Gimme Maps for our Urban Fantasy RPG

March 15, 2011 10:27 AM

I need maps for a modern urban fantasy (pen and paper) RPG...

Okay, so there are tons of map tiles out there for fantasy gaming (Paizo, WOTC).

But what about modern games? We would like stuff on a grid (1" - 1.5") and we need a variety of stuff: hotels, houses, apt buildings, post office, grocery store, auto repair shop, etc. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

posted by Irontom to sports, hobbies, & recreation (8 answers total)

Sounds almost like Shadowrun... It's urban fantasy + cyberpunk. You might find some resouces searching for that.
posted by BeerFilter at 10:47 AM on March 15, 2011

DriveThruRPG.com has a ton of modern and near-future maps of clubs, homes, hotels, and what-not available for sale. Probably the best deal is here:

People, Places, and Things: You are Here from Second Rat Games

$10 USD gets you:

Coffee shop
Arcade
DMV
Small business and warehouse
Rest stop
Gun club
Hair salon
2 books stores
ISP
2 restaurants
Bar
Church
Tanning salon
Bank
Convenience store
Small hotel
Parking garage
Post office
Small house
Emergency care center
Office
Fast food restaurant
Club
Clothing store
Bistro
Dentist office
Comedy club
posted by magstheaxe at 11:13 AM on March 15, 2011

If you can find it, Wizards released a collection of modern-day maps called Critical Locations. The art is by veteran RPG cartographer Christopher West. I highly recommend it.
posted by dismal at 11:49 AM on March 15, 2011

Are you playing Call of Cthulu? I'm sure there are Cthulu resources out there that you could tap into...
posted by Glendale at 12:29 PM on March 15, 2011

1. Grab some aerial images from google maps
2. Mess them up in photoshop with static and distortion and noise and some desaturation.
3. Select sections (buildings, roads, etc) drag them onto a grid (slight stretch where necessary)
4. Print them out. Cut them out
5. Reassemble them as your map - on a light table (or a glass coffee table with a lamp underneath)
6. Say that they're a SPY-SATELLITE VIDEO FEED

(The noise etc will not only give a spay-sat theme, but harmonize the images so you can put a building next to a street from elsewhere and make it look like they go together. You actually want to do step 2 after step 3, but conceptually it seemed better to mention it first.)
posted by -harlequin- at 12:48 PM on March 15, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you're looking for internal floorplans one of the greatest books for this was Chameleon Eclectic's Millennium's End GM's Companion. Internal floorplans for offices, car parks, bars, restaurants, houses, apartments, hotel rooms etc etc.

It's not gridded unfortunately but otherwise it's in my top 10 resources for modern RPGs. It's not so hard to scale it up and print it with a hex grid over the top if you've access to a scanner and photoshop but at $4.99 on Amazon it's a steal otherwise.
posted by longbaugh at 1:00 PM on March 15, 2011

Maybe RPG Mapshare, or Cartographers Guild. The latter doesn't seem to have much search functionality, so it may be hard to find what you are looking for.
posted by meinvt at 4:16 PM on March 15, 2011

SJ Games have recently made a hex map for the Utah Salt Flats available (funnily enough it was released around the 1st April)...
posted by longbaugh at 11:46 AM on April 7, 2011