D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

[Lanefan]

Is this a puzzle for the players or for the characters?

Yes.

As in, both in parallel: the players are experiencing the same puzzle the characters are.

 

[el-remmen]

I draw a map for the players at a 1-inch = 5-feet scale on beige cardstock with sharpies and wedge-tipped black markers. I then meticulously cut out each of the rooms, and then during the game i and lay them down on the table as we explore them. This creates a fog of war effect as I pick up old, previously explored rooms when the dungeon sprawls across the table.

I do very similar, except I use multiple chessex wet erase battle mats or my DIY dungeon tiles. I encourage the players to map as a way to figure out where to go or areas that need exploration or revisiting and other planning.

 

[Brotton Goodfellow]

Hope this thread doesn’t devolve into an argument about what the true meaning of being lost is…

Anyway, I’ve always hated mapping both as a player and a DM. It always kills the pacing and tension of a session when I have to keep checking and correcting the players or myself with the shape of a room that has zero bearing on the overall experience.

This is a timely thread as I’m running a biggish dungeon over the next few sessions. Normally for something I’d run in a single session I’d forgo the mapping and only drawing out encounter areas if needed. But with a dungeon that will need to be properly explored, I’ve been asking myself how to deal with mapping.

My group plays once a month for 3-4 hours, so I’m loathe to do anything that’ll slow down play. But I’d like to also make the exploration of the place have some depth and tension.

Not sure what I’m gonna do.

 

[smetzger]

I will sketch out the map on a plain (non grid) piece of paper (or a large whiteboard) as the characters move through the dungeon.
Since it is by hand without grid, it ends up being a rough estimate of relationships between rooms and hallways.

Simple and quick just enough to get the point across

 

[Reynard]

I think handwaving PCs being able to navigate back misses the point of dungeon exploration. If you are going to do that, dispense with fog of war entirely.

 

[Truename]

I’m running an in-person megadungeon at the moment, and this topic is one that I wrestled with at the start. I feel like the part of the fun of a dungeon crawl should be creating a map, but in practice, actually describing the rooms has been a hassle. Even a rectangular room slows the game to a crawl, and I can’t describe irregularly shaped rooms at all without sketching them out.

So this time I made player maps with dungeonscrawl(.net?) and printed them out on cardstock at five squares per inch (1 square = 5 feet). I cut them out along the walls, then at game time, I slice rooms off according to how they explore the dungeon. They glue them into a manilla folder using a glue stick. (I do give them a hint about where to place the first room.)

The in-game fiction is that they’re mapping as they go, and they have to take 10 minutes to search (Investigation check) and map (no check) a room. In practice, I just hand out the map pieces, but they don’t get them if their characters are distracted, such as fleeing or in combat.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Maybe I just have terible sense of direction, but I don't think most people are actually good at remember routes in complex, largely similar environments. my examples of schools and hospitals are based on actual lived experiences. military bases and office buildings, too. At least for me, when there are lots of hallway turns and everything looks pretty much the same, losing my way is pretty easy.

"We go back to the throne room" feels like a cheat to me. I mean, first of all, if you aren't exploring and mapping the dungeon, looking for secret doors and finding hidden routes, what is the point? If it is so linear or defined that there is no chance of getting lost, why have a dungeon at all?

There are lots of reasons to be in a dungeon, other than exploring every nook and cranny, the Fellowship went into Moria, mainly because they could not get over the mountains. Other than Gimli they had little interest in exploring the place.
Dungeons can be useful places to stash a mguffin or a captured NPC, or a place to conduct an eldritch ritual.

A dungeon can be a place to explore and to find secret locations and mapping can be useful. It is not a playstyle I find a lot of fun, and it takes a lot of time to do it, which I do not usually have. I still have no idea how to do this efficiently online. Nominate a player a mapper and have them photo their map each session and upload somewhere?
Or perhaps some kind of shared whiteboard app.
What do you do if the player makes a mistake? Have the character make a survival roll or take it that the character also made the mistake?
How often do the player meet and play. One of the things I find unreasonable about some assumptions relating to things like this, is that player that may meet once a week for 3 or 4 hours are expected to remember as relevant facts over a period of months that their characters have experienced over the course of perhaps a day or less.

One of the problems I have found with this style of play is the players fixating on descriptions meant as colour and missing the bits that I actually wanted them to notice. Have others had that problem and how do you address it?

 

[aco175]

One of my problems might be that I tend to run a bunch of 5-room dungeons and not anything longer than a dozen rooms leaving mapping a non issue.

 

[Hriston]

During travel (either through a dungeon or in the wilderness) in my 5.0E games, I describe the environment the party is moving through, and it's entirely up to the players whether they choose to draw maps or take notes in some other way, which are ways players can engage with the fiction. Some players (like me) engage better by listening rather than taking notes, so I don't have an opinion one way or the other about what player activities are taking place at the table, as long as there's a general focus on playing the game.

Unrelated to whether a player draws a map, if a player's character has drawing materials, they can say their character is drawing a map during travel. This means they won't notice hidden threats and will be surprised if combat starts. In return, they'll have a map from point A to point B that gives advantage on any Wisdom (Survival) checks made to navigate between the two locations when retracing the previously mapped path.

In wilderness travel, I'll ask for a navigation check to move between hexes. Failure means getting lost and moving into an unintended hex, and having previously mapped the route gives the PCs advantage on the check. A player-created map has no bearing on such a check, but it might inform the players' decision making about which hex they intend to have their characters move into.

In dungeon travel, if the party is trying to get somewhere they've previously travelled, but the players aren't sure about which way to go at a specific intersection or choice of room exits because they don't recall the fiction in enough detail to know which will lead to the desired destination, I call for a navigation check. Obviously, a player-created map could prevent the need for such a check, if it's sufficiently accurate. A PC-created map made while previously travelling through the area will give advantage on the check. Success reveals the correct choice among the available options with no lost time, while failure results in lost time and a wandering monster check, although you still learn which is the correct way to go to prevent a "nothing changes" result.

I forgot to mention, the only time I draw a map for the players during the game is if combat starts and we're going to put some miniatures on the battle mat, in which case I draw an outline of the room or the surrounding terrain where the battle's taking place .

 

[Simon The Hunter]

I like maps, I have way too many Paizo/D&D flip maps, I print way too much 3d terrain, and I like seeing terrain on my table. I can see the appeal of VTT, I have mucked about with Foundry and it's pretty cool, but I don't play online and even IRL I'm just playing solo these days, so it's all for my own entertainment anyway.

When I was running games, we used a combo of Paizo/D&D gridded maps and D&D dungeon tiles. I like the fact that we could see the layout of the land, so to speak.

In the end I like to map, and always did it when I was both player (the GM was happy to have someone help him), GM, and soloGM/Player