"A ten-foot wide hallway stretches thirty feet and then . . ."

Mark CMG · Oct 23, 2005

I remember with great fondness mapping out a dungeon as we explored its depths but that seems to be a thing of the past or a "never-was" for most gamers. What's your take on this? (Will the graph paper industry survive?

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Steel_Wind · Oct 23, 2005

The whole "mapping the dungeon as puzzle" thing got old - fast.

Remember playing Wizardy on the Apple ][+? I bought an Apple ][+ just to play that damn game! I had a lot of fun with it too. (Far more than Morrowind or Dungeon Siege has ever provided to me).

But - like the CRPGs of old - that style of play was fun in it's day. That day is gone, imo.

YMMV.

Perun · Oct 23, 2005

Mark CMG said:
I remember with great fondness mapping out a dungeon as we explored its depths but that seems to be a thing of the past or a "never-was" for most gamers. What's your take on this? (Will the graph paper industry survive? )

You mean there are people who don't draw maps of dungeons?

Seriously, though, if we're in a dungeon, we almost always draw the map. It's just easier knowing exactly where you are, and if the adventure stretches over several sessions (something that regularly happens in our games), that helps a lot.

jdrakeh · Oct 23, 2005

Mark CMG said:
I remember with great fondness mapping out a dungeon as we explored its depths but that seems to be a thing of the past or a "never-was" for most gamers. What's your take on this? (Will the graph paper industry survive? )

In every dungeon crawl that I've ever played in, from Basic D&D to 3x, mapping the dungeon has been a pretty integral part of it - if we (the PCs) wanted to find our way around without wandering aimlessly, that is. In some instances as a GM, when time was limited, I'd create prop maps ahead of time to let the PCs stumble across. Such freebies rarely laid out the whole dungeon for players, but they would usually point the way through some tricky parts. Still, dungeon crawls without mapping? That would be an utterly alien experience for me (of course, I'm big into sim roleplay, so mapping in that manner makes all the sense in the world to me).

Gilladian · Oct 23, 2005

I have to go with the majority. I think that mapping is an absolute necessity if the dungeon is more than 5-6 rooms.

Nowadays, since we use a battle-mat, I draw the rooms there as needed, and then one player copies them onto their permanent map as their own record.

When leaving a dungeon, they have to be able to give me a fairly accurate statement of how they're leaving, or they will get lost. That could be just turning down a dead end and finding a wandering monster, or it could mean never getting back up the stairs to the first level!

I think I must have a hundred pads of graph paper around...

Gilladian

DragonLancer · Oct 23, 2005

Map drawing is a pain in the a$$. My guys try but they either always over/under do it or it comes out lookinjg nothing like my map in the book.

The other thing that bugs is how time consuming it is to draw the map and describe it... just play the damn game. Thats how it feels sometimes.

If possible always have a means of them finding at least a partial, if not completely detailed, map of the level. Just for ease.

Mystery Man · Oct 23, 2005

DragonLancer said:
Map drawing is a pain in the a$$. My guys try but they either always over/under do it or it comes out lookinjg nothing like my map in the book.

The other thing that bugs is how time consuming it is to draw the map and describe it... just play the damn game. Thats how it feels sometimes.

If possible always have a means of them finding at least a partial, if not completely detailed, map of the level. Just for ease.

As long as its reasonably close its ok, it doesnt have to be perfect. And if they (my players) screw it up it's usually due to my terrible description and sense of direction so I'll fix it for them. Or just say "screw it" and hand them a blank copy of the real map.

Klaus · Oct 23, 2005

Do you guys think that in a world with all the usual DnD-isms there'd be papermakers that sell "graph" map sheets to ease the job of adventurers, perhaps in thicker stock?

(Psi)SeveredHead · Oct 23, 2005

I map interesting rooms, but mapping the whole dungeon is pointless.

DarrenGMiller · Oct 23, 2005

My players used to map pretty much every inch of dungeon. Of course, then we were not so much into using mini's. Now, we use mini's constantly and have a huge, table size battlemat. While encounter rooms get drawn on the battlemat, there is a corner reserved for the engineer in my group to draw a small copy of the dungeon map with marker. Unfortunately, he is a perfectionist and anything resembling a crooked line, or not to scale hallway gets erased and redrawn meticulously, but usually while we do other things, so it doesn't disrupt... usually.

DM