Basically I am looking at getting Gothic Realms and Streets of Mayhem. Streets is actually for my brother, whose B-Day is rolling around soon. He just started playing a Sci-Fi wargame and thought I'd get him a good set of terrain to play on.
Anyways, onto the real question, I do not have a very good printer. So I want to print them out at a local Kinkos or similiar. But here is what I need to know, to create a 4' by 4' playing area with moderate cover, about how many pages am I looking at for both SoM and Gothic Realms?

Thanks,
Lotus

Gods, that's a hard one to answer.

My (very) rough guess might be an average of four or five pages per 7 inch section, at least for such things as elevated railways. (The straight railway bridge has four pieces, plus the base tile makes five.) If you were to cover the entire board with railway that would be something like 220 sheets or so - quite a lot of printing (and most likely a wee bit on the high side... take that as your worst case scenario). More reasonably you are looking at a minimum of 49 sheets (7 tiles x 7 tiles.) for the base, which will make a board 49 inches on a side. And maybe a hundred more for props, bridges, vehicles, etc.

A more reasonable guess might be done by using the and finding out how many sheets will be needed after figuring out what you want on that.

Gothic Realms, that is even more variable, but again I would look at a high of four or five pages per seven inches, most likely less.

A cheat that I did for the sewers out of Gothic Realms is to make some geomorphs - a mix of 2 tile x 2 tile boards and 1 tile x 2 tile sections. The y can then be positioned as needed.

Sorry if this sounds discouraging - I think that you might be better served buying a better printer than running to Kinkos, since that would likely set you off less money in the long run. (I have no idea how many sheets I have printed over the years, but likely in the thousands or at least the high hundreds, just not all at once.)

The Auld Grump

You'll probably have more pages for SoM than for Gothic Realms, because SoM has more pieces that have elevation and have more pages because of their size, and as Grump pointed out, you'll need 50 pages at least just for street/ground tiles, and you'll probably want more, so you can have some variety in your layouts.

My recommendation is NOT to go to Kinko's. They will be expensive, especially if you print on cardstock. You might try a local short run printer, an office supply store, or see if your local teacher supply store has a printing service. You might also be able to shave off some $$ by purchasing the cardstock up front, and supplying it for the run.

You may also want to look into Platform Command - really nice for firefights, that. And while the elevated railway is expensive in terms of printing it also makes a great area for gun battles. One of the first combats that I ran for Spycraft 2.0 was done using the elevated, it was a blast (especially for the guy with the grenade launcher... ).

SoM and GR can be used together in interesting ways as well - while I used the sewers as sewers . The raised walls of the sewers give a tactical advantage, and can be combined with elevated bridges (both rail and foot) from SoM. (That board might also serve as a good inspiration... I know that I am jealous of it. )

The Auld Grump

You may want to revise your goal of a 4'x4' playing surface. Not that that's not feasible, mind you - and it sure would be lots of fun to have such a large surface. But chances are, once you populate that area with buildings and other structures, you'll notice you don't really *need* that large a surface for most games.

Sure, if you roll out your battlemap, your average roleplaying character or wargaming min can probably cover that distance in a few rounds. But in a dense urban or dungeon environment, where death (or at the very minimum - surprise) can lurk around every corner, chances are most of your game will be concentrated in a few city block area.

I would recommend you start out with a little less ambitious goal, maybe something like a 4x4 layout of Mayhem tiles, a bit over 2' to a side. That's enough for a few of streets, a couple of buildings, and maybe an elevated railroad. It'll take you only one third of the time you'd need to build a 7x7 layout (4' to a side), and you might find that you don't really need that much more space anyway...

What constitutes a "not very good printer"?

I mean, my friend has a HP Ink Jet printer that costs maybe all of $70 and it works just fine for WWG stuff.

Do not go to Kinko's. I would strongly suggest trying to use a library printer or something else first.

So one of my friends who comes over to game a lot sends me an email last night, like 3 AM (a HUGE email, almost filled my enitre inbox)
He basically says "I forgot your birthday, and I know you've been eyeing these up for a while. " Got me Caveworks, Gothic Realms and Chunky Dungeons. So now I am out of color ink and out of cardstock. Also I ran out of yellow I think, because my Gothic Realms started printing purple. I tried some of the others but the colors were off. So I grabbed the Caveworks, ran it through a few filters in GIMP and now have Ice Caves Then I printed all those till I was out of Blue.

Anyways, talk about awesomly convenient. I even had some Foamcore leftover from Christmas ($0.25 each) All I had to buy were paperclips. And I think I am going to try Hairpins instead, they are a good color and are less likely to snag the paper.

Would there be any problem if I posted one of the files for people to see what I did for the Ice Caves?

All I have right now are a couple long hallways and some corners, I ran out of ink before I got any further. So now I need to get a refill kit for my printer, but I can't do that until payday (next Thursday)

Can I just grab a small section of it and them put some text saying SAMPLE in black letters across the front like some others have?

EDIT:
Ok, here is a really bad picture (If you looked my camera up in the dictionary, you'd see a steaming pile of . . . . . yeah, you know)


EDIT 2:
Small sample with hideious text

The small sample is just fine, and looks really similar to what we had come up with before. Can't wait to see more of the actual builds!

Yeah, I just found the thread. I have been converting all the files over. I hope to make them PDF's again as well. Otherwise they'll all be pngs, just print as they are and they come out at the right scale and everything. I hope to do a full set, but it'll depend on a few things. I like the transparency idea though. But I'll only be doing it for special things.

I've been considering this as well, taking the Cave sections and 'blueing' them up hohoho. Don't have Photoshop, but have another, weaker program and have just figured out the way to get the blueish colour.

Can't create pdf files though. Hopefully just printing the jpgs taken from the orig pdfs will print at the right scale.

Download GIMP from http://www.sourceforge.net
Also PNG's tend to have less quality issues than JPG's
Anyways, take you files then open them in GIMP click on Layers, Colors, then Hue/Saturation. Adjust the numbers to these.
Hue -175
Lightness 75
Saturation -60
Then do the same as before but go to Brightness/Contrast instead.
Brightness 50
Contrast 50

Then save and print.

EDIT: I have completed the Caveworks modification. Well everything I am capable of doing. So not everything got an update due to my lack of skill.

Later,
Lotus

Rather than start my own "newb" thread, I thought I might tack a few questions onto this one.

I'm running a Castles & Crusades campaign that has a lot of dungeon crawling. Would Chunky Dungeons or Gothic Realms be a better starter set?

Is Gothic Realms on a 1.5" grid?

C&C isn't as grid-dependent as D&D 3.5. Would a 1.5" system give more "breathing room" for miniatures with outflung weapons, capes, etc.?

Thanks for the info/insight.