Why the focus on *geography* in RPGing?

[hawkeyefan]

I have two initial thoughts, which echo some of what others have said.

I find that maps help provide context for players to better understand the fictional world their characters inhabit. This city is beyond that river, this blacksmith is four streets from the tavern, this district of the city is going through civil unrest, and so on. I think these kinds of references, whether detailed ahead of time or during play, give the GM details to help portray the situation, and give the players some sense of what their characters can expect (so the GM can use the river as an obstacle or as inspiration for other obstacles, and the players know the characters will need to cross a river to get to the city, and so on). So the geography offers inspiration for scene framing or random encounter lists and the like.

The other, which I think may relate to the idea of linearity mentioned in the OP, is that geography can serve as a pace setter or a way to sequence elements if desired. Think of a hexcrawl type of game, with the characters at some kind of home base and a large frontier before them to explore and interact with as they'd like. The Gm can use that structure to arrange for encounters/situations that are appropriate to the level/power of the characters. So suitably low level threats may be in the immediate vicinity of the home base, and high level threats much further away. This helps pace things according to the power level of the characters, or to potentially "nest" a chain of encounters (the goblins right near base are working for the necromancer in the swamp, who serves the lich in the far off mountains, etc.). You can use it to help create decision points (do we go over the mountains, or through the mines) or to sequence certain events/locations (to get to the wizard's tower, we must brave the river and go through the harpy infested fjords).

 

[Bedrockgames]

I have only heard of "linear adventure" used as describing being restricted to going A to B and never as geography is an important part of framing.

Geography being important is normally on the other end opposite linear adventuring, sandboxing.....

I suppose what we mean by linear adventure is important here. My brain immediately leaps to the structure that emerged in 3E, where there is often an A to B but a series of encounters planned out (and that is a very reductive description as in many adventures, once you got to A it might be a pretty open and fleshed out town with a nearby dungeon that could be explored in a variety of ways).

But my sense of what Pemerton was talking about was maps being used for such adventures (most linear adventures map A to B on physical geography). I think one of the main reasons is even linear adventures aren't automatically railroads, so all it takes is one PC saying, I go off the road and approach the distant hills, for the map to become very relevant. But I do think Pemertons point is you don't need a physical geography map for this kind of adventure structure. To an extent, this is what happened towards the end of 3E if I recall. Many of the later books emphasized structuring adventures around a series of encounters based on their EL. So often you would literally just chart out something like: EL 2, EL 2, EL 1, EL 3, EL 4. Then take that and build encounters to the Els (picking appropriate CR monsters and foes so it gets to the right number). Then you would lay it on an adventure map of some kind (obviously this could be done in the other direction too). If you ran 3E this way, it worked very well mechanically in terms of presenting the right level of challenge, giving a sense of building towards a final bad guy....but the point where they started emphasizing this a lot is where I found myself losing interest (and I think that is because the EL system was the real underlying structure and as a GM I found that made sense of place less important). This was most clear to me in the 3E Ravenloft GM guide. The core setting book wasn't like this. But the GM book got deep into encounter structures. Mechanically it was very interesting because a lot of thought went into how to make encounters build fear and horror using the EL system (and in 3E the GM really can't ignore that system if they want encounters to achieve what they want them to achieve). But it made clear to me that once the setting wasn't as significant as that underlying challenge level structure, I just didn't feel as enthusiastic to run it (and I didn't like that EL structures tended to lead to pretty linear adventures by their nature).

But that is all towards Pemerton's point that you a map it out that way. You don't necessarily need a geographic map to fit that on top of. I think my argument would be that may be the case, but because, even in the most structured path adventure built around encounters, the players always have the ability to go in an unexpected direction, that the geographic map is going to be helpful for most GMs (it is also really hard I think for GMs to think about those series of encounters divorced from a map of a place). I could be misunderstanding Pemerton's point though about the maps.

With D&D especially, I found very few campaigns survive any particular 'way' of running the game. I run a lot of sandboxes. And I've run lots of D&D sandboxes. But how much of a sandbox I can run is very player dependent. If I have players who expect certain kinds of adventures and engage the world that way, then I have to bend to that to a degree. So I think it is the same with linear adventure paths. Those may be the idealized structure but for those who run them, since i don't really run them anymore, how often do players take things in a totally different direction where a map suddenly goes from being helpful to essential?

 

[Manbearcat]

Alright, so...some thoughts but first, I'm going to use Topography here as well as Geography. My understanding of the difference between the two is (a) level of zoom and (b) topography's focus on dimensionality.

Alright, so games/procedures that use these two things:

* In B/X or RC Hexcrawls, it integrates with the exploration rules and the spatial values of the map to give players one of their primary inputs to the decision-space that they navigate. You're here? You want to get over there? Ok, you have all this amount and type of stuff between here and there. So that means, procedurally, you've got all of these Exploration Turns + Night/Day/Rest/Camp loops + Random Encounter/Wandering Monster checks (and with this potential menu of critters/situations) before you. Chart your course and loadout with these things as proverbial "North Stars."

* In Stonetop and Dungeon World, the spatial relationships and geographic/topographic paramaters of the map informs (a) how many legs (procedural loops) and (b) what sort of situational framing and consequence-rendering will emerge for (c) any given course charted for a Perilous Journey. This will be very important when making pre-Journey decisions about (d) loading out, (e) provisioning, (f) hiring or bringing Cohorts, (g) Requisitioning assets/personnel (Stonetop), and (if you're a "split-the-party-to-tackle-more-Opportunities/Threats simultaneously") (h) which PC to send on which Journey (for intra-Journey role consideration as well as final destination - Adventure site - consideration).

* In Torchbearer and Mouse Guard, orthodox Journeys are handled much like Stonetop and Dungeon World with some nuances differences. But you can port much/most of that stuff directly above to here.

* In D&D 4e, Journeys are Skill Challenges and handled much the same as the above for ST/DW/TB/MG. Distance and relationships/danger level on a map = legs of journey which informs Complexity of Skill Challenge and Level > topography helps to inform GM situation framing + decision-space for players + consequences space for GMs.

* In Torchbearer Wilderness Crawls, I use two methods to resolve Adventure phase driven by these.

If the Wilderness Adventure is Short (4-6 problem areas/obstacles), then I have a few scant sentences/tags written down based on theme, player Goals, and what play has established about the location. I don't have a map here. I'm basically generating play much like Stonetop and Dungeon World journeyes, nailing things down with the Adventure procedures of TB2 + procedurally generating content during play as we play. Here, I'm basically framing scenes with spatial relationships to anchor decision-points and provide vitality to skilled play; multiple ingress/egress (as well as flowing with creative ingress/egress generated in-situ by player exploration/action declaration), framing that provides multiple approaches to any given area/obstacle and generates divergent consequences and Obstacle Ratings (again, to inform player decision space), with consideration for Camp locations (this is a phase for Recovery and respite) and Danger level. Outside of that, I'm procedurally generating whatever else I need to (weather, loot, etc).

If the Wilderness Adventure is Medium (10-12 Areas/Obs), I might handle like the above or I might handle like the following. If its Long (18-20 Areas/Obs), I'm 100 % ALWAYS handling like the following (because the intricate spatial relationships are entirely too complex to keep in my head and maintain their relationships with perfect fidelity). So, the longer and complex ones, I handle as Point Crawls. Its effectively the exact same thing as Short, except I've got a written down map with a lot of lines going to and from boxes with the lines representing ingress/egress points (and their type and verticality) and the relationships of those ingress/egress points + boxes with several words/tags outlining the broad situation therein (Danger level, topography, denizens, any context) and I'll in-fill any detail necessary (including procedurally generating weather/loot as needed). This informs all the stuff above (situation framing > player decision-space both immediately and "the long game") but it also informs my Twist-space as a consequence of "failed" (in TB, there is really no "failure", its pretty much all Success w/ Condition or Twist but Fun Once - eg new situation to deal with before we move on...rare is the ocassion that you'll have a Twist that constitutes a "you have to resolve the prior obstacle still" situation).

* Broadly, Geography (I'm talking when considering the full Hexcrawl map, the full map for a DW/TB/Stonetop game) provokes the imagination for both players and GMs which then propels play. "What's over there?" "Let's give it a thematic feature and a name and find out!" or "ooooooh, that name of that place is interesting...lets make that a point of interest in our play and go there!"

---

TLDR - Inform GM situation framing, inform player decision-space, inform GM Consequence-space, provoke table imagination.

 

[niklinna]

It's interesting to me that @pemerton didn't mention maps at all in the OP, and here we are all talking about maps in some detail. Of geography, at that (although a few have mentioned maps of other kinds). But, how else are you going to express spatial relationships, or any other complex set of relationships (between people, resources, etc.).Maps are much more efficient for that than words. And of course they're just cool, like warlock staffs.

The discussion alongside that, about stories being grounded in a sense of place, perhaps hews closer to what I think @pemerton is more interested in. @Campbell provided an interesting counterpoint to that. And some folks here have talked about how different groups place different levels of importance on knowing where things are happening, at various physical scales (interstellar down to 5-foot grid). How important is geography, and in what particular ways, to writing or running an adventure? Does the kind of adventure (or part of adventure) matter? How "movable" are encounters? All interesting matters....

 

[Arilyn]

I have never been particularly keen on concentrating on time and space in my RPG play. Fairly early on I embraced There are no maps in Rokugan and a cinematic sense of time outside of dungeon crawls and hexcrawls. I think the draw is mostly because it makes the setting feel like a real place you can touch, that you are moving through space in the same way you are in real life or a video game like Skyrim. I tend to not pay a whole lot of attention to my immediate physical environment so it's never really been much of a draw for me personally.

This is usually my take on things as well. I'm a huge Peter S. Beagle fan and I love that his stories are not grounded in solid geography. The background blurs which makes the characters pop. We know the unicorn comes from a lilac wood and our heroes travel to the coast to free the unicorns from the red bull but there is deliberately no map or world name.

I dislike detailed Star maps in Star Trek games because none of the series feel like there is consistency in this regard.

I'm using maps in the game of One Ring I'm currently running. The players want to feel like they're in Middle Earth by visiting The Prancing Pony, travelling to Mirkwood, etc. The geography of Middle Earth is essential for this game.

 

[Lanefan]

So time and space as a focus of play is one answer?

What does that focus bring to RPGing?

Believability, verisimi-whatever, realism, consistency - all that fine stuff.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Even if the exact location of the Green Chapel isn't unnecessary in a regional map, don't you still require a map of the Green Chapel itself? Maybe there isn't always a need for a regional map (I think there is, because we don't play games in locations that don't belong to some larger region), but the encounter scale map is still necessary, thus maps are still necessary. I didn't realize you were asking about maps larger than encounter scale as within the parameters of your question. I've published adventures that had encounter scale maps only, but never one without a map.

But I would say that, particularly in more modern RPGs where the focus is not often on things like marching and supplies and whatnot, that the notion of 'map' can be a LOT looser. We've been playing Torchbearer 2 (@niklinna is in that game, which is run by @Manbearcat) and while MBC does have a regional map, I don't think there are detailed level maps, generally. The map is more of a conceptual thing, like if we climb the mountain there are a few different paths to the top, and I expect each one will end up having its own obstacles. For example at one point there was this weird tree, and alternatively you could climb a scary looking cliff and get around the weird tree. So maybe it could be described as what was mentioned as 'nodes', so maybe the 'map' in this case is more of a graph. TB2 seems pretty much designed to work this way as well, as everything is divided up into 'travel legs' and then when you get to the end of a leg, there's going to be SOMETHING, a town, a scene with obstacles, etc. Time is abstract too, so traveling a 'leg' might require a tick on the grind (unless it is mapped already, then the travel is normally just uneventful). Obviously classic D&D doesn't utilize a structure like this, so you would more likely have the geographic map (and I have drawn literally 100's of them myself too).

 

[Reynard]

In this thread - Why Jargon is Bad, and Some Modern Resources for RPG Theory - @niklinna has helped me to understand what is meant by a "linear adventure".

My tentative conclusion is that "linear adventure" has two uses:

This thread is prompted by the first of those dot points.

I know the historical answer to the question: D&D has its origins as a game of exploring dungeons and exploring wildernesses.

But why has this endured? Why is there such a concern over where things happen and who gets to decide where things happen? Is it because of the additional premise I flagged - that where a PC is determines what scene the GM frames? Or for some other reason?

Setting is a key component to story, and whether you are playing to tell a story or watch one emerge from play, it still ends up being a story, so setting matters. It could be a dingy bar or a vast outer plane, but the action still happens somewhere, and that somewhere deeply impacts how the action plays out.

What would an adventure look like without geography as a consideration? Even if the PCs never went anywhere, the geography of where they were still matters.

 

[niklinna]

But I would say that, particularly in more modern RPGs where the focus is not often on things like marching and supplies and whatnot, that the notion of 'map' can be a LOT looser. We've been playing Torchbearer 2 (@niklinna is in that game, which is run by @Manbearcat) and while MBC does have a regional map, I don't think there are detailed level maps, generally. The map is more of a conceptual thing, like if we climb the mountain there are a few different paths to the top, and I expect each one will end up having its own obstacles. For example at one point there was this weird tree, and alternatively you could climb a scary looking cliff and get around the weird tree. So maybe it could be described as what was mentioned as 'nodes', so maybe the 'map' in this case is more of a graph. TB2 seems pretty much designed to work this way as well, as everything is divided up into 'travel legs' and then when you get to the end of a leg, there's going to be SOMETHING, a town, a scene with obstacles, etc. Time is abstract too, so traveling a 'leg' might require a tick on the grind (unless it is mapped already, then the travel is normally just uneventful). Obviously classic D&D doesn't utilize a structure like this, so you would more likely have the geographic map (and I have drawn literally 100's of them myself too).

Well, if you look at the sample adventure in Torchbearer 2, it is a classic map-and-key setup. @Manbearcat's got a system down, but I doubt got it from Torchbearer 2.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I commented in the original thread that linearity is an attribute of "situations"—locations, events, people, objects, objectives, etc.—but didn't really examine that location is generally assumed, as you pointed out here. Even if the linearity is of other things, those are commonly scripted at given locations, often with maps, as if that mattered for anything other than, say, the tactics of a fight or something. And maybe it does! But it could quite easily not. And I realize I failed to point out that situations in linear sequence need not be of the same kind! You might have to go to a particular location, obtain an object there, deliver that to particular NPC wherever they happen to be, and so on.

Also, there is a difference between enabling linearity (you need A to be able to get to B) and restricting linearity (you can only go from A to B). But usualy the latter is meant, and the enabler is added on. This is wandering off the point, apologies for free-associating.

As for "who gets to decide where things happen" and "where a PC is determines what scene the GM frames", I've seen many variations. Often the scripted adventure decides, or the GM decides, but I have played games where the GM asks us, "So where are you doing the thing?" (Blades in the Dark, in particular), or as noted, once the scene is framed in terms of who or what is there, "So where is this actually going down?"—not that it always mattered, but it's nice to have some grounding. My Blades GM never used site maps (we did work with the city map as a general background, but could have done without that too). So my experience has been this isn't required, but I hadn't really thought much of it until now.

I will admit to a certain fondness for maps and keys. I just like them and I like to have that sense of groundeness in place. But they are good for certain kinds of play, and just as easily a technical distraction for others. Some of the games I have played, in fact do not use maps. But some still do, even though it doesn't help (and I have seen GMs ditch them, especially on virtual tabletop platforms like roll20, where they just freeform things and don't worry about the grid). This is getting into more lower-level detail than I think you originally meant but it's still related.


That's true, it's really irrelevant in a great many senses. Maybe the players have an interest in where on the island of Britain their characters are, but it still doesn't affect what they're going about.

Edit: Fixed a typo.

Well, it is interesting, and there could be a whole topic on just the literal focus on maps themselves in RPG culture and play. I recall now that myself and several of my friends decided we wanted to play some Arthurian Romance, but we weren't really interested in the specifics of the canonical stories, more the tropes and tone of the thing. So instead of just grabbing some off-the-shelf game or setting (like say Pendragon, which probably could have served as a good basis for this) we just made up some PACE characters. However, the interesting part is, then I drew a bunch of maps... Now, we did 'use' them, but to be quite honest I cannot say they served a lot of purpose. In fact I think they were probably more constraining than useful! Were I to revisit that exercise today (this was back in maybe 2010 or so IIRC) I would certainly NOT employ any kind of geographical maps at all! At the time, even though I was at least roughly familiar with some Narrativist concepts of play, it just never crossed my mind that the map wasn't something that was necessary. I didn't examine that assumption at all!