What's a good way for a poorfag DM to make/draw dungeon

try use marker and paper

>>52695155
purchase a sheet of plastic and whiteboard markers from the dollar store for under 8 dollars total

some christmas wrapping papers have grids on the back

>>52695155
Dry erase board. They come in grid and non-grid varieties.

>>52695181
Sounds good.
How hard would a sizable grid-based one be to find?

>>52695170
Not that desperate yet

>>52695163
>>52695169
Too much work and extra explaining without a grid

>>52695155
>grab large square graph paper
>cut it into a shit load of tetris shapes for the hallways
>cut out rooms of various sizes and dimensions
>glue it all to cardboard backing for sturdiness
>add glitter to taste
>put them all in a box and shuffle well
>serve at random

You now have an exciting and randomized dungeon for every delve! And you can keep the next room hidden by just not putting it on the table until the players enter it! And it's a fun project for kids and parents!

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Every time this question comes up everyone gives all these work intensive solutions.

OP, spend $20 and get a chessex wet erase mat. It works fine. I used one for years. Just remember that RED MARKER should erased after every session. You can leave other colors on for a week, but not red.

>>52695155
>tfw so poor you play 3.P without miniatures or a gird just saying what you are doing and asking if something is close to you
>tfw you see something like this

>>52695155
Whiteboard from Lowes or Home Depot, or whiteboard paint.
In the latter case, MAKE SURE YOU GET THE WALL SMOOTH BEFORE APPLYING IT.
Whether you get a board or paint, it'll be cheap.

But you'll get the quality you paid for. Whiteboard cleaner will not be optional.
Still a million times cheaper than a nice whiteboard though.

>>52696082
Seriously this, I didn't even know there were people who played ttrpgs that didn't have one of these. There cheap and literally made for this, plus their normally two sided so you can go with squares or hex master race. Don't get a dry erase board, mats are way nicer to transport and store.

>>52695240
they make 8x11 grid paper or large at any office supply store. if you want something players can put pieces on a grid white board is your best option. although im not that sure it would be any less expensive than a gaming mat from somewhere like chessex. Ive got a 34" x 48" wet erase mat that i spent like $30 on

>>52695155
Save up for a white board, buy some dry erase markers. I have used this every session for 20+ years of Gaming, and it's never failed me. If you want to get fancy, take some painter's tape, a ruler, and some black paint, and make a 1inch square grid.

Recently, I've thought about making a hex grid one, for hex crawls.

>>52696096
Used a chessex mat with random shit as minis for over a year. Bottle caps, pen tops, coins, paperclips, erasers. Whatever we could get.

This led to one particular session with the dreaded NICKEL-PENNY (a penny ontop of a nickel because we ran out of coin denominations) representing some big tough monster that kicked our asses.

Nobody remembers what the hell the monster was but everyone remembers NICKEL-PENNY.

>>52696253
Cant even afford the mat bro. Half my group cant even afford the bus ride to meet up half the time. Living is fucking expensive.

>>52696271
Then get a vinyl shower curtain liner, a sharpie, and a ruler.

>>52695240
"without a grid"

Graph paper.

Get your fucking dick back in it's holster and buy a big sheet of glass. Then pick up some 1" painter's tape like the badass motherfucker you are. Place that tape on the glass so there's a sliver in-between each strip. Coat that glass with some fucking etching paste you got on amazon like baller. Wipe it off after a few minutes. Do some wang-jangling with the tape and finish up your grid with the etching stuff. ezpz

>>52696298
That may actually work.

>>52695155
The real question is how do i make a table like this?
I will actually build it and post it tomorrow if I get solid advice.

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Take a hex/square grid (or any piece of paper, really) down to a kinkos/staples/any office store that does printing services and laminate it, then use sharpies on it. Re-usable and resistant to spillage from mountain dew and pizza rolls.

Any quirks do you use for drawing on the grid? Like my friend uses black for the dungeon map itself, red for light sources, objects, points of interest and blue for natural environment (though he rarely uses the blue one and it overlaps with red)

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>>52695155
literally just say whatever you want and if it doesn't make logical sense then whatever

>>52695155
>draw dungeon maps in the middle of a session?

Draw them out beforehand and save yourself the trouble.

Whiteboard Andy whiteboard markers

>>52695998
I like you.

>>52696351

-Make sure you have/can get a wood router. For a saw, circular is best, but hand is... possible.
-Determine how many people you want your table. How much room you give every person is up to you, but be sure to give enough. (Fat friends take up more room than skinny ass bastards like myself.)
-Order supplies - good or better wood, nails/screws, cup and pencil holders, wood stain, padding, plus whatever else I'm forgetting. Like padding for the bottom of the legs.
-Make a shortish table. If you want the TV in it, cut the hole for it and add support to keep it in. I assume you know how to do this, just make sure to reinforce it a bit more than normal. This goes without saying, but if you can't make a decent, level table, then you can't make this. And before I forget, rout out where the cup holders are going, if your edges aren't tall enough.
-Work on the still disconnected edges. The ones you'll cut the cup holders in. The picture used strips of wood to hold the cover, but if you've got already got the router, may as well use that.
-Figure out how you'll remove the cover. Small, finger sized holes on the edges? Small, finger sized holes on one or more of the covers? Up to you, just make sure it can be easily removed.
-Rout out cup and pencil holders. BEFORE putting the plastic holders in, attach the lips to the table. Put in screws where you cut out pencil holders, and hide with the covers. Glue your padding into the hidden portion and you're done.

NOW HOLD ON. As a result of building a table and then adding more, the top of this table will be plenty thick. This is just a quick and dirty way of doing things; by no means the best.
ALSO. If you want it to look nice at all, you'll have to draw it out first. I draw out lengths and widths everything.
Finally, MAKE SURE you know how it will look. At the very least, you should keep a realistic vision in your head.

Might draw one up myself... Also might post my blueprints when done.

>>52695155
>all that work into the table
>folding chairs

2/10 would not game

>>52699675
Every goddamn time with this, /tg/
OP asked for a cheap way to do battle grids. Not fucking carpentry instructions.

The only practical solutions that has been offered is graph paper and a shower curtain.

>>52695240
>without a grid
incompetech.com/graphpaper/lite/

Print those out.

I got a whole bunch of used cardboard from costco, and stole some computer paper from my college library. On the computer paper I drew some basic shapes for rooms, like big hallway, small hallway, etc. Then I pasted it to the cardboard and cut out the hard shapes. I keep them in a folder and pull out the shapes as we play from an accordion folder. If I need an extra room or something specially designed I tend to pull out some extra cardboard or graph paper. It's low budget but I like it and I'm shit at drawing without a ruler.

Describe each room to your players, and let them draw their own map.

>>52703294
Wasn't replying to OP, bro. A guy asked how to make a table, I answered.
Also? Those directions are HARDLY comprehensive.

You poor, you lazy, you want quick and easy. Those paper grocery bags. Slice the bottom off and slice a side. Bam! now you got a giant surface to draw on. Skip the grid let them use a ruler or tape measure like they do in war games. If it is too much just cut a 6" strip since pretty much everyone has 30' of movement.

It is also great for making old looking parchment maps and other hand outs. I've even burned the edges on the stove to get a more ragged edge.

I've even use cereal box interiors and cardboard boxes. There is a ton of ghetto fab builds you can do with crap that you normally throw out.

I used to use all of those techniques and paper bags were my choice since I am always drawing and used to playing wargames.

>>52696082

I also support this solution, like anon said though, be sure to clean it off.

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>>52695155
Wanted to brag about my current table DESU.

But these people are right. Simple paper with quick shitty drawings and then dice to represent PCs anjd baddies is how I did it for the longest time. Sometimes I use roll 20 and project it on a big TV. Now i have a gridded dry erase board.

>>52696497
A surprising number of people can't fathom playing without a grid.

>>52714179
I've done it, sure I prefer the grid, but its not impossible.
I feel like it's hindering and leaves bad DMs the possibility of "Lol, you accidentally shoot X because he's in the way."
But a really good play group doesn't "need it"

Pen and fucking paper

>>52696351
OP's pic is from a youtube video, I forget what it's called but it's some asian dude, he shows almost every stage of the construction if I remember right (he doesn't go into exact measurements or anything but it's easy enough to figure out what he's doing form watching the video) and apparently, apart from the TV and the saw which you can rent for fairly cheap, the total cost of supplies was somewhere around $300 which is pretty good considering you could probably sell that thing for around $1000, easy.

>>52695155
Buy a notebook of grid paper and get a pencil.

https://www.amazon.ca/Chessex-Role-Playing-Play-Mat/dp/B0015IQO2O is what I use.

Use overheard markers, not whiteboard markers.

Just use water and a cloth to clean it after each use.

Another option is to buy paint that lets you use it as a chalkboard.

Get a piece of graph paper and tape it to a piece of cardboard (just cut off the side of a box). Use either pushpins with the colored balls on the end or colored thumbtacks to represent players/monsters.

This is the really-poor person solution but it's effective if you don't have a large playing surface, since you can make the maps very small (or print maps from a PDF and size them down).

I got a tablecloth from a craft store with checker board squares about an inch in size. I use popcicle sticks for anything that needs to be outlined

>>52714179
Having a map or something really helps to keep track of where everyone is in relationship to everyone/thing else.

>>52695155

Projector and a T-square.

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>>52695155

>>52695155
Theater of the mind, duh. Never worry about grids again.

Ditto on the Chessex mat.

Helpful: Pre-sketch battlemaps on a graph paper pad, and when the time comes to draw it out in detail on the mat, hand the sketch to your players and let one of them draw it.

That way you can get any other shit together while they're drawing, and if you take a little extra time (or scoot to the bathroom or kitchen), they can add some nice flourishes.

It helps if one or more of your players happens to be an actual artist, which has been my good fortune in multiple groups.

>>52695155
Just pirate or find free dungeon tiles. Print 5-10 A4 pages, spend an hour with scissors and you can gather most shapes you can imagine (you can use tiles on top of other tiles as walls)

>>52696082
Protip: Draw over red marks that won't go away with a different color marker. When you erase the red goes away too.

Use PowerPoint or equivalent to make an A0 sized piece of paper with gridlines on it. Buy a liquid chalk marker, since we are saving money, just get a mid thickness tipped black one. Go get however many copies of your grid page you can afford printed out and laminated. The chalk marker comes off the laminated surface with a wet rag. I got 3 of these A0 badboys made for 35 AUD. Just one would be under 15 AUD with marker and one is honestly plenty of space if you use 0.75 inch grid.

>>52695998
Thank you for that one, going to use it if I ever get a rl group again.