Caveat Ludior

As you may or may not know, I've been working on setting up a game of Dungeons & Dragons with my little sister and a few friends. To get things started, I've been on acquisition mode, buying miniatures, supplement books, and whatever other supplies I could get, to make a game possible. The amount of money I've spent on this is ridiculous, but I'm hoping the end result will be more than worth it.

My biggest problem so far has been figuring out what to use for maps. The miniatures are built on a scale of about 1/60, so that an inch on paper is equal to five feet in game. To help establish the scale, most D&D map accessories come with a 1" grid printed on them. I've been trying to get my hands on some sort of reusable gaming surface with that kind of grid on it, so that I could draw my maps on it and erase them when I'm done. Let me tell you, it's been a chore.

Now the first suggestion any veteran Dungeon Master would tell you is that you have to find a comic book shop or hobby shop that sells role-playing accessories. Fair enough, except there are no gaming shops in my area, and none of the nearby comic book shops bother with role-playing accessories because the profit margins suck. So I've had to improvise.

For my first attempt, I went to Staples and picked up a pair of blank dry-erase tiles (1'x1') and some dry-erase markers. At home, I measured out and drew on (in pen) a 1" grid. Now I had two gridded, reusable tiles, but it wasn't a proper solution: First off, the grid kept rubbing off after a few reuses. Second off, The largest possible map I could make using these tiles was 7200 square feet... which is about the size of a small house. Not big enough for elaborate caves or wildernesses. I needed something bigger, and at $5 a piece, those tiles were way too expensive to go buy a whole bunch of them.

For my second attempt, I was focused on size, so I went back to Staples and picked up two giant pads of gridded paper. The sheets were 2'x3' each, which is pretty big, and they already had a 1" grid printed on them, so that was good too. The downside? The pads were fairly expensive, too, at $30 for 100 sheets. And since they weren't reusable, it was a given that I would eventually have to buy more pads.

I knew that I was looking at a temporary solution, so I went about looking for a more permanent one. I asked at Staples about lamination, and they told me I could get a single sheet done for about $12. Eek, that's a bit much.

I know of a local print shop, whose employees I see regularly through my job at the bank, so the next time one of them came in to cash a check, I asked him for their rates for lamination jobs. There was some confusion as to what kind of project I had in mind, and he made it clear he wasn't in charge of pricing so the estimate was not binding, but he estimated that for $15, he would be able to get three sheets done up. That sounded extremely low, but I decided to come in and check it out anyway. I set my budget at $30 for three sheets, just in case.

When I went in, I spoke to the owner, and I was told that to laminate the big sheets whole would cost about $40 per sheet. Way out of my budget. I was ready to walk out, but then he asked how I felt about cutting the sheets down into 11"x16" sheets and laminating those. I told him I didn't care, it was the total surface area that mattered to me, not the size of each individual sheet, and we started negotiating. I did the math, and figured he could get four smaller sheets out of one jumbo sheet, if he cut it right, and three smaller sheets if he cut it wrong. Either way, his price quote of $30 for three jumbo sheets was satisfactory. I agreed to the price and he told me to come back in a week to pick the sheets up.

Here I am a week later. The first indication that something was wrong was that when I went into the print shop to pick them up this morning, the owner told me that he was just getting started, to come back in a few hours. Fine, no problem. I went off and had lunch, and came back when he said to. Now at this point he handed me three (3!) laminated 11"x16" sheets, plus the three jumbo sheets of paper I gave him, each one missing an 11"x16" chunk.

Apparently there was a misunderstanding in the agreement. When he said he was going to cut up three sheets and laminate them, I understood that to mean he was going to get as many 11"x16" sheets as he could from each jumbo sheet. Why else would he have me tear out three jumbo sheets from the pad? If he had just meant three 11" x 16" sheets, he could easily have gotten enough paper from a single jumbo sheet. I'm pretty disappointed at what I got for my $30. Staples' price of $12 for a single, intact sheet is a much better deal. Nevertheless, an agreement is an agreement, so I paid the man the money I promised him and I left.

I give up. I think I'm better off just buying a vinyl gaming mat from some online hobby store. Any suggestions?