D&D General Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan complaint

[Atomoctba]

I remember that when I was young there was a Geography exam that displayed a map and then asked questions like "the river is east of the town", etc. The catch is that north was not up. And no compass rose either. We used just the numbers for latitude and longitude impress at the lines to now to which direction the map was pointing. Perhaps that is obvious and automatic for some people, but for me, I needed some mental conscient manipulation to understand what was going.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

So I looked at the AD&D version (included in the Spoiler) and in that map, North is Up. But it was also spread out across three 8.5x11" (roughly A4) pages in 3 vertical oriented pages.

When they decided they were going to put this into Yawning Portal, my guess is someone at WotC figured out they could fit it all onto two 8.5x11" pages if they connected it all into one map going long-way across the two pages and rotating it 90°. But that also meant they needed to preserve the North orientation in relation to the rooms. So thus was born the North to the left issue I (and everyone) am experiencing. See 2nd map in full color in Spoiler.

I will also note that the WotC version they forgot to label which rooms were "Second Tier"; but that's not actually impactful nor important to the adventurers since it's not really mentioned in the box text.

Mystery solved, annoyance unresolved...

Spoiler

 

[Lanefan]

@Eyes of Nine - your pictures very clearly point to the other huge complaint I'd have with the newer map over the original: the original is detached from the module, meaning I can read the words and look at the map without having to flip pages all the time.

Detached cardstock maps for the win, every time!

 

[Tonguez]

living in the southern hemisphere, with a mountain to the south of town I always orient my self South and then East to the rising sun. I can work out North and west from there. walking home at night I’d orient myself by Orion, which I knew to be West

 

[Paul Farquhar]

living in the southern hemisphere, with a mountain to the south of town I always orient my self South and then East to the rising sun. I can work out North and west from there. walking home at night I’d orient myself by Orion, which I knew to be West

Lucky you. Living on the edge of London, I haven't seen the stars for about 20 years!

But, living in the northern hemisphere, pre-London, I used Polaris to orientate myself. Which is another reason for putting north at the top of a map.

 

[Voadam]