Geomorphs or Maps

[Sigurd]

Designing adventures that _make sense_ is a lot more work than populating random maps but sometimes I get the feeling that many players simply don't care that much. Makes me wonder if its worth the work.

Is a simple geomorph or random map sufficient, just as good, or a disappointment?



Sigurd

 

[Xath]

It depends on the situation. For a one-shot or random adventure, continuity isn't as important to me as it is in a long running campaign. However, I'm perfectly happy sitting in front of Dundjinni for hours, so having custom maps isn't really a problem for me.

 

[kensanata]

For my next adventure I'm planning on preparing some encounters (5-room dungeon style), and set it in big empty fluff dungeon. So once they've found the entrance there are tons of tunnels, stairs, water ways, fleeing creatures in the dark, until they finally arrive at... and so on. The point is to skip left or right decisions, skip mapping, skip everything except the encounters and the fluff between. That's because I have a similar suspicion: Players don't really care that much.

Unless there are other reasons to map. In the Vault of Larin Karr my players have made a longer trip into the underdark, and they found a piece of a map, and an NPC drew them a rough sketch of the underdark. Once they realized where they long trip had taken them, and where the piece of the map belonged, they were really excited about it. If you don't plan on having these kinds of moments while exploring, however, you might as well skip the mapping part.

 

[Umbran]

Depends on the adventure.

My players will generally assume my map is reasonable - not optimal, but reasonable. If I feed them a random map, they'll assume it is not random, and may try to make sense of it and use that sense to drive their tactics or reasoning about a situation. So, if I use a random map, I must take care to use it in a situation where it won't be over-analyzed.