On my runs, I like to draw up maps for my players, to show the layout of whatever building they were in. The problem is, I am a crappy artist, and a worse achitect Do you guys know a good place to download some kind of building plans, for Shadowrun or in real life?

What I used to use was a wet erase mat. It was a large vinyl mat around 20x30 inches that was divided up in 1 inch squares. With a wet erase pen you can draw out streets and where things are located. If you want you could use minatures with it. Just my idea I dunno where you would find one today...check your local gaming store and see if they have or can order it for you. Hope this helps!

If you can understand German, know how to use babelfish, or just don't mind clicking on several links without knowing what they are, the German language Shadowrun website has a whole bunch of maps HERE.

The Abstruse One

Looking at names of the grafics might help, too.

Here's a few I use.

Control's Intelligence: Click on Buildings or Locations.

Museum of Natural Sciences: Just an example of what google can get you. Firefights in museums can be fun.

Wiz Kids: Some general maps of Seattle by region.

TopoZone.com: Real maps and arial photos.

That's all I have handy, but I got all of those links surfing these boards.

Thanks guys! This will really help a lot. My players thank you

If i can be bothered to actually -make- a map, then Micro$oft Visio is surprisingly good at that.

It does indoor and outdoor maps, with symbols, and HVAC layouts, along with (unfortunately rather substandard) security diagrams, and you can overlay them onto a plan on separate layers.

Its less useful than a cad program for other things, but the fact it does lots of stuff for you makes it useful for this sort of thing, where its actually nice to have things automatically done (Like making the doors thin the walls, etc)

Its also quite good for people with no artistic ability for the same reason, although i'm considering seeing if i can find a small webguide to architecture, as some of the stuff i've done with it would probably fall down/explode/something in real life... But since when has shadowrun cared much about reality, anyway *grin*

well , does somebod knows where to get my dirty hands on actual floorplans of whatever building ?

I went to Google, clicked on Images (right over the search input box) and typed in "floorplan". I got 70,300 hits.

Floorplans