Budget Bespoke - Custom Print and Paste Battlemats

Today's Project

I just wanted to share a quick arts and crafts project I recently took on as a part of my D&D session prep. I got some great feedback on this over on Reddit so I wanted to share here.

Some Context

Battlemats are a very useful tool in tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, serving to visually represent the battlefield and enhance the tactical aspects of combat. In fact, the core 5e rules, both in 2014  and 2024, assume the use of a Battlemat for combat, despite the majority of the designers supposedly preferring theater of the mind combat. I love a visual representation of the environment, not just a clear, shared visual of the combat area, allowing players and myself to place miniatures, tokes, or pawns on the grid, but also a vibrant, captivating representation of the environment for the players. Battlemats can depict various environments, such as dungeons, forests, or city streets, adding to the immersion of the game.

I started my D&D adventuring career in the The Thunder Rift era, when the "Basic" or BECMI series of adventure modules, published by TSR in the early 1990s, stylistically attempted to evoke the feeling and style of a board game, while teaching the concept of role playing. These modules emphasized dungeon delving and included big vibrant battlemaps for every adventure, as well as a collection of paper pawns to place on the map. Pre-printed mats versus those with hand-drawn terrain features, for me, create a more engaging and visually appealing experience.

Some old Thunder Rift Battlemats

I know that one only really needs to represent battles. I know all about UDT. I know all about Dwarven Forge and Open Forge. I know about Loke Battlemat Books. I have and love all of these things. Don't at me!

I want my map. I want to lay it out on the table and intrigue my players with its details. I love the hardback adventure books that Wizards of the Coast has put out in the 5e era, but if I want the maps that go with them, my choices are limited. I can possibly purchase them from the cartographer's website, like Mike Schley for example; Download them from DnDBeyond or 5E.tools and get them printed at my local Staples or Short Run Posters; or purchase premium, luxury editions of the module from Beadle & Grimm's Pandemonium Warehouse.

I have done all of these, and none of them are particularly cheap or accessible for most Dungeon Masters. Don't get me wrong, all are pretty awesome. The most beautiful, high-quality maps are from Beadle and Grimm's, but Mike Schley's are very nice too. If the module has Dyson Maps, they are very cheap to get printed at Staples as an Architectural drawing, but this is by far the least attractive / immersive result.

Crooked Staff Terrain's "Print & Paste Dungeon Textures" are a fantastic resource for tabletop RPG enthusiasts looking to create immersive and affordable terrain.
Crooked Staff Publishing provides digital PDF files containing a variety of textures designed to represent dungeon floors, walls, and other terrain elements. The idea is that you print these textures and then adhere them to a base material, such as foam core or cardboard, to create your own custom terrain pieces. The extensive library of YouTube tutorials Kris has posted to his channel show you how to make all sorts of generic modular dungeon tiles, much like a "poor-man's Dwarven Forge". What really inspired me, though, was his "Build-along" series, focused on creating a single dungeon around a single theme or mechanic.

Using the Map to make room C-15

I recently started my own iteration of "Vecna: Eve of Ruin", a 10th to 20th level D&D adventure that pits my high-level players against the iconic lich, Vecna, in a multiversal jaunt made up of a large fetch quest stretched across a greatest hits compilation of villains and settings. I am largely homebrewing this adventure, using the book as a starting point, and combining it with the work of Mr. Welch, Gamemasters (if anyone knows this guy's name, let me know. I feel weird calling him "gamemasters"), and Jorphdan for large plot and thematic adjustments. I am also going to Dad the Dungeon Master for tuning any content that I use directly from the adventure. For the big changes, I can use my own terrain and Loke Battlemap Books. I am starting the adventure, however, using the first adventure in the book, "Return from Neverdeath Graveyard". That said, I decided to try using Crooked Staff Terrain's "Print & Paste Dungeon Textures" in the style of the "Build-along" series to create a modular custom battlemat for the Hallix Mausoleum dungeon.

So, the next one of these I do will use corrugated card as the base, rather than poster board, so as to prevent warping and curling on bigger rooms. All in all, though, I really like how this turned out. I created each piece and then flipped it over and wrote the corresponding room number from the Dyson map in the book. Then, I threw them in a box and took it along to my game session. At this point, my group is about half-way through the dungeon, and they really seem to enjoy the concept. It is very helpful to be able to just remove the rooms we're done with as we progress further into the dungeon.

Rm. C-15 Top

Rm. C-15 Bottom

My Box of Rooms

Some of the map set up with doors