locate a print shop with a large format printer and print out on that. It wouldn't be very expensive for just one or two deck plans.

 

[flykiller]

It wouldn't be very expensive for just one or two deck plans.

actually it can get quite expensive if they use a color printer. ask if they have a black-and-white printer available first.

 

[aramis]

If you don't mind some assembly time... a $20 paper cutter, and some tape, and acrobat's poster printing mode works well. My current D&D map is on 6 sheets of letter. (I am using a non-standard scale - 1"=12.5', or 1:150.)

 

[DickNervous]

You can also try a product I have played with called Quick Decks. IT is by DSL Ironworks and you can get it on DriveThruPRG. I actually wrote a review of it that you can find here.

For setting up small areas of ships (or anything really) it is pretty awesome. Putting together a deck plan for an entire ship could be a bit of work, but if it is something you will use all the time, well worth it. I haven't had anything that I need to re-use like that yet, but I figure you can build the deck plans on either some poster board (so you can roll it up) or even foam board. And if you want to go all out, laminate it so it lasts forever.

 

[nobby-w]

actually it can get quite expensive if they use a color printer. ask if they have a black-and-white printer available first.

Well, if that's too rich for your blood you could always buy a few sheets of 1/2" graph paper and copy it out by hand like we used to do in my day.

Uphill both ways etc. Now get off my lawn.

Harrumph.

 

[Patron Zero]

A side note to printing your deckplans at a local quick-print shop.

Most 'standard' copiers can produce 11x17 format prints, that should meet most general deckplan needs for use with miniatures, enlarging such from the LBBs or other books to the 15mm scale needed is quite simple.

A bit old school in this world of smart-phones and other devices but a wheel-type proportional scale is a good addition to your box of graph and hex paper. It's an inexpensive tool that never needs updating or recharging and makes using those 'standard' copiers for enlarging images quick and easy.

 

[Dr_Skull]

Well I put the power of mental thinking to work and this was my ultimate solution:

I made a photocopy of the System Defense Boat from Traders and Gunboats.

I cut the actual plan into sections that were 2 inch by 2.5 inches

I used a photo-copier set at 4 times zoom and printed out each of the small sections. Then I trimmed and taped together each of the resulting 8x10 copies into a complete plan.

The main deck is 3 and a half sheets long, with two smaller sheets for the upper and lower decks each. It took about a half an hour or so to get the whole thing done and the cost was negligible.

 

[kilemall]

If you don't mind some assembly time... a $20 paper cutter, and some tape, and acrobat's poster printing mode works well. My current D&D map is on 6 sheets of letter. (I am using a non-standard scale - 1"=12.5', or 1:150.)

Oh nice, you can use N scale buildings/people and should be able to use 10mm minis interchangeably.

 

[aramis]

Oh nice, you can use N scale buildings/people and should be able to use 10mm minis interchangeably.

I could, but I'm a cheapskate. I draw plans and use 8mm numbered and/or lettered cubes...

 

[Mako]

Printed at the local copy center would be nice.

My main issue with many deck plans is that they only have one corridor, and/or large open area, so don't provide for much variety, or tactical options for firefights.

Some have multi-deck plans to get around that, but again, frequently just one corridor per level, the length of the vessel.

I'd like to see some deckplans produced with at least two corridors on a single deck, and/or one corridor, and then an adjacent cargo area to permit at least two paths to advance along/through.

A decent option is to go to an office supply store, and purchase some flip-chart paper, with 1" grids on it. They're poster size, and with the gridding, it makes it a lot easier to draw your own vessel designs.

1" grids are probably a bit large for 15mm figures, but are perfect for 25mm, or larger figs.

If you just eye-ball 1/2" imaginary quadrants in every 1" block, that might make things better, and with a large pad relative to the scale of the 15mm minis, you can make quite a large vessel to explore and play on/in.

I'm going to give that a go, soon.

With some magic markers, and a pad, you can produce a lot of different designs for about the cost of one, commercial deck plan design.

 

[Condottiere]

Having occasionally dabbled in blueprinting, the economical approach to maximize common areas in small ships is to huddle staterooms together along corridors usually leading from bridge to engineering.

 

[nats]

These sorts of erasable rpg mats are good - you can quickly draw up an area of a town or deckplan for a battle and then wipe clean again:

http://www.gamesquest.co.uk/games/r...=85178b03003bf7862970e39269fc9269&fo_s=gplauk

Otherwise if you get a CAD program like AutoCAD LT you can digitally draw a load of 12.5mm squares onto an A1 or A0 size paper in a few minutes, get them printed on several sheets of A1 or A0 paper at an architectural plan printers for next to nothing - gives you a massive play area for drawing loads of battles on. Luckily I work in an architectural firm so I have no problems printing off large grids.