Prep — On Battlemaps & Encounters
Estimated Reading Time – 26 minutes
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Abstract
We've all been there at one point or another while preparing a game. Your plot is in the middle of some major changes and twists, the players have taken matters into their own hands and next session verges on a big confrontation. But, wait, you need a battlemap.
Cities and villages, allies and villains, complications, plots and plans, items of the MacGuffin variety and so on, so forth – many of these things will come naturally to a GM. In our minds is a living breathing world no matter its scope, some a mere microcosm of fantasy, fun situations and cool ideas, others a universe with its history penned from its first gasp.
But what about when all of the above intersect?
For the longest time, humanity as a whole has fawned over epic battles, stories and their narratives trending towards the romanticization of conflict and war – not necessarily due to a love of violence, but more often the grandeur of fighting for one's ideals. But all of these share one thing in common.
Would Lord of the Rings, perhaps, be so epic were its final confrontation not at the summit of its famed Mt. Doom?
Would Star Wars be so beloved if its final confrontation was not at the heart of the Empire?
At the core of these legacy-defining clashes are several factors – the people involved, the time it occurs, the circumstances behind it, the narrative lead up – but perhaps one that is often overlooked is where the conflict happens. A place, an environment.
As much or more as any other factor, the environment determines how an encounter takes place. A character may think in a variety of ways, maybe pragmatic, overly careful or overly rash, yet no amount of character-centric thinking will influence the environment around them – it is an unbending presence. Without a location to exist in, nothing can, in fact, exist.
But the character's actions, or rather, how they think of the environment, however, might very well influence it. The overturning of tables to create cover in a pinch, the striking of a great-hammer against a crumbling stone pillar to destroy it – these actions can and will influence the way an environment exists, but this is the effect of the environment taking place, the way it shapes our course of action.
And this is, I think, the beauty of battlemap design.
Pitfalls
Something I often see is the tendency for battlemaps to simply set a mood.
Quiet backdrops for the encounter to take place, a few ornamental pieces of set-dressing for the action to unfold. Even with regards to premium content, the battlemaps I see are more often than not plain fields themed after something – kingdom walls, castle courtyards, forest clearings, abandoned crypts – but still just that, plain fields, devoid of character.
It is, at least in my opinion, a shame to not give the environment the voice it deserves. Battlemaps should be loud.
They should, as much as the enemies you face, demand your attention. Wars have been won on assaulting under the cover of night, using the recent rain to assault enemies while the ground is yet muddied and slippery, using the high ground to maintain archer superiority and exploiting the momentum of slopes for more vulgar methods of artillery like landslides and rockfall.
Control of an area is perhaps one of the more essential factors to winning a fight, and yet is so often forgotten.
That is not to say they should be annoying – though this, too, can be used to great effect – but if they are little more than backdrop then anything from a white canvas to simple scenery with a grid on it will suffice. And for many, I'm sure, this is sufficient.
But a sentiment I often see – and one I share myself, too – is that battlemaps aren't just a necessity, but that they should convey some form of identity, some attachment to the campaign they belong to and the encounter they serve as backdrop to. GMs often feel that they should create these battlemaps themselves, that simply fetching one from elsewhere feels cheap.
Perhaps this is not the right attitude to have, but to a degree, I feel the same. It would be like simply lifting a character tit-for-tat from another piece of narrative media and putting it in your world wholesale. It feels cheap. Tacky. Out of place. And to a degree, the players can feel it, too.
But what to do then, when you share this sentiment, yet find making battlemaps utterly boring? Simply a chore – something that's part of the prep that you don't really enjoy, yet is necessary to conduct your next session.
The first step, I think, is to face the creation as designing a battlemap. A subtle yet important distinction. The second, and most important, is to measure your approach. Designing a battlemap isn't just prepping scenery for your next session – it is an exercise in encounter design beyond just picking a handful of creatures out of a book of statblocks.
It is, in itself, a preview of your next session. And as the GM, you get first dibs on it. How exciting!
Designing a Battlemap — Two Facets
For most TTRPGs, people tend to easily split themselves into two camps that cross-pollinate and mix to create the campaigns we play and love. These two camps are, for the most part:
- Those who love the mechanics and the way it influences the narrative. Function over form.
- Those who love the narrative and the way it influences the mechanics. Form over function.
In the first we have those that love building their characters, thinking of how options synergize and meld together to be greater than the sum of their parts, and then observing as their options become relevant to the narrative or offer them unique ways to unfold new stories.
And for the second, we have those that enjoy the concepts they build, coming up with wonderful and fantastic ideas in their minds, and then looking at the mechanics to see how they can frame their decisions from that perspective, taking fitting options and performing fitting actions.
To both camps, I offer a solution.
It is important to note that while the 'rules' of good design are partially subjective and not universal, the core of mastery of any skill is the knowledge that you must first know the rules to break them.
Another thing to note is that good mechanics and good flavor aren't mutually exclusive, in fact, I dare say they are one and the same. This is something I intend to showcase by showing both approaches, and you are likely to note that the end result, functionally, is extremely similar.
As a result, it is my intent to offer advice that allows you, no matter your perspective on how to design where your big emotional confrontations and stories take place, to have a well designed battlemap that makes for a fun adventure.
It is also important to note that as you practice these approaches, it will become more and more ingrained and natural. Soon you won't even have to think of doing it actively, and you're likely to be able to handcraft intricate and fun battlemaps in the span of half an hour or so, but for the sake of accessibility and explanation I'll be sure to be thorough with my examples.
As you put these maps into play and see how encounters unfold in them, you may come to agree or disagree with my advice. And that's okay, what matters is that you've found something that works for you, and sometimes the best way to do that is to find what doesn't.
Additionally, independently of your inclination, it is a good idea to read both methods in full as they hold valuable information that can prop the other up. You may even find yourself, like me, using the methods interchangeably to come up with good ideas when you're stumped, or when you don't feel like using one of either method.
So, without further ado...
The Methodical Approach — Mechanics First
Maybe you enjoy tactical exercises. Maybe you're a war history kind of person, or a simulation enthusiast. Maybe you enjoy grid-based tactics videogames like XCOM, Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics Ogre. If so, this approach might work for you.
Similar to the way one might create a map for a videogame such as Counter-Strike or Quake, our first step is to block out our playing space, our area.
What this area actually is isn't as important right now as defining how the encounter will take place. Every single choice we make here will define the flow of the fight and how our players tackle their decision-making. And our intent, of course, is to make that decision-making as interesting as possible.
We'll begin by simply cutting off areas from our blank canvas using simple shapes. What these shapes represent we define later, for now we are determining where and how the encounter is, rather than what.
How, you ask?
The Golden Rule: Avoid having a singular, obstacle-less empty square.
Any empty square in your map is a delimitation of your play space, beyond just what raw space obstacles block themselves. Players tend to take the path of least resistance, and in terms of environment this means that most parties will gravitate to areas that have less obstacles to block attacks, movement and general line-of-sight.
Some systems avoid this naturally, others encourage it. Systems with Attack of Opportunity-adjacent actions tend to be particularly egregious about this, especially if these are free and universal to all, players and enemy alike, creating a mosh pit of tank and spank.
Players will tend to favor areas they can attack and move freely in, and dislike being cornered, which means that if you have a particularly empty area, enemies and players will immediately hone in on it and never leave it.
The solution? Have several, smaller empty areas.
How do you determine what affects the size of a battlemap's “effective playable area” and what doesn't? Well, maybe that is easier to demonstrate with an example. Say hello to our little canvas.
How thoroughly empty. Let's add some spice to it, absentmindedly. If this were a forest, think of it as dropping a tree at random. In this case, since it's an interior, let's use a wooden pillar.
And wouldn't you know it, we've screwed up already. We've created a really tiny mosh pit.
“But it looks so spacious and innocent!”
Yes, it does. But it is not. Let's take a closer look, shall we? First we'll begin by naturally breaking our playable area into squares.
Immediately, in these four squares, we can discard number four as playable space. It's small, it has next to no line-of-sight to anything, and it can be flanked from either side, leaving you both exposed and cornered. No one in their right mind would go there.
Discarding that, let's analyze the line-of-sight between the remaining three squares of playable area.
Immediately we can take a few notes from this – Area 2 is very strong. Even taking a few steps back from the pillar, they have well over half the map obscured, but all it takes is a single step out of the pillar's cover to peek and take a shot. They control the whole battlemap while being easily covered from most of it.
Conversely, Area 3 even up against the pillar barely has cover from anything, while the people on the far end of it will take ages to be able to see area 2.
Area 1 however, despite having no cover, does have line-of-sight on everything.
So, what does that mean? Well:
- There is no incentive to go to Area 3.
- If there's no incentive to go to Area 3, then Area 2 only really has cover from Area 1, since cover from Area 3 is pointless as no one goes there.
- If you're gonna be in Area 1, then you might as well be on the left side of it which has visibility to Area 2 so they don't have cover from you while taking cheap shots.
- If people are in Area 1's left side, then there's no point taking cover in Area 2 anymore.
What we're left with is the negative space of the existing over-centralizing cover. Which means our playable area in the battlemap actually looks like...
Uh oh, that's a mosh pit. Where did all that space go!?
The alternative is that people do take cover behind the pillar in Area 2 or 4 anyway to take cheap shots at Area 1, and all of the people in Area 1 swarm the pillar, creating an even smaller mosh pit.
All this from one pillar. Ouch. But what's the takeaway here? Well, it's not the pillar's fault, not really. It's only truly a problem if we leave it like this.
If you were to, say, place a pillar symmetrically opposite, then Area 3 would be of equal value to Area 2, and none of these events would cascade. Area 1 wouldn't have cover from anything, but would have an advantage in having line-of-sight to everything.
Look at all that space! So, what's the major takeaway from this?
- Line of sight breaking objects delimit your space.
- Squares with obstacle-less line of sight are over-centralizing.
- Adding an obstacle, no matter how small, can make space much smaller than you think.
- Adding more obstacles, no matter how small, can make space much bigger than you think by making other squares less over-centralizing.
Placing objects that don't block line of sight is, essentially, free. Objects that offer cover but without breaking line of sight are an excellent way of offering interactive environment and preventing ranged attack supremacy while also sprucing up the scenery, but without removing the playable space and creating another dull, featureless mosh pit.
When placing down a “block” in your initial sketch, think tactically. Ask yourself, “Why would my character go there? He's just gonna get shot from everywhere without being able to defend himself. Is this piece of cover actually useful? Does it serve a purpose?“
In fact, line-of-sight blocking objects that don't actually offer cover from much of anywhere, such as, say, a small pillar smack-dab in the middle of the battlemap, don't actually break up playing space squares. If I had to give it a number, I'd say around the point where you get total cover from around 20-30% of the battlemap just by being behind that object is where it really starts to count.
Not all pieces of a battlemap have to serve a purpose of course, and using line-of-sight blocking objects can be important to delimit the playing field on purpose, but as referred above, first you have to know the rule to break it, play with it, and mold it to your needs.
Other ways of devaluing a square with too high of a tactical value involves making movement more difficult, making existing in that square more hazardous, making visibility conditions at a certain distance harder through fog or lighting, among others.
Things that make it more difficult to abuse defensive gameplay tend to help, like positions of height advantage that allow opponents to circumvent difficulties entering that area to make it easier to assault – adding more line-of-sight breaking obstacles isn't the only way.
But at the heart of all this is that first process – breaking the area into small squares of playable space, independent of what form or flavor the obstacles themselves take later, to deliver a fun tactical experience the players must actually engage with.
For some more fun, let's break up these squares further into smaller squares and then spice it up into a real battlemap that is both function and form.
Here's the extremely rough sketch I started with.
Legend: – Green: Cover area. Doesn't block line of sight, difficult terrain to move over. – Black: Total cover. Blocks line of sight, can't be walked through. – Purple: Higher elevation area. Might ignore some cover areas due to this height difference. – Red: Hazard.
While I won't break this into squares as it's quite fragmented, most if not all areas have line-of-sight to other areas to prevent over-centralizing a particular area. The idea was to have the higher elevation areas be overlooking balconies, but they ended up devaluing other areas too much and becoming too powerful themselves, so I ended up settling for a smaller one later on.
Corridors of total cover provide a way for martials to navigate the battlemap without exposing themselves too much to ranged creatures, but anyone who wishes to get a clear sight on someone else must traverse the horizontal or vertical center of the map in which they are exposed.
I still felt that the center might become a mosh pit due to all the clutter existent in other locations, so I decided to break it up with a hazard in the middle that forces people to circumvent it unless they're feeling brave – a risk in and of itself that forces the players to interact with the environment.
In the end, scale and size was adjusted as well as general shapes to not make the map too annoying to traverse that it rewarded crowding at the center. What I'm left with is a map of fragmented open areas that have covered corridors and areas between them that characters can use to traverse from skirmish area to skirmish area in order to flank enemies or even retreat from in order to lead enemies into an ambush.
The sketch itself was pretty freeform. In terms of final creation, while it is missing some additional touches of furnishing, more careful shading and maybe some texturing, I wanted to showcase what this slower, more methodical process can do in half an hour to an hour for an interior – which typically holds much more detail due to being furnished – of this size (45x25 sq).
Corridors of total cover interrupted by regular cover were turned into rows of bookshelves with planters between them. This random elevation platform attached to a pillar became a mason's makeshift platform for repairing the structure of the interior, overlooking the area of the bookshelves so that players can't simply hide in their corridors forever. Irregular blobs of cover became tables with chairs.
Function first, then form.
Our wooden pillars remain, of course, expanding on the original was the point of this exercise after all. While it may not be the best looking map ever, it at least delivers on being a grandiose interior, and the divisions of the combat areas remain largely the same.
One big difference is I elected to alter the hazard a little bit – while the center had the potential to crowd in, the fountain at the center should make it a little bit more difficult, and there's a lot of well-covered areas with visibility to it that make it harder to camp the center without simply being shot to death by arrows or spells or whatever.
Instead, the hazard became an enormous chandelier hanging over the center that, should it fall to the ground, threatens to light the entire central area ablaze. I give the central area a chance to prove not over-centralizing, and if it is, I have a reasonable justification to turn it off by having a smarter creature shoot it if the players decide to hog that area.
If the area is still too valuable, the fire can always spread. Perhaps it spreads across the carpet, cutting them off from other valuable areas and beginning to corner them unless they spread out, or it roars so high and intensely that it blocks line-of-sight so that they must move to engage other creatures and places. I have options, and so do the players. Everyone benefits.
Equally, if enemies line up under it for some reason, a clever player can use it to their advantage. Either way, what matters is that the environment is being used. The ideal result is a scattered line of players and a scattered line of enemies trying to maintain line-of-sight between their team's allies in order to assist each other, while taking cover and flanking the enemy groups.
Another gameplay element not immediately visible in the map, but that I quite like in my head, are long, thin banners hanging from the ceiling, one on each corner of the central fountain. While it won't do much for the southern section, the idea is that a creative creature or player could jump from the top of the bookshelves and swing to the mason's platform using these, adding a little bit more verticality and challenging the area value of the center and that platform.
Because of the way we're trained to handle things – and the fact that pincer attacks are really rough to recover from – players are likely to engage in small skirmishes in each playable area square, clearing it of enemies before moving further and making sure that the way they came from is clear in case a retreat is needed.
A far, far more dynamic result. It may not be perfect, but that is alright. Human error is an ever-present factor, and imperfections are what makes us who we are. As a GM, you're likely to be swimming in thoughts regarding session planning regardless, and it's okay to not execute everything flawlessly.
As long as you get to see it in action and notice where your design plans succeed and where they fail, you'll always do better next time.
The Writer's Approach — Narrative First
For this approach, I will use the same format I used for the previous one for my explanations. We shall begin with a blank canvas.
Maybe, even if you enjoy tactical exercise, it can be exhausting to go through the motions every time. Maybe, for once, you just want to tell a story. Well, what if you could make a battlemap precisely by telling a story?
Using this blank canvas, let me tell you a story. One shall be our villain, and two our hero. It is an epic, told time and time again. First, allow me to set the scene.
Our hero enters the decrepit banquet hall, its stone pillars threatening to crumble at any time. What was once a place of festivities and celebrations holds little more than sorrow under the tyrant's rule. With sword and bow, he would challenge the man who had laid his homeland to ruin. From the other side, he sees a silhouette step into the light. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he gets a bead on the figure before him – the villain himself.
Oh, exciting! What next?
They then took cover behind the nearest object and shot arrows or spells at each other for the next 30 minutes until one of them got unlucky enough to die.
Wait, what? That's not very exciting.
Right, let me try that again, then.
They then both each walked into the exact center of the room, then swung at each other with their swords for the next 30 minutes until one of them got unlucky enough to die.
That's not much better.
You're right, and yet somehow it keeps happening. Again, little more than plain fields themed as a banquet hall, or whatever else.
Instead, let us take a narrative approach to building this battlemap, shall we? Let's start from the beginning.
Our hero enters the decrepit banquet hall, its stone pillars threatening to crumble at any time. What was once a place of festivities and celebrations holds little more than sorrow under the tyrant's rule. With sword and bow, he would challenge the man who had laid his homeland to ruin. From the other side, he sees a silhouette step into the light. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he gets a bead on the figure before him – the villain himself.
His anger blinds him to the enemy's intent, causing him to get caught off guard as the villain begins to suppress the area with spells to block his approach!
Ah, now we're talking. What would make for something fun in this situation? We're in a banquet hall, right? How about...
Our hero rushes a few steps forward to the banquet hall's rotten, wooden tables, flipping one to its side to give himself some cover and time to think.
Oh, regular cover! Nicely done, hero! But now he needs somewhere to go, our villain is clearly in a high value position, and we need to give our hero some form of movement advantage to keep the fight interesting and give him a fighting chance.
Nearby he spots a set of pillars holding up some form of second floor viewing balcony overlooking the hall. But the villain, standing at the top of the Lord's platform at the height of some stairs, adorned with once-beautiful curtains at each side, holds the advantage.
Ah, our villain seems to have a high visibility position and height advantage. But that's alright, our hero seems to have spotted some total cover he can move between to get the approach without being completely laid to rest by spells. He just needs to find a way to get there.
Our hero looks up to see one such set of curtains bundled up by rope, held out of the way. Thinking quickly, he takes his bow and shoots an arrow towards it, tearing the rope and letting the curtain down as it obscures the Lord's section of the hall, blocking the villain's vision! Using this distraction, he rushes down this dark corridor, dashing from pillar to pillar while loosening arrows towards the villain as he tracks his silhouette behind the curtain, the villain firing magical bolts in return, when a hooded assassin leaps at him from the shadows, hiding behind a few crates.
An interesting development, some environment interactions to prevent people from just shooting each other from each side of the room! It seems also that this hall has some crates scattered around, perhaps for food, that are big enough and in dark enough spaces for figures to hide behind.
As he struggles to go free, the hero kicks the rack of crates, causing one of the heavier, unstable ones at the top of the pile to crash upon the assassin's head, knocking him out for the time being. Using this opportunity, he dashes towards the platform the Lord's chair rests upon, jumping and climbing over the railing that separates it from the remainder of the hall. Rotten and old, the wood of the railing gives way, causing him to stumble, though he catches himself in time.
Hmm, things here are really decrepit and old now, aren't they? Maybe there's more damage than one would think. I wonder how that might influence a fight? Still, it seems we are reaching our climax. I wonder how this will unfold!
As he appears onto the platform from behind the curtain, the villain smiles as he strikes one of the stone pillars, causing it to crumble and crash onto the platform both of them stand on! The rotten wood gives way to the weight of stone as it ruptures through, leaving a gaping hole in their midst, and other sections of the floor give way – most treacherous ground.
Ah, hazardous ground... It seems our hero now has to face the disarray of the structural integrity of this place once more. But, hold on, didn't he loosen a curtain earlier...?
Hanging over this hole lies the rope he loosened earlier to release the curtain. He dives from the railing to the chair, letting the villain loosen his magic and, before giving him another chance to fire once more, he leaps forward onto the rope, swinging across the chasm with sword in hand, finally engaging the villain in melee combat.
Yes, the tiny green dot is supposed to be the hanging rope.
Yes, all quite nice, this is looking good! All we need is a few more chairs and tables, some extra spice, and I think we have enough to work with. Let's turn this into an actual battlemap, shall we?
Oh yes, looking quite good! With this more freeform approach, this one is closer to 20-30 minutes of production, granted it is a fair bit smaller than the other one. And, compared to our sketch floorplans, all that was added was a separate room, which was a fairly simple thing to think of for a banquet hall, as those crates and barrels in the story we constructed needed to come from somewhere.
The stairs, holes, overturned tables, crates – all of this was built as part of the narrative above. Form first, and with it, function.
It's important to note that we are not plotting the actions of the players as we design a map, rather, we are telling the story of what has already happened in the environment, and doing so in the form of an encounter. The reason for this is twofold:
Telling the story of an encounter, and coming up with reasons that the villain and hero can't just simply hit each other to death right then and there forces us to come up with an interesting solution for the tank and spank conundrum.
As we are building the state of the map with the narrative, we can build the map alongside the construction of the narrative, allowing you to flow between both simultaneously.
The first factor allows us to approximate the Methodical Approach without having to dive headfirst into game design notions and all the implications each piece of cover we place entails, although knowing these things assists us in approximating this effect even further.
The second factor speeds up construction of the battlemap considerably, and allows us to also use ideas we come up with while building the map to construct the narrative, which in turn will help us build a better map.
If you come out of it with a story to tell about the location of the battlemap and why it is in the state it's in, even better!
Closing Thoughts
While these methods may not be perfect, I hope that they achieve at least one of two things for you as they do for me.
One, that it helps build more interesting battlemaps for your encounters to be more fun and fruitful, as it is always discouraging when you put so much effort into something that ends up being put aside in favor of whacking each other with sticks senselessly in the middle of the field.
Two, and most importantly, that the methods themselves and the knowledge that the encounters will be more interesting makes designing new battlemaps fun, rather than a simple chore one has to do as part of prep.
For me, I think of it as playing a prototype of a what-if session before session even happens, and I end up getting lost in my own little fictional table's events sometimes. The fun of it goes well beyond just building the battlemap itself, and I hope it's fun that you, with the assistance of this, will share too.
If not, that's okay too. Like I said, this won't work for everyone. We're all different, and knowing what doesn't work for you is important too. But if it helps any one singular person at all, then this post has done its job.