"A ten-foot wide hallway stretches thirty feet and then . . ."

[Jupp]

We still map all dungeons we are running/walking/dying through. We did it 13 years ago, we still do it today. Why? Because it's getting a bit complicated if the dungeon has more than 4 rooms. I occasionally do some cave walking/climbing and if you dont have a map, you get lost very, very fast. It's the same in a dungeon so I dont see a reason for a DM to let the players wander around in it without a map. Well, they can do it, sure, but I wouldnt count on them getting back out of it any time soon It's also a good thing to go over the map to see if we might have missed something. Aaaand its mighty cool to take out those maps years later and remember the cool adventures we had back then. So, I couldnt think of playing D&D without mapping our dungeons.

 

[Gwaihir]

When I play I prefer to map, though these look more like flowcharts than a true dungeon.

In a group that I used to DM had several players so passionate about mapping that if they didn't exactly work out they would get greatly upset. They believed they could use the map to locate secret rooms.

I quit creating complex maps for this party. It simply wasn't fun to describe various angles and lengths all night long.

Oh, and I gave them magical boots that conveyed them the exact dimensions of any room.

 

[KRT]

Back in the day when the most complex peice of mapping was the 45 degree angle we used to map religiously as there were always tricks/traps/secret doors that you couldn't find elsewise. As to how this adds to role play there are a couple of examples that might apply. One is when you have two parties in one who are allied for the purpose of defeating the Big Bad Guy, hoever once accomplished its the usual snatch some treasure and run with the map. Its fun when there are players in both parties and they are now pitted against each other. The other example is what made me forever a fan of mapping.

We were playing a large dungeon crawl and it was decided that only one of three guys would map because they were our quickest and most accurate mappers in the group. None wanted to so they diced for it. This guy Mike got the short roll and had to map, but he took it well and his character moved back to the safe zone in the marching order (just behind the clerics and mages). We eventually got to a point where we needed to retreat to heal up so we turned to Mike and said "ok mapper, get us out of here". He hummed and hawed and said something about, "it's a bunch of lefts and a right, and some doors too i think". We were still clued out "ha, funny Mike, really which way". His character dropped the map and ran laughing his ass off. The player then dropped the map on the floor between the other players. The only way to describe it is if you gave a blue crayon to a 3 year old and told them to draw the entire cast of the muppets in a food fight, that would be our map. I think about half of us perished on the way out fighting through rooms that wee shouldn't have opened. Strangely enough the insane mapper found his way out as well although his insane giggles probably kept most intelligent monsters at bay.
It was the last time we had a single mapper and didn't periodically check the maps.

 

[Aaron L]

We would vary between making detailed maps and making lines on paper shopwing us wich way to run when things giot hairy, depeingind opn who wanted to do it. I m yself was always horrible at trying to map, but some people liked doing it.

 

[greymist]

Once again I will date myself, but mapping is a big part of the game to me!

When I play, I map just about everything, dungeons, caverns, large buidlings, even sketches of overland travel. I still have maps from games that I played 20+ years ago!

When I DM, I don't force the players to map, but if the location is large enough to be confusing, I don't give them the benefit of doubt when they have to retrace their steps.