D&D 5E 2/4/2013 L&L:A Change in Format

[TerraDave]

I have a player who maps, voluntarily and unobtrusively.

The maps have occasionally been consulted, sometimes urgently.

In any case, I don't track initiative while DMing, barely track conditions, and there is no ing way I will map.

 

[LostSoul]

All of this stuff... like mapping and calling, or carrying 10 foot poles through dungeons, etc. etc... are all things long-term players of D&D remember fondly with rose-colored glasses, but in actuality just don't need to do anymore.

I still want to do those things these days, though. I feel like this blog post is relevant here: http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.ca/2013/02/on-gameplay-in-megadungeon.html

On the Caller: I think the Caller works as a "Commit Actions?" button. When the Caller tells the DM what you do, that's what you do. If the Caller doesn't tell the DM that you did something, then you didn't do it. It clears up some "murk" that can happen in the game:

DM: What do you guys do?
Player 1: We enter the room.
DM: Okay, you trip a pressure plate and the room starts filling with gas. Saving throws against poison.
Player 2: No, wait, I didn't say I was going into the room, I'm still outside.
DM: Urgh.

DM: What do you guys do?
Player 1: I want to go into the room.
Player 2: I want to stay in the doorway. I don't trust this room.
Caller: Okay. Well I go into the room, and Krog "the Untrusting" stays in the hall.
DM: You trip a pressure plate and the room starts filling with gas. Make a saving throw against poison. Krog is okay in the hall.

 

[Libramarian]

To the extent that my players map (not very often, these days) they do "zone and line". But it's never occurred to me that permission has to be granted! Do you regard full-fledged grid mapping as compulsory in classic D&D?

I think it should be compulsory in the sense of "hey try this out and see if it grows on you", because sometimes it does and people enjoy it, and if the dungeon design is pretty predictable and boxed-in close together, supposedly you can deduce the location of secret doors with an an accurate grid map (I've never actually seen this happen, but it would be cool). I do kind of like just saying "hey, you guys have to find your way around this mazy labyrinth, so do whatever you think is necessary to do that" and seeing what mapping behaviors that leads to, but that's unlikely to ever lead to grid-mapping. On balance I think players should be instructed to try it out.

Related question: in classic D&D there's a pretty strong implication that the player drawing the map is also a PC, in game, drawing a map (and if that PC is lost, the GM can confiscate the map!). Do you think this approach is inherent to classic play? I've always tended to regard the players' map as more of a meta-thing, a substitute for perception and memory.

I'm the same way, I think of it as a meta thing. I would be down to try diegetic mapping out, though. If I were going to roll item saving throws for the map and what-not, I would have NPCs willing to buy it from the players as well. I haven't run into any problems thinking of the map as meta, so I think it's a pretty modular complication.

Intense mapping by players has problems. At its worst, the game turns into a discussion between the DM and the mapper, while the other players wait for something interesting to happen. In some dungeons, it turns into mapping lots of empty rooms before finally getting into a fight. I was running a 4e conversion of Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure last Friday, and that's exactly what happened: the encounter count was very low compared to all the confusing passages and rooms the group had to go through, and so the mapper got to do stuff while the others waited around.

Running Isle of Dread last year for my AD&D game was slightly more bearable, but did lapse into intense boredom as I'd say, "You go northwest. To the northwest are mountains; to the east is forest; to the north-west a river runs through a chasm" again and again and we'd have to pause for the mapper to mark that down. This was a game with eight players, so the conversation really was between one mapper and the DM while the other players sat back and waited.

When I ran Isle of Dread last year we also found the hexcrawl portion pretty boring, but my conclusion was that the material is boring. The player who was mapping said that they found filling in the blank map kind of satisfying in itself, but there needs to be more of a payoff to it than encounters that are like some monkey men in a tree, some cavemen in a cave, etc. I'd like to try hexcrawling in one of John Stater's Land of Nod regions, where the encounters are more like:

2436 Yoghaudha: Nestled in the hills there is a circular
keep standing 30 feet tall and built of large limestone
blocks. The keep is surrounded by a moat of sorts, that
draws in a rushing stream that flows from the surrounding
hills. This water flows around the keep and finally enters
through a large grate carved from granite. This is the
entrance to an odd construction of the ancient ophidians.
For the visible keep is merely the outer ring in a series of
six rings, each 30‐ft tall and 30‐ft wide and sunk 10‐ft lower
than the ring that surrounds it. Thus, the keep, which is
360‐ft in diameter, resembles something of a pit, with the
center of the keep set 20 feet below the surface of the
earth. The stream flows through the different rings of the
construction, sometimes openly, sometimes hidden in
pipes. It ultimately flows into the central chamber, cooling
an atomic pile that powers a temporal stasis machine. An
invisible entity of chaos was imprisoned in this machine,
which can be ruined in a variety of ways by curious
adventurers, not the least of which is the removal of one of
seven golden rods surrounding the frozen chaos entity.

Each of the rings is protected by different creatures, with
the power of the defenders increasing as one gets closer to
the center. The innermost ring (the one that surrounds the
central chamber) is defended by a dozen beetlors. The
outermost ring is defended by a legion of zombies
animated through science, and thus not truly undead. The
second ring is defended by bronze cobras and pyre
zombies (also not undead). The third ring by brown molds,
giant centipedes and vierds. The fourth ring by crystaline
assassins and Marrosian statues, and the fifth by wax
golems, giant serpents and wandering holes.
(from NOD no.1)
​

 

[Iosue]

I still want to do those things these days, though. I feel like this blog post is relevant here: http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.ca/2013/02/on-gameplay-in-megadungeon.html

On the Caller: I think the Caller works as a "Commit Actions?" button. When the Caller tells the DM what you do, that's what you do. If the Caller doesn't tell the DM that you did something, then you didn't do it. It clears up some "murk" that can happen in the game:

DM: What do you guys do?
Player 1: We enter the room.
DM: Okay, you trip a pressure plate and the room starts filling with gas. Saving throws against poison.
Player 2: No, wait, I didn't say I was going into the room, I'm still outside.
DM: Urgh.

DM: What do you guys do?
Player 1: I want to go into the room.
Player 2: I want to stay in the doorway. I don't trust this room.
Caller: Okay. Well I go into the room, and Krog "the Untrusting" stays in the hall.
DM: You trip a pressure plate and the room starts filling with gas. Make a saving throw against poison. Krog is okay in the hall.

I think this is definitely part of it. Also, the Caller acts as a kind of assistant player-side DM, allowing characters to disparate things without overloading the DM with the actions of 4 or 5 individuals as well as handling the dungeon, monsters, and what not. So while exploring a room or hallway, all the players can feed the Caller what they are doing, who can then present that to the DM is an orderly fashion. No one's standing around; if they aren't searching the room, they may be guarding the doors, and so on.

If you've only got 2 or 3 players, then you may not need a Caller unless you want that "Commit button".

Related question: in classic D&D there's a pretty strong implication that the player drawing the map is also a PC, in game, drawing a map (and if that PC is lost, the GM can confiscate the map!). Do you think this approach is inherent to classic play? I've always tended to regard the players' map as more of a meta-thing, a substitute for perception and memory.

Not just the mapper, but the Caller, too! Moldvay suggests the Caller be at the front of the party so he can see what the DM is describing. Given standard marching order (fighters and clerics in front and guarding the rear, thieves and magic-users protected in the middle), this was another reason to play a fighter.

When I ran Isle of Dread last year we also found the hexcrawl portion pretty boring, but my conclusion was that the material is boring. The player who was mapping said that they found filling in the blank map kind of satisfying in itself, but there needs to be more of a payoff to it than encounters that are like some monkey men in a tree, some cavemen in a cave, etc.

My style of wilderness mapping when DMing B/X was to give the players a copy of the map. Of course the characters would have a map when traveling, so the players did to. Even if they were in an uncharted area, their field of view is much greater than in a dungeon. If they were following a road, they never got lost, and I would just roll Wandering Monsters. If they struck out away from the road, I had them follow their map, but would make rolls to see if they got lost. Then I would keep track of where they really were on my map, while they kept track of where they thought they were on their map.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

In our old school days, we played with caller, mapper, light source, and sometimes some more esoteric "roles". A lot of times the wizard would be the mapper because he had a hand free and wasn't necessarily the best guy to be stuck near the light in an ambush. Naturally, the rogue never carried the light source, but could often be the mapper. The caller, meanwhile, was nearly always the fighter or cleric, because he was constantly calling attention to himself (e.g. giving directions.)

So we took the implications of what it meant to have any such role and ran with it in game. In one memorable fiasco with a party of five, the party got separated by traps and monsters into three different groups. No one with a map had a light source and no one with a light source had a map. I picked up the board that we had been laying out with tiles, and made them find their way out by memory.

 

[pemerton]

supposedly you can deduce the location of secret doors with an an accurate grid map (I've never actually seen this happen, but it would be cool).

I'm pretty sure that I've seen this happen (I have a vague memory 20 or so years old). Given when it would have happend and thinking back to the sorts of gear the players back then would have had ready to hand, I doubt the map was on a grid - it would have been of a building of some sort drawn with a pen and ruler. (The regular shape of the typical building also facilitates this sort of deduction.)

 

[Blackwarder]

I think that map design has deteriorated to the point where most maps don't give you the option to find hidden rooms with an accurate map.

B1 In Search Of The Unknown, got one of the best map designs I've seen in a published adventure and it should the the prototype for great dungeon design. It got great and missing tropes such as non-liner design, maze, teleport traps, a pit trap to the next level (what a great idea!) and most importantly hidden rooms that can be deduced by accurate mapping!

Damn, I'm so glad WotC has given us B1 for free, I want to run that thing.

Warder

 

[Libramarian]

My style of wilderness mapping when DMing B/X was to give the players a copy of the map. Of course the characters would have a map when traveling, so the players did to. Even if they were in an uncharted area, their field of view is much greater than in a dungeon. If they were following a road, they never got lost, and I would just roll Wandering Monsters. If they struck out away from the road, I had them follow their map, but would make rolls to see if they got lost. Then I would keep track of where they really were on my map, while they kept track of where they thought they were on their map.

I've done this too and I like it better. The Isle of Dread approach where the map is totally blank in the middle and the players fill in everything is unusual. I like the Judges Guild maps, where the players' map is the same as the DM's map but without the cities/towns/sites of interest. I think giving the PCs a random chance to get lost on top of expecting the players to fill in a blank hex map is a bit much, so I didn't use the rules for getting lost with X1.