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*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Mapping During the Game
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6281958" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>I'm old school; as a player I map.</p><p></p><p>As a DM I expect my players to map if they don't want to get lost, although, since I have a Navigation skill if they do get lost as <em>player</em>s, all they have to do is successfully Navigate in order to remember how to get from A to B. Now, it's possible to get lost as characters, which is why you'd want a map. I'm so old school, that they aren't allowed to map unless sheets of parchment and ink are in their equipment list, and they aren't running around or charging everywhere.</p><p></p><p>In the current group I've got 1 experienced player, and he draws quick but effective little graphs rather than trying to map the dimensions of everything exactly. That is also very old school, because Gygax was fond of maps that had distorted distances, slopes, silent teleports, and other challenges to mapping that would cause the players to form false inferences. Graphs of the room joins tend to defeat that, just as they do in old school cRPGs. </p><p></p><p>But I don't think you are actually talking about mapping. Your central issue as I see it is 'Visual aids or not', and not 'Map or not'. </p><p></p><p>I feel the game goes better without minatures or grids. Your players need to practice imagining rooms, and the crutch of visual aids has robbed them of their spatial imagination. I only resort to visual aids (battlemat, minatures, etc.) when things get sufficiently complicated that the value added to the game from the tactical problems is equal to the harm caused to the game by the distraction of props. The more experienced your players, the less need they'll feel for props. It's a bad habit, because it means that they are problem never imagining scenes in first person, and are not used to setting themselves on stage in the first person. It may also mean that you aren't getting enough practice as a DM organizing your room descriptions and stating them clearly.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6281958, member: 4937"] I'm old school; as a player I map. As a DM I expect my players to map if they don't want to get lost, although, since I have a Navigation skill if they do get lost as [I]player[/I]s, all they have to do is successfully Navigate in order to remember how to get from A to B. Now, it's possible to get lost as characters, which is why you'd want a map. I'm so old school, that they aren't allowed to map unless sheets of parchment and ink are in their equipment list, and they aren't running around or charging everywhere. In the current group I've got 1 experienced player, and he draws quick but effective little graphs rather than trying to map the dimensions of everything exactly. That is also very old school, because Gygax was fond of maps that had distorted distances, slopes, silent teleports, and other challenges to mapping that would cause the players to form false inferences. Graphs of the room joins tend to defeat that, just as they do in old school cRPGs. But I don't think you are actually talking about mapping. Your central issue as I see it is 'Visual aids or not', and not 'Map or not'. I feel the game goes better without minatures or grids. Your players need to practice imagining rooms, and the crutch of visual aids has robbed them of their spatial imagination. I only resort to visual aids (battlemat, minatures, etc.) when things get sufficiently complicated that the value added to the game from the tactical problems is equal to the harm caused to the game by the distraction of props. The more experienced your players, the less need they'll feel for props. It's a bad habit, because it means that they are problem never imagining scenes in first person, and are not used to setting themselves on stage in the first person. It may also mean that you aren't getting enough practice as a DM organizing your room descriptions and stating them clearly. [/QUOTE]
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