D&D General Do your players map?

[Don Durito]

Most D&D games are set in fantasy land. Not earth before 1920. So people are as literate as you decide them to be.

In any case mapping is an abstraction. Up to the group if the characters are mapping or not. Mapping may serve somewhat to bridge the gap between the vast distance from where the players are and the virtual word of the character.

While it may be unrealistic for the players to have a map accurate enough to find there way around a large dungeon level without getting lost - it is also unrealistic for the characters to get as disoriented as players would get among a group of players who don't map and who only have the GM's description and not immersion in the physical environment to help them.

And mapping could stand for various means the pcs take to keep oriented, such as making chalk marks on walls etc.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[jgsugden]

It is up to the goup to decide whether it makes sense, but I generally lay out the dngeon for them. I've done the mapping in some games, but it is usually not to scale or on grid paper - it is the equivalent of what my PC would cribbl in their fournal freehand.

 

[Fanaelialae]

We have one guy who handles the mapping when needed. He has incredible mapping skills and can map things that I have trouble with even when looking at the map (including a 3d maze and a Mobius strip). Usually he doesn't even need to bother with a drawn map, as his mental map is sufficient.

While I've done mapping in the past (before he joined the group) I was rather rubbish at it, with the other players (and even occasionally the DM, despite that it was against policy) needing to help me out when I inevitably messed up the map. Even in real life my spacial skills are lacking. I can memorize a route without issue, but I easily get confused about which direction a particular town is in if traveling via an unfamiliar road (though nowadays I just rely on GPS whenever in doubt).

For better or worse, my strengths lay elsewhere, such as making sense from the pieces of the story. My friend will draw the layout, while I focus on the history and purpose of a place.

As for my other (newbie) groups that I DM for, I don't require much mapping. I give them an incomplete (and not entirely accurate) overland map at the start of the campaign. How much they do or don't map is up to them, and I don't get too critical about it. If they've been to the Fangmarsh and they want to go to the Fangmarsh, they'll get there. If they haven't been somewhere they will need to find it first, but even there I'm fairly generous as long as they end up in the correct hex. WRT dungeons, I tend to lay them out as point crawls, so no mapping is needed.

 

[Delazar]

RL games, I (the DM) sketch a map when absolutely necessary.

In the wonderful world of Roll20, gorgeous maps and dynamic lightning is the way we roll!

 

[zztong]

So, I am wondering - have you or do you have your players involved in mapping the areas the party adventure in?

Not anymore. Typically maps are imported into Roll20 and either the map is small enough that it isn't worth the effort to map, or we use "fog of war" features to reveal parts of the map or "dynamic lighting" so that the pogs show what the characters can see.

 

[HarbingerX]

In the megadungeon I ran for the last year, I asked one player to be the mapper but I didn't require them to map based on my descriptions. I would sketch out the dungeon as they went on my chessex battle mat and it was up to the mapper to transcribe that and make any additional notes. This worked really well and having the giant map helped them plan where to explore next.

Otherwise, for smaller dungeons I don't require it and flowcharts are probably better. Though it makes secret doors that aren't in rooms pretty much impossible to ever find.

 

[Nebulous]

For some reason we used mapping a good bit in 4e when running Keep on the Shadowfell and a couple others. I don't know why, they weren't big or complex maps, but it was fun for the players. That is the only time before or since we did it. I had bought some big grid sheets from the store, like 2x3 feet, and that's what we used. They were big enough to place minis on it and use.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

As most people PRIOR to 1920 were illiterate.

That's just fine, then, as my D&D setting is set in the 2553rd Year of the Bregatian Pantheon, and for over three centuries the Sisters Scholastic have been spreading literacy even to the far-flung rural communities as a byproduct of their search for children with wildborn sorcery talent, pursuant to the dictum of the Three-Eyed King that all mages' true names be taken from them and sealed in the Emerald Archive (and of course a true name can only be written autographically).

Actually, none of that's true, I just made that up. My campaign does happen to be set in a place rather like early medieval ("Dark Age") Europe, and literacy does happen to be low. But even so, PCs are exceptional individuals and thus are considered literate unless specified otherwise -- even the half-orc ex-slave learned to read in some handwaved downtime. Because in my experience, having to remember to censor my descriptions and handouts of all written content for an illiterate PC is just a pain in the butt.

Either way, I trust you take my point.

 

[Lanefan]

Because in my experience, having to remember to censor my descriptions and handouts of all written content for an illiterate PC is just a pain in the butt.

The only time I ever worry about this is on the very rare occasions where I happen to know the entire party is illiterate - rare indeed because arcane casters have to be literate, and most parties have at least one.

However, provided someone in the party is literate in that language and-or uses Comprehend Language, then everyone can read the handout at the table on the basis that it's being read out to them in the fiction.