Disagree. I behooves the creators to make the most effective presentation not necessarily bowing to blind convention. Maybe those of us that grew up with print being the most common medium don't really see this as an issue since changing the orientation of a map is trivial (just rotate the page). Maybe for those who grew up in the digital it seems a much bigger deal since it is more difficult to rotate an image (like two mouse clicks depending on the view software).
So, you have to rotate your 200 page (ish) book every time you want to use a map properly and that's "bowing to blind convention"?
Again, NEARLY EVERY print map you've ever used in your entire life has put north on the top of the map. And, note, sure, I can just reorient the map, but, in the print product, that's a bit more difficult.
You must not use a lot of 45 degree bends if you only give directions like left and right.
DM: The corridor T's ahead of you, left and right.
Player: So, East and West?
DM: No, remember, North is to the left of your map.
Player, Ok, so, North and South.
DM: No, it's not quite a right turn. It's a soft turn in each direction.
Player: So, Northwest... or, sorry, right, north is to the left, so, northeast and southeast?
DM: Yes, that's right.
Player: Ok, we head down the northwe... I mean northea... I mean left corridor.
Again, no thanks. Draw the map properly in the first place and there's no problem. You can call it "blind convention" all you like, but, well, it's been that way for about five hundred years. At that point, it's not just convention, it's how it's supposed to be done. And, it's done that way so that everyone who looks at the map immediately knows how to orient it, even maps without a compass rose on them. My paper provincial map of Ontario doesn't have a compass rose on it, yet, I automatically know how to orient the map. My google map searches automatically orient north to the top, so, that I don't have to hunt down which way that map is oriented. I can assume, because maps are drawn north to the top, that north is, in fact, on the top of the map.
There's a word for "blind convention" that I'm not sure you're aware of. It's called standardization. Heck, a meter is just a "blind convention" too, and so is a yard or a pound or a kilogram or virtually any other measurement. Yet, funnily enough, a kilogram is the same everywhere in the world.
I guess we should not follow standards and have to learn new ones every time.
-------- Edit to add
Oh, yeah, let's not forget, when we rotate the map 90 degrees, all the text on the map rotates as well. Meaning that the map now looks like crap because everything written on the map is oriented wrong. So much for all that work making a beautiful map. In actual use, your map looks bad and everyone reading your map is cocking their head to one side, looking like a confused Labrador.
Draw it right the first time and all these problems go away.
Every time I use Google Maps, it's oriented north to the top. Every single map of Canada I've ever seen, going back centuries, is oriented north to the top.
