D&D 5E Starter Set: Phandalin Map

[Gilladian]

I dislike the labels on the map for one reason: if I use this adventure/village, it will be stripped from the realms and placed in my campaign world. The place I put it will have its own name/language conventions, and the locales will all have to be renamed. This means I can either whip out the whiteout and make a big mess of the map, or convert it to my paint program and spend 2 hours trying to cover the labels and replace them with my own. I'd much prefer a legend, which I can just slap a text box over and re-use.

Otherwise, the lack of a well or other visible water source, the minimal fields (I guess they import most food, being a mining village) and the absence of a mill are irritating, but not really game breakers.

 

[Hussar]

Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll post the map on the WOTC site sans labels. Good for play.

 

[Wangalade]

I'm not sure you're appreciating the size of the place. The entire village is barely 1000 feet wide - nobody's going to need to go exploring to find anything.

Assuming that the way in is from the Triboar Trail, it's impossible to walk from the outskirts of the village to the clearly-visible main square without seeing (and, assuming they're signposted, identifying) 90% of the village's public buildings - the only ones not immediately visible will be the Miner's Exchange, the Sleeping Giant and the manor house, and those will be trivially easy to find if a PC spends two minutes wandering the rest of the village's streets.

the point that buildings were labeled, but roads were not was to illustrate the inefficacy of the map. you are right in that it is easy to locate the buildings without a road map, which brings us to the question of what is the purpose of this map? is it to analyze a specific feature or how they interact? no, there are not thematic elements and no real geospatial information besides locations. so is it a general use map? general use maps are primarily used for navigation, whether they are city street maps or topographic maps or even ancient maps, their main purpose is navigation. the fact that no roads are named and only landmarks relevant to the storyline(this is an assumption) are marked leads me to the conclusion that this map would serve very poorly as a navigational tool. how would you direct someone to Harbin Wester's Home?

having each building and road with a sign was just an example of use. as you put it, it would be easy for the pcs to locate all the labeled buildings without a map, so then why have a map? isn't it simply a list of important places stamped onto some nice artwork? do we need a map for such a small village?

so with the conclusion that this map is not designed for analytic or navigational purposes, then we decide the map is really superfluous and realize it is only presented to satisfy the demands of the customers for pretty pictures. the map is simply an aesthetically pleasing image, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[MarkB]

the point that buildings were labeled, but roads were not was to illustrate the inefficacy of the map. you are right in that it is easy to locate the buildings without a road map, which brings us to the question of what is the purpose of this map? is it to analyze a specific feature or how they interact? no, there are not thematic elements and no real geospatial information besides locations. so is it a general use map? general use maps are primarily used for navigation, whether they are city street maps or topographic maps or even ancient maps, their main purpose is navigation. the fact that no roads are named and only landmarks relevant to the storyline(this is an assumption) are marked leads me to the conclusion that this map would serve very poorly as a navigational tool. how would you direct someone to Harbin Wester's Home?

having each building and road with a sign was just an example of use. as you put it, it would be easy for the pcs to locate all the labeled buildings without a map, so then why have a map? isn't it simply a list of important places stamped onto some nice artwork? do we need a map for such a small village?

so with the conclusion that this map is not designed for analytic or navigational purposes, then we decide the map is really superfluous and realize it is only presented to satisfy the demands of the customers for pretty pictures. the map is simply an aesthetically pleasing image, nothing more, nothing less.

I'd say its primary purpose is to give the adventure a sense of place by providing the players with a good visual representation of the village their PCs are interacting with. That's a different use than a navigational tool, but it's more than mere aesthetics - it's an aid to immersion.

 

[Mistwell]

There are 6 farms portrayed, and half of them seem to drift off-map, and it's pretty obvious there are, in the least, more farms to the north edge of the map, and probably more to the southwest of it. So I definitely do not think they have a farm problem.

I also think water wells are too small a detail to portray on a map of this scale, but I definitely see tiny square outbuildings next to many of the larger buildings that could be wells. See for example Linene's Home, Alderleaf Farm, and Woodworker.

As for the purpose, it is a player overview map, of the kind you provide once the players have been able to talk to a resident about general layout and locations. It provides enough terrain detail to choose a smaller appropriate tactical type map if needed, and information on abandoned locations that the players could renovate or explore, and hill-height and related distance and size information for scale issues. Seems quite useful to me.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'd say its primary purpose is to give the adventure a sense of place by providing the players with a good visual representation of the village their PCs are interacting with. That's a different use than a navigational tool, but it's more than mere aesthetics - it's an aid to immersion.

It's purpose is to show us what the place looks like. Isn't it obvious?

I'm not following the logic of those complaining about the lack of farmland. The farmland goes off the map in at least two different directions. Presumably there's more farms that are not "downtown" in the village. It's only a few hundred feet to get off the map, isn't it?

 

[thewok]

how would you direct someone to Harbin Wester's Home?

The same way we do it down here in the South. Assuming from the inn:

"Head outside and take a right. Before the Shrine of Luck, take a left. The Townmaster's Hall will be on your left. Past that and the Lionshield (they have a good deal on apples this time of year), when you see the Woodworker's in front of you, go left. Go down that road, and it's the house with the blue roof on the left. Now, if you see a wooden fence, you've gone too far. That's the Alderleaf Farm. They don't take kindly to trespassers, so stay away."

 

[Remathilis]

how would you direct someone to Harbin Wester's Home?

Google Maps Faerun?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

The same way we do it down here in the South. Assuming from the inn:

"Head outside and take a right. Before the Shrine of Luck, take a left. The Townmaster's Hall will be on your left. Past that and the Lionshield (they have a good deal on apples this time of year), when you see the Woodworker's in front of you, go left. Go down that road, and it's the house with the blue roof on the left. Now, if you see a wooden fence, you've gone too far. That's the Alderleaf Farm. They don't take kindly to trespassers, so stay away."

I like it. I'm not sure people in small towns spent too much effort naming roads within their towns. They just know where they're going. Out-of-towners mostly use the big road through the middle of town, anyway.

 

[Echohawk]

I like it. I'm not sure people in small towns spent too much effort naming roads within their towns.

Yeah, I live in a pretty rural place. To get to a road with a name requires navigating three roads without names. We don't really have an address so much as we have GPS co-ordinates.