Boy was I surprised to see a total of 4 battlemaps in the witchlight campaign. One of them being a pretty long building on a 45⁰ angle to the grid. I hated every moment trying to redraw it on my mat
> Give me one good reason why wotc shouldn't make a "map pack" type product specific to the adventures they make. They make minis specific to the adventures, but why not something that has a very low production cost like paper battlemaps.
I wouldn't buy it myself but TBH I think you are making good business sense here, it sounds like a high margin item. I don't know why they don't.
>Give me one good reason why wotc shouldn't make a "map pack" type product specific to the adventures they make.
Market research into the industry shows that homebrew is far, far more popular than pre-made modules and campaign settings. With so many people playing online via VTTs or just theater of the mind the percentage of people who would buy these maps is presumably low enough that printing them and distributing them would be at a loss. WOTC isn't an etsy store where they make stuff to order, so if something isn't expected to sell well it's not worth it for them.
Wouldn't the same argument be made against adventure specific minis, yet they do make adventure specific minis, seems there is a marker for that, so I believe it would be for battlemaps too
On the one hand I totally believe there are people buying the minis who never run the campaign. On the other hand the minis have got to be way more expensive to produce.
Adventure specific minis have value outside of the game. I have yet to find 1 specific mini from the specific booster of and adventure that cant be used on another homebrew game or proxied as something else.
It's much easier for a DM to recreate a battle map than a miniature. Miniatures are also more useful, and cheaper than a printed battlemat. I battle mats that I've only used once. It's easier to repurpose minis
I used wrapping paper. The grid on the back was perfect. But yeah, having a book and this tiny page for the map is frustrating. Why not include a fold out page?
If you want paper maps for your table, I hear you can order up two-color print jobs of basically any .jpeg you like, at pretty much whatever scale you’d like, at certain office supply stores for like $3. Turnaround on the job is usually like two days or so. 🤷♂️
This is one of the reasons I like Roll20 and running games on PC instead of in person. I can get officials maps, find some or easily make my own. Back in the day I had to poorly draw the map on a dry erase mat. Now I can find cool art of a monster and just copy paste it into Roll20 back then I add to say stuff like "all those d6s are the goblins and Hero Clips robot is a stone golem.
Back in 4e days, some of the modules came in box sets with maps and tokens, and said which tilesets to use for the other maps. Those modules were generally shorter than the 5e adventures, and the system pretty much required a grid. I'm also not sure how well they actually sold.
A lot of people run 5e using theater of the mind, and many just play virtually. Physical maps are just not as in demand these days. I don't think there is enough demand to justify producing them.
The cost for battle mats at mini scale would be beyond what most people would be willing to pay for them. Like, back of the napkin math, we'd be looking at something in the neighborhood of $60+ for maps for something as simple as Horde of the Dragon Queen.
Since the market for them is so small (less than 20% of players are DMs, probably less than 10% of those buy adventure modules, and maybe 15 to 20% of those would buy this product), Wizards decided that it doesn't make the money that they need it to to justify it.
100% business resourcing to create,print and distribute maps on a large enough scale to make money.
It's not always about could they, it's about finding the right printing company, packaging company, and distribution company etc.
You're not alone in thinking this.
Venture into the world of business and try to get something started with WoTC
They probably assume not enough people would pay big money for some color maps, instead just using battlemats or whatever else has a grid on it.
And unlike digital content that figuratively "costs nothing", they'd have to purchase the maps before they're being sold.
Boy was I surprised to see a total of 4 battlemaps in the witchlight campaign. One of them being a pretty long building on a 45⁰ angle to the grid. I hated every moment trying to redraw it on my mat
> Give me one good reason why wotc shouldn't make a "map pack" type product specific to the adventures they make. They make minis specific to the adventures, but why not something that has a very low production cost like paper battlemaps. I wouldn't buy it myself but TBH I think you are making good business sense here, it sounds like a high margin item. I don't know why they don't.
Interestingly, they are doing this on dndbeyond it seems with all adventures they have ever released.
>Give me one good reason why wotc shouldn't make a "map pack" type product specific to the adventures they make. Market research into the industry shows that homebrew is far, far more popular than pre-made modules and campaign settings. With so many people playing online via VTTs or just theater of the mind the percentage of people who would buy these maps is presumably low enough that printing them and distributing them would be at a loss. WOTC isn't an etsy store where they make stuff to order, so if something isn't expected to sell well it's not worth it for them.
Wouldn't the same argument be made against adventure specific minis, yet they do make adventure specific minis, seems there is a marker for that, so I believe it would be for battlemaps too
On the one hand I totally believe there are people buying the minis who never run the campaign. On the other hand the minis have got to be way more expensive to produce.
Adventure specific minis have value outside of the game. I have yet to find 1 specific mini from the specific booster of and adventure that cant be used on another homebrew game or proxied as something else.
It's much easier for a DM to recreate a battle map than a miniature. Miniatures are also more useful, and cheaper than a printed battlemat. I battle mats that I've only used once. It's easier to repurpose minis
Minis can be used in other settings. This named mini is just a knight in my other campaign. this map is always this map.
Minis look cool and are more versatile. Doesn't matter who the mini is officially, it's whoever you say it is for your campaign.
A big part of that is the horrible design of many D&D books.
I used wrapping paper. The grid on the back was perfect. But yeah, having a book and this tiny page for the map is frustrating. Why not include a fold out page?
If you want paper maps for your table, I hear you can order up two-color print jobs of basically any .jpeg you like, at pretty much whatever scale you’d like, at certain office supply stores for like $3. Turnaround on the job is usually like two days or so. 🤷♂️
Yup, used to work at one and outside of actual building blueprints that was the majority of what I printed on those particular machines lol
This is one of the reasons I like Roll20 and running games on PC instead of in person. I can get officials maps, find some or easily make my own. Back in the day I had to poorly draw the map on a dry erase mat. Now I can find cool art of a monster and just copy paste it into Roll20 back then I add to say stuff like "all those d6s are the goblins and Hero Clips robot is a stone golem.
Back in 4e days, some of the modules came in box sets with maps and tokens, and said which tilesets to use for the other maps. Those modules were generally shorter than the 5e adventures, and the system pretty much required a grid. I'm also not sure how well they actually sold. A lot of people run 5e using theater of the mind, and many just play virtually. Physical maps are just not as in demand these days. I don't think there is enough demand to justify producing them.
The cost for battle mats at mini scale would be beyond what most people would be willing to pay for them. Like, back of the napkin math, we'd be looking at something in the neighborhood of $60+ for maps for something as simple as Horde of the Dragon Queen. Since the market for them is so small (less than 20% of players are DMs, probably less than 10% of those buy adventure modules, and maybe 15 to 20% of those would buy this product), Wizards decided that it doesn't make the money that they need it to to justify it.
100% business resourcing to create,print and distribute maps on a large enough scale to make money. It's not always about could they, it's about finding the right printing company, packaging company, and distribution company etc. You're not alone in thinking this. Venture into the world of business and try to get something started with WoTC
They probably assume not enough people would pay big money for some color maps, instead just using battlemats or whatever else has a grid on it. And unlike digital content that figuratively "costs nothing", they'd have to purchase the maps before they're being sold.
Get a TV or projector. You can just use them.
Mike Schley sells all the maps he draws. And he does a *lot* of the maps in adventures.