creating a great map handout

[birdchili]

...so I let my players buy a map from a vendor at a festival (leading to ancient ruins and adventure, of course). They seem really keen on following up on it so I'm prepping for next session assuming they'll follow the map out of town.

I think I want to give them a handout of the map... Any experiences/advice that would make having a handout here particularly interesting/compelling?

The map will depict the current city, an abandoned road, and an ancient road that lead to the ruins. Other items on route are very flexible, though there are no other settled areas (the wilderness is very... wild). The accuracy of the map is questionable, but I want my players to be able to get to their destination as depicted.

As a player I always loved getting maps as handouts - what makes a good map handout a great one?

 

[Castellan]

As a player and a DM, I've always preferred hand-drawn maps over print-outs. Paper that has been burnt, crushed, soaked in coffee/tea, or otherwise aged is a nice touch.

As a DM, when I present a map to my players, I consider it to be another NPC. The original map-maker may have had certain ideas or goals s/he wanted to record. But, other people might gain ownership of the map and use it for other purposes. Perhaps there's a hint you'd like to place for a future encounter (villain or otherwise) in the form of a cryptic scribble. Your players might drive themselves batty trying to figure out what it means, and they could end up providing you with all kinds of ideas for adventures in the process.

I think the Story Hour for Piratecat's group (the Defenders of Daybreak, early years) has a great little bit where he handed them a map and one of them flipped it over and said, "hey, what's this written on the back of it?" Turns out it was a fire trap or some other warding spell. While you should be careful about replacing search checks with the players' real-life experiences, it can add a touch of realism to the game (if used sparingly).

I'm not a great artist, but I consider my maps to be works of art. I treat them seriously, and even the hastily-drawn handouts get extra consideration before being put into play.

If you give your map similar consideration, your players will hopefully thank you for it, and can pull that map out months or years later and say, "remember when we got this...?"

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Hand drawn, definitely. Cool symbols and weird pictograms are even better.

I once handed out a map with runes on the back - split in half by the fold. If you folded the map and looked carefully, the two edges came together and spelled out a phrase. The PCs had fun translating the runes.

Another time I put several lines of text on a map, then put pinpricks underneath certain letters to spell out a message.

Anything really is cool. Just spend a little time drawing it up to make it real looking.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

If you're going to take the time, hand-drawn, as previously mentioned, is probably the best way to go about it. Even if you can't draw to save your life, a few scribbles on a piece of paper with a pencil or, better yet, a fountain pen or thin paint brush adds sooooo much to the experience.

One set of maps I made were drawn on that coarse brown paper that comes in a roll and is used to wrap packages. I drew several maps on it with fountain pens using several different colors of ink and painted/wrote/drew with water colors and a fine brush several other maps. Then I cut them out, crushed them up, crumpled them, spilled coffee and drips of water on them, buried them in a flower pot with fresh soil for a day or two, and then wiped them off and straightened them out. Made pretty good "ancient" maps. Plus it was fun, too!

Of course, I don't know your time table and the money at your disposal, but it was fairly cheap and only took a couple of days, but, boy, did it add to the game.

But then again, I tend to make the scrolls that the group finds, too. And fill little bottles found at Hobby Shops with colored water for potions. And I own a BIG bag of plastic gold and silver goins. And another bag of cut "gems." And... Well, you get the idea. I loooooove props.

I once filled a Crown Royal bag with nickles so show how much the treasure they found weighed. They were surprised at how HEAVY all those coins were!

 

[EdL]

There is very little that I can add to the above excellent suggestions. You might want to draw your map on 'vellum' paper that can be found at art supply houses and stationary stores. If your group has anyone interested in codes you might make a 'new' language out of a substitution code with a few frills and a new alphabet to use for hint scribbles. (I did that once and the players stopped and figured out what it said in about 10 minutes! A really cool experience.)

 

[pogre]

Tea stain some parchment and draw the map in ink - your players will love it.

 

[Hairfoot]

Nup. Print and distribute. There are so many good maps online that you can plan endless dungeons and fortresses and not have to railroad the players into visiting the one seaside village the DM painstakingly sketched with a quill.

 

[birdchili]

I'll certainly be drawing by hand - more fun for me too. I've got lots of time to work as we don't play particularly often... My artistic skills are hardly the greatest, but I should be able to get something.

Thoughts on gameplay-centric map elements? Having an ancient script on the map is out as this is a recent map (a copy of an original penned by an dwarven explorer). I'm going to put some minor destinations on it I think (stuff the PCs should probably avoid), but I'd love to have the map make the players grab it back and forth across the table trying to figure something out (or otherwise have it feature in the actual game) - I'm a bit at a loss for ideas on this front other than some sort of obvious puzzle (which I want to avoid).

Some sort of telling inaccuracy perhaps? Or something that will seem curious, but innocuous until later in the campaign... Map as NPC is great - I'd love for this one to be a recurring character.

 

[adwyn]

This summer i picked up some tanned rabbit hides for a few bucks each. They still have some fur on them and will be used for the maps of the "Barbarian lands". Scrap leather can also be gotten inexpensively if you're patient and makes for a great map.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Here's an idea robbed from an old 70s adventure movie. Give them a prop that requires passing it over the map to find things or hide things to show parts of them which are really disguised images. (I'm remembering a reindeer horn that when aligned properly pointed to a destination.) This requires disgusting amounts of time and creativity, but perhaps some lesser version would work?