ralf | April 10, 2014 | battle map, Deadlands, dungeons of schley, Floorplan

A few days ago my gaming group’s Deadlands Reloaded campaign ended, after 18 months and 23 sessions of play. We had great fun, despite – or perhaps because – the game system (Savage Worlds) is more combat-focused than the typical games we play. One thing it does, and it does that really well, is make use of battle maps and miniatures without slowing down combats much. To take advantage of this I decided at the start of the campaign that I would create as many battle maps for the game as possible – of course using the Profantasy software at my disposal to maximum effect.

For my maps I used Dungeon Designer 3 a lot, but also City Designer 3, Symbol Set 2 – Fantasy Floorplans, the Annuals, the free art collection CSUAC, and at the very end the brand-new Symbol Set 4 – Dungeons of Schley. All of these I printed on my inkjet printer at home in A4 tiles, then glued them together for play at the table. I ended up with more than a dozen A1 battle maps, plus a few smaller pieces. I’ve collected them here for your enjoyment and use. Just click one of the images to download the full-size pdf*.
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ralf | April 21, 2013 | battle map, Deadlands

I created another battle map for our ongoing Deadlands Reloaded campaign: A city block from Chinatown in the Weird West’s Portland. The group hasn’t reached this part of the story yet, so no battle has taken place, but I hope it will next session.

For this map I used an area movement setup instead of the traditional gridded layout. Adapted from the FATE rules, this is a user-suggested rule for Savage Worlds that I want to try out. You can download this version as a full-size A1 pdf by clicking the image above. If you prefer the traditional 1″ square grid, click here.

This map uses symbols and textures from Dungeon Designer 3 and Symbol Set 2: Fantasy Floorplans. You can download the original CC3 file here (both add-ons needed to properly view it).

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ralf | March 5, 2013 | battle map, CSUAC, Deadlands

I continue my series of battle maps for our Deadlands Reloaded campaign with this A1 map of a longhouse set on a snowy clearing.

It saw action last Friday, when the player characters stood side by side with the Klickitat tribe to defend the longhouse against a wolfling attack. It was an exciting battle!

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ralf | February 18, 2013 | battle map, CSUAC, Deadlands

Last Friday’s Deadlands Reloaded campaign session saw a tough battle against a Chinook – a weather-controlling cross between a wolverine and a Kodiak bear in the Deadlands setting. It was fought on the shore of a mountain lake and I created this battle map for the occasion, making special use of the snow and ice bitmap fills includes in Symbol Set 2 – Fantasy Floorplans. The tree symbols are from CSUAC.

Click on the image to to download a full-size miniature-scale pdf and go to the ProFantasy forum to download the CC3 file.

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ralf | January 24, 2013 | battle map, Deadlands

After a hiatus around Christmas and New Year, our Deadlands Reloaded campaign is back in full swing. For the latest session I created this little battle map of an underground lab/hideout. It didn’t get used yet, but it’s generic enough to be used in almost any environment and campaign. It uses Dungeon Designer 3 artwork, as well as pieces from the Annual Vol 5 February issue (created by Joachim de Ravenbel).

Click the image above to download a pdf version of the map, scaled and tiled to print on two pieces of A4 oder US Letter size paper.

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ralf | December 5, 2012 | battle map, Deadlands

Here is another battlemap from my ongoing Deadlands campaign, this time of a mountain glade bisected by a small stream. It was created with Dungeon Designer 3, the Dungeon Symbols issue of last year’s Annual, Symbol Set 2, and the CSUAC.

Click the map to download an A1 pdf of the map, ready for printing.

For outdoor maps I usually prefer hex grids over square, as this map shows. As the Savage Worlds game system is flexible in this regard, switching bweteen the two is no problem at all.

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ralf | November 9, 2012 | battle map, CSUAC, dd3, Deadlands, ss2, wild west

For my own ongoing Deadlands Reloaded campaign, I’ve created this battle map of a run-down home out in the Weird West. It’s based on the DD3 Battle Map template from the Annual Vol 2 and uses textures and symbols from DD3, Symbol Set 2 and the CSUAC. The roof texture on the upper level is from City Designer 3.

Click on the images below to load the full-size A3 pdfs.

You can download the CC3+ version of the maps (FCW format) here, but be aware that you need all the afore-mentioned products to view them properly in CC3+.

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ralf | July 6, 2011 | Deadlands, Paper Models

This month’s Annual issue on paper modeling is not the first time I’ve messed with Dioramas Pro, paper, glue and a trusty hobby knife.

t all started with our Deadlands: Reloaded campaign. Savage Worlds was our first game system that put a really heavy emphasis on miniatures, and I started painting a few Western miniatures for our characters, as well as investing in some fitting paper minis. Then Eric Hotz’s beautiful series of Wild West buildings (Whitewash City) caught my eye and soon enough I was busy building paper models for our game.

This was all well and good until our posse ventured south and into Mexico, and the American-style buildings suddenly didn’t fit the mood anymore. When it became clear that our characters would have to free a rebel leader from a fort, I started out by drawing a Mexican fort in Perspectives Pro. This came out very nicely, but it wouldn’t really help out on our gaming table.

Dioramas Pro then came to my mind and I asked myself, why I shouldn’t be able to design and build a few mexican-style buildings myself. They’d not come out as marvelous as the Whitewash City models, but probably good enough for ourselves. So I fired up CC3, loaded a Dioramas Pro template for the first time in quite some time and set about designing my own models.

There was a lot of trial and error at first, the project grew and grew, the paper bin overflowed, but I finally managed to create the complete set of buildings as shown in the Perspectives Pro map. I even added some extra goodies like cannons, the village fountain and a graveyard.

We had a blast in the two game sessions our posse stormed that fort and successfully freed the captive. The time I spent on building the model is of course way beyond what you’d normally spend on preparing one or two game sessions, but I had a blast and learned lots about paper-modeling (and Dioramas Pro) in the process. The fort even served as a display piece at Spiel’10 in Essen. And here it is on all its glory:

More images of the fort and other props of our Deadlands campaign can be found in my online gallery.

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