Alternatives to map-and-key

[zakael19]

The version of this I'm most familiar with is the 4e skill challenge.

Just thinking it through, the challenge consists of:

*A threat to be overcome, or an overall goal - in my experience, in a complex challenge (eg 10 or 12 successes required), this can itself evolve as the challenge unfolds;​

​

*A set of elements, probably introduced by and definitely managed by the GM, that oppose the PCs' efforts;​

​

*The use of the skill systems to (i) frame local scenes/events within the larger context of the challenge, and (ii) work out what happens to them (based on success or failure of a skill check).​

I think it is the first two dot points that establish some structure for the scenes/situations, and that suggest the "latent" scenes/situations; and then the third dot point is how the actual progression of the scenes/situations, and the move from latent to actual, is handled.

Does that seem right to you?

Yeah. I think the key is probably the forward facing nature of this? Like "you will achieve this goal when you get to full" changes the context of how the players and GM interact with the obstacles? There's no hidden guesswork, your actions iterate or are insufficient to address the problem at stake. I think this can be "Event Driven" in that the GM has planned out a set of obstacles between where the players want to go and their ultimate goal, or it can be responsive to the players in a "play to find out" sort of way.

 

[kigmatzomat]

With respect, it is the norm - the average, usual, or typical way rpgs have been and are currently played. Norms are a matter of statistics, not design philosophy.
When you write a new game, you don't have to take it as the default for your game. But understanding that this is a deviation from the norm is crucial in the success of your presentation of your game.

Lot of truth here. Maps are a common way people think. Heck, some people prefer physical books because they build a "map" of the book that helps them remember where information is located.

One alternative to Map and Key that may fall under Event Based (maybe?) is the reliance on Clocks/Countdowns of a goal with GM fronted but player "method to tackle" obstacles that games like 4e Skill Challenges, .....

The latter in particular tends to rely on the GM framing a scene that ties towards an overarching goal the players have in mind (stop the villain, find a macguffin, etc), but then suggests that you be explicit about how much the players need to do to "close out the scene" via a countdown, where the players can know that they progress on Successes, and may incur further complications on Failures.

That sounds like tug of war. Pull the thing across the line while foe tries to stop you.

Hey, that's a map!

Or maybe its a graph. I mean, the difference is in some ways contextual. Are you literally moving a thing around a geographical location? Map. Is this about changing a relationship between people or even concepts? Graph. What if the objective is to split up some group? That might be a mesh.

 

[zakael19]

Lot of truth here. Maps are a common way people think. Heck, some people prefer physical books because they build a "map" of the book that helps them remember where information is located.



That sounds like tug of war. Pull the thing across the line while foe tries to stop you.

Hey, that's a map!

Or maybe its a graph. I mean, the difference is in some ways contextual. Are you literally moving a thing around a geographical location? Map. Is this about changing a relationship between people or even concepts? Graph. What if the objective is to split up some group? That might be a mesh.

It’s a counter. When you succeed it goes up, when you fail the failure side goes up or some other complication. It’s non-spatial except in the most abstract degree.

A key (heh) difference between counter based iterative play and map-and-key style play is generally concrete and explicit goals and obstacles. You’re working towards “navigating the outer fortress” and the steps are 0/6, before 3 failures.

 

[kigmatzomat]

A key (heh) difference between counter based iterative play and map-and-key style play is generally concrete and explicit goals and obstacles. You’re working towards “navigating the outer fortress” and the steps are 0/6, before 3 failures.

So..they need to move 6 spaces along the map without setting off 3 traps to get inside the fortress. Got it.

I'm a big mapper. I make a lot of physical maps, triptychs (which are properly graphs as they represent time not space) and mind maps of concepts and goals.

A mind map is not technically a map, being a graph, unless the structure actually represents space. Then it is a map. But people like maps and are afraid of graphs (X? Y? Run away!) So "mind map" is the common term for a graph.

To circle around to "how maps/graphs are used in rpgs that aren't explicitly d&d", the XDM books have plot maps (my book is packed so I can't find the exact term) for players to "move through" or "navigate" to get to the completion. XDM has only been around for a 15 years or so.

Shadowrun, which has been around for four-ish decades, uses proper maps for combat and a (poorly explained) graph for advancing plots. And I mean very poorly explained as they sprinkle relationship data on each node (character) without every drawing the map. I mean graph. Except when they discuss places, when it could be a map. But their adventures are absolutely graphs without the handy map. Diagram. Graph. Whatever.

What I'm saying is, a map is a subset of graphs, and darned near everything is a graph but lots of people hate graphs (math!) while everyone is comfortable looking at a map these days. So if you want to de-emphasize geography-based adventures, tell people to map something else. Plot map. Story map. Motivation map. Event map. Scene map.

It is much more approachable to the majority and only the truly pedantic will get huffy about it.

But every graph/diagram/map should have a key. Always, always, always.

 

[aramis erak]

Non-geographic maps are a thing... usually for showing social groups within an investigation or plot/character/setting elements when writing. They're great in flowchart form for writing adventures

Also, I've found that many dungeons I've designed can work just fine as point crawls/subway maps. Others are more compact and work best as a geographic map.

Subway style maps are used in several SF games.... Starfire¹ 2nd ed and later, VSCA's Diaspora, LEG's Aliens Adventure Game... And are particularly good for 2300AD, even tho they're not in the GDW core books. Star Frontiers Knight Hawks has a subway map version of the Alpha Dawn map. Vorkosigan Saga (for GURPS) uses them, too, but largely because the novels do.

An alternative to a map is the the cross tab table

	E	D	C	B
A	13	5	7	7
B	10	6	1
C	8	6
D	9

Note that this table format, if all routes are bidirectional, you only need to fill in half the table, and that makes layout a bit easier.


-=-=-=-=-=-=-
¹: 4x board wargame. They're not shown in core, but in the 2nd ed GKW supplement, and in Stars at War for 3rd

 

[Campbell]

If you discussing RPGs, and you're excluding D&D, its many variations, and games that play like it, I feel you really need to do so explicitly, and be aware that the discussion is no longer about "RPGs", but rather a fraction of such.

IMO, no discussion excluding D&D et al is a "general RPG" discussion. Such games simply occupy too big a slice of the pie to ignore implicitly.

D&D should definitely be included, but not given special weight because more people play it. Vastly more people play Call of Duty than Clair Obscur, but the latter does not need to justify itself or have expectations for how it works by default based on the former. Vastly more people play Monopoly than play Dungeon Lord or Battle For Rokugan, but no one treats Monopoly as a norm for how board games work more generally.

 

[TheSword]

I think the opening post was very interesting right up to painting event based adventures as railroading and map & key based adventures as linear. That isn’t automatically the case. Event based adventures might be railroading but they easily might not. Key and map might be linear - depending on how the rooms are arranged - but they easily might not. So often I see one style reduced to its lowest common denominator and compared against another style’s highest art.

Compare your best with their best and your worst with their worst.

 

[pemerton]

Yeah. I think the key is probably the forward facing nature of this? Like "you will achieve this goal when you get to full" changes the context of how the players and GM interact with the obstacles? There's no hidden guesswork, your actions iterate or are insufficient to address the problem at stake. I think this can be "Event Driven" in that the GM has planned out a set of obstacles between where the players want to go and their ultimate goal, or it can be responsive to the players in a "play to find out" sort of way.

I agree with you about being forward facing, so the players don't have to guess the stakes.

When the skill system is leveraged in the manner of a 4e D&D skill challenge, it also tends to be the players who set the "local" stakes for those checks. Or at least influence them significantly, in virtue of the actions that they declare for their PCs. This then makes it hard, I think, for the overall goal/stakes/threat/opportunity to be fully determined by the GM.

Or to flip it around, if the GM does play the major role in determining the overall goal/stakes/threat/opportunity, then they will probably have to play a big role in setting the "local" stakes/obstacles, which I think reduces the benefits gained by leveraging the skill system. But even then there is still forward facing transparency in the way you describe.

 

[Nijay]

Node & Branch might be thought of as an overlay that changes depending on context - what it's wrapped around. Apply node & branch to a map and you have map & key: cities with quest boards and NPC's that point to other nodes. Dungeons are often cul-de-sacs, nodes with no branches other than the one that led there. But what if a dungeon was a key node... perhaps that's a mega dungeon.

Apply node & branch to a plotline and you may have a non-linear adventure with some main story beats (nodes) that players choose a path through or a linear adventure that has different outputs from one node to the next that changes the experience.

For world building, factions and religions can be nodes with multiple connections to different places, people, and events.

To OP's focus on player-centric control over the narrative, I think if a GM applies node and branch to pacing - I'm thinking in "sharing the spotlight" terms here - the nodes become putting the spotlight on a character one way or another. Encountering a character from their backstory, a foe they have a unique advantage against, the next step in achieving a goal, a scenario they have a particular set of skills suited to.

Now I have to emphasize that none of this is exclusive. You can play map & key or event-based campaigns with player-driven narrative. It's more a matter of play style and the sources for the places and encounters - to what degree are they being invented collaboratively? And I think that is more down to player preference, player involvement, player skill, and practicality than the framework a game or narrative is hung on. There could be more signposts for and explicit discussions about player-driven narratives. And a system could emphasize that in its guidance for crafting an adventure. But there's nothing stopping you (except maybe other players).

 

[pemerton]

I think the opening post was very interesting right up to painting event based adventures as railroading and map & key based adventures as linear. That isn’t automatically the case.

The OP does not say what you say that it says:

Map-and-key play can be relatively player-driven

<snip>

Map-and-key play can also be heavily GM-driven

Another important sort of play - what some DMGs call "event-based" scenarios - closely resembles GM-driven map-and-key play in some key respects

<snip>

I think it is reasonably common for the sort of event-based play just described to be called railroading, whereas the similar map-and-key play will often be described as linear (if there is only one path along/through the map) or even as a sandbox (if there are multiple paths).