How do you make ad-hoc maps for Conan when you play online and offline? I found that the four official tile sets, as awesome as they are, are not that flexible in covering many possible situations or configurations. I stitch them with Paint(dot)net and GIMP or even re-use maps from roll20 and make zones, but takes time and not always worth the fast and furious combat.
What are you using? Show some maps or ways to tackle the non-standard zone-based combat in Conan!
This is in regards to in person play.
I don’t use battle maps generally. I use modular tiles with the occasional larger set piece. For quick games I am working on a set of tileable maps that could be laid out in a nearly infinite series.
Zone wise, since none of these have zones built into them I have generally gone to a range ruler instead of a zone system. I wrote a quick article on this idea and posted it here: http://starshipsandsteel.blogspot.com/2018/08/zones-revisited-for-miniatures-conan.html
Hope it helps!
I wonder how I missed this article 
Very interesting idea, implementing war game style of movement.
We use chessex battle-matt and water-erasable markers to draw maps, no digital screens or projectors, therefore your approach is applicable. Have to experiment and see if it will speed up the combat compared to what I was considering - drawing zones with different colors on the map.
Do you play online nowadays? How do you handle those ad-hoc situations in Fantasy Grounds or Roll20?
I’ve never had my schedule overlap with players who wanted to play the few times I have tried. May see about it in the new year, but for now, no. With FG though my approach will probably be to drop a large hex grid over everything.
I think I am still messing around with range ruler sizes. I think I need to either make them a little larger or my table a little smaller. It took most of a combat for our thief to outflank the enemies in an encounter last time.
Growing pains though I guess. I still like the idea better simply because it gives more tactically minded players the ability to know what is what and not have to constantly ask, “well how many zones is that?” when you are using terrain.
The map boards from the Conan board game or Mythic Battles Pantheon are already zoned and are of great quality.
I find the tile sets impractical with because they tend to be a little too small in scale.
Too bad those map boards from the boardgame are not available online in a legit way… 
I’ve had success using a Steam “game” called Ilwinter’s Map Generator which is cheap and quick for making nice maps. It’s probably relatively simple to designate zones using the edge tool but they aren’t a big deal in my games, we tend to have an intuitive understanding of range increments or I just rule that on the spot.
I scour google images for maps that look like they would fit a Hyborian setting, saving them as I go. Then I crack a beer, open paint[dot]net and get busy tweaking them and putting in zone lines. Then I put them in Roll20 each on their own page with descriptive name like “market square”, the result of which can be seen here. Currently I have about 15 set up in Roll20 with more to come. Sometimes I’ll do the zones with the line tool in Roll20
