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Another thing to consider is how you are going to turn the room that you build into a game play space.

I have started to do some thought on this and have been hunting around for cost effective solutions.

1> First, you need to find 1" squares for the minatures to be used on.

Now, you could go and special order a Battlemat from a company like Chessex that deals in Battlemats.

http://www.chessex.com/mats/Battlemats_&_Megamats.htm

Me, I am looking at a cheaper solution.

I found that you can go to my local Walmart and they have have a product under the name Ghostline. This product comes in pre-printed squares mounted on your choice of bristleboard, foam, or cardboard. Sheets come in a range of colours and sizes in the 3 to 5 dollars a sheet range.

http://www.ghostlinebrand.com/ghostlinesection.html

Another option, is to print your own graph paper. The following site is an example that will allow you to make custom sized graph paper along with a range of other types of graphing paper including isometric.

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/

I have plenty of cereal boxes and the like at my house that would be headed to the recycle bin but a bit of glue and printing out the graph paper (I can get 7x10 squares with margins on an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet).

Thanks to the scrapbooking hobby, there are plenty of good glue choices on the market from the really cheap Elmer's glue stick to double sided tape to micro dot in a 'white out tape' dispenser.

Scrapbooking also offers another good item. Tired of strictly white paper then buy a couple of sheets with a different base pattern and print your grid on top of the base pattern (do a test sheet first to make sure your grid is strong enough to be seen).

I also noticed that if you are not as concerned with a grid but just want some room size shapes to put together without having to do lots of cutting and pasting then you can buy a '1lb of scraps'. This again is a scrapbooking product which offers a large mass of different coloured bits of paper that are roughly between 4x4 and 6x4 in size with some larger and smaller pieces. For a few dollars then you will have as many pieces to lay out rooms to cover a major temple dungeon.

The ultimate battlemat though might be a rug. I noticed a couple of rugs at Walmart with 2" square pattern for around $50. These rugs looked to be 4'x6' and marked in three to four shades of grey. Used either as the actual grid or as a base upon which you could tack other grid objects with a finer grid (like homes and dungeons) you could be assured that players would not run the risk of 'running' out of grid for the battle.

I hope the above gives some ideas on where you can put those minatures when you decide how big a room to go with.

Oh, and WotC also has some preprinted minature maps of their own in the minature product line.

Holy_Beholder wrote:

Graph paper works well, possibly laminated. It costs about 2 dollars to laminate a piece of paper at kinkos. Or you can make a bigger grid.

For those of us in the 21st century GIMP (probably photoshop too but I don't own that) can make grid lines appear and disappear with a click of a button. I've got it set up so 1 grid is equal to 10 miles.

Holy_Beholder wrote:

And almost everything can make grid lines disappear and reappear at the click of a button, its not exactly a novel feature.

I discovered it yesterday so I was quite excited about it :P

Holy_Beholder wrote:

For those of us who don't feel the need to have a computer to play a pen and paper role playing game, graph paper works well.

I'd use something else if I was able to play in person Unfortunately no-one I know in my local area plays D&D.

webrunner wrote:

I have an eisel pad (like you used to see in grade school) with 1 inch graph paper on it. After a good night of adventuring you even get a memento!

Reminds me of the time I made the credits after one game finished. I was GMing, so I had this really long list. Including
GM-Me
Cartographer-Me
Go to Kinkos and get map laminated person-Me
Character Sheet Assistance-Me
Keeping Noise Level Down Person-Me
Time Management-Me

It was awesome.