How detailed are your wilderness/overland maps?

[dreaded_beast]

When I made my adventure, I think I should have made the overland/wilderness maps first. I am now trying to make my area map, but am encountering difficulty in deciding where to put what. Oh, I know that the dwarven ruins are in the foothills, and that the shrine is by the main road, but other than that, I am having some problems deciding where to put what. So far, my map has been sketched on a piece of loose leaf paper.

Anyways, how detailed are your maps?

 

[rounser]

As detailed as a dungeon, ideally...I hex map my wilderness with Arr-Kelaan Software's Hexmapper, 4 miles to a hex, and number the hexes which have detail. (In fact, to support the numbering I made a tileset with a blank whitespace at the bottom of each hex graphic for four digit numbers, but it got wiped in a hard drive crash. Will have to re-make it sometime).

Some ideas for if you go the hex mapping route: To keep PCs on their feet I suggest occasionally varying the ratio of interest features per hex from something other than 1:1, otherwise they'll only expect something once every few sets of four miles...and also to offer a smallish percentage change that they don't stumble across some hex's interesting feature (so they might discover it on the way back). It's also possible to describe the "patrol areas" of various types of wandering monster with hex mapped wilderness. You might note exactly which hexes in which griffons hunt (and the hex their eyrie is in), and therefore might appear as wandering monsters, for instance. It's also possible to set up areas that call specifically upon ranger and druid abilities, making these classes relevant just as you might add rogue specialty encounters to a campaign. And there's nothing more artificial about this than setting up a purely combat encounter for the fighters, IMO.

I think that a huge opportunity is regularly missed with D&D wilderness, simply because traditional D&D game design doesn't emphasise it. D&D can become fascinating when it involves exploration, and offering the opportunity for exploration is what the wilderness does best....stumbling across ruins, lairs, mini-adventures (e.g. farmer's scarecrow comes to life because of a redcap's prank) and magical terrain features. Once hex mapping gets the detailing discrete areas problem out of the way, there is one big "gotcha" which seperates dungeons from wilderness though, the problem of status quo encounters which the DMG touches upon:

Apart from mountains of the impassable variety, wildernesses tend not to have ways to channel the party into areas that are appropriate for their level.

The nearest theoretical solution I've thought of to meet this problem is to keep the lairs, mini-dungeons, encounters and mini-adventures appropriate to the level of the party, and upgrade them behind the scenes as the party gains levels (within limits - obviously, an occupied troll lair can't contain less than one troll, and the kobold caves can only be upgraded in EL so far before they break the verisimilitude reputation of kobolds not being huge challenges). So if the PC set off to raid Trollden Hill at first level, they might meet a single old and toothless troll with only a handful of treasure...but if they do so at 12th level, there might be a whole clan there, complete with barbarian levels, traps, and a giant two-headed troll leader.

I think wilderness encounters can offer a lot in the way of conveying a world's atmosphere - as an example, Fighting Fantasy's Sorcery! book, The Shamutanti Hills really brings home the exotic and dangerous nature of the Old World. Likewise, stumbling across an abandoned village with many sets of tracks leading elsewhere, or a wizard's celestial observatory (maybe he or she will show the PCs the heavens, and incidentally a falling star which seems to have landed a few miles over there), or a farmstead with an overly hospitable family who invites the PCs in (and subsequently gives them a sever case of the creeps for various reasons) can add a lot of depth to a campaign that can't be done in a dungeon, or through shovelling broad setting detail at the players.

Anyway, it's also interesting that this thread has generated so little interest. Is the wilderness really that irrelevant to D&D DMs?

 

[Lord Rasputin]

Anyway, it's also interesting that this thread has generated so little interest. Is the wilderness really that irrelevant to D&D DMs?

Nah. But be careful. I ran a party through dense forest two weeks ago and combat was as slow as hell. Don't let terrain get in the way.

 

[Rashak Mani]

You know how innacurate maps were in the past ? A lot !

Make very rough maps and if you want to move stuff around, just blame the fact that the castle was supposed to be right next to the river on bad map making in the middle ages.

 

[rounser]

Nah. But be careful. I ran a party through dense forest two weeks ago and combat was as slow as hell. Don't let terrain get in the way.

Without really meaning to single your words out, this is sort of the D&D accepted way of doing things I'm referring to - terrain as a bit "in the way" between interesting bits such as cities and dungeons. It's mostly used as just a platform for encountering wandering monsters. If it's used that way, of course ye olde Forest of Doom is going to be a bore.

But if the Forest of Doom is stocked full of adventuring opportunities, encounters and treasure like a dungeon (haunted pixie mound here, ettercap's traps there, goblin treehouse over there, mad old wise man with a treasure map marking another spot in the forest there, orc archmage's leaning tower there, thicket maze full of shadows and an evil druid there etc.), then the point may be to get to and survive said legendary, treasure-filled Forest of Doom in and of itself, not just using it as a seperator between two interesting bits of the campaign that are actually detailed.

In fact, there's some good arguments why wandering monster tables shouldn't be used...no wonder the wilderness is seen as "in the way" when that's all it's used to offer.

 

[bushfire]

Is the wilderness really that irrelevant to D&D DMs?

You know wilderness mapping is something I have always done with D&D. I started a long time ago with the Judges Guild Wilderlands and have always figured it was the best way to go. Detailed maps, 5-mile hexes, lairs, ruins, villages all there for you to use. Detailed Judges maps, blank Players maps. Still the best campaign setting ever for outdoor adventuring, even after 25 years. Combined with a good random encounter table and a good weather generator and the outdoors can be as memorable as down in the dungeon.

I got pretty spoiled using JG though. When I bought the 1st ed Forgotten Realms box set I liked the world but hated the maps. They had a 90 mile to the inch scale or something right? All I know is that using the FR maps it was darn impossible to actually map the wilderness.

I think most all published campaign settings have the same problem. They are trying to present such a large campaign world that the little details like actual terrain get lost. Large scale poster maps look nice and all but are pretty useless to the DM in detailing the wilderness. I mean how can you have a party get lost traveling when you have a map with 65 miles/hex like the LG Gazetter? How can you explore a 65 mile hex? How can you know how the terrain varies within the 65 mile hex? Heck, 65 miles is a days travel even by horse in good terrain, several days travel by foot. Such settings are nice I suppose if you are planning on the party crisscrossing the globe on a regular basis or only following roads. I like site-based adventures but getting to the dungeon should be half the fun.

I am so looking forward to the re-release of the Wilderlands maps by Necromancer/Judges Guild, especially with the expanded descriptions of stuff. I will be glad when a new generation of gamers can see what a wilderness map should look like.

I don't tend to modify wilderness encounters by party level like I would in a dungeon where you can have a more linear track. Top level easy, lower levels harder. The wilderness should be dangerous and unpredictable, and parties should have to occansionaly duck and cover (or run and hide) if confronted with something beyond thier ability to handle. In the troll den example above I would keep it a den full of trolls but allow the party the chance to avoid it. If a low-level party wants to try taking out a den of trolls, then thier death is thier fault. Civilised areas have thier own problems, bandits and tax collectors among others. It is a rare kingdom where a virgin can carry a chest of gold across it without being molested.

bushfire

 

[rounser]

Large scale poster maps look nice and all but are pretty useless to the DM in detailing the wilderness. I mean how can you have a party get lost traveling when you have a map with 65 miles/hex like the LG Gazetter? How can you explore a 65 mile hex? How can you know how the terrain varies within the 65 mile hex? Heck, 65 miles is a days travel even by horse in good terrain, several days travel by foot.

Shucks...with 3E's speedy level gain, it's quite conceivable to rise from 1st to 20th level in a single 65 mile area stocked with a few villages and dungeons. I think it would be vaguely amusing to spread out the entire GH map and watch reactions as the DM points to a spot and says, "...and the entire campaign I've prepared takes place in this hex."

The wilderness should be dangerous and unpredictable, and parties should have to occansionaly duck and cover (or run and hide) if confronted with something beyond thier ability to handle. In the troll den example above I would keep it a den full of trolls but allow the party the chance to avoid it. If a low-level party wants to try taking out a den of trolls, then thier death is thier fault.

That being the case, perhaps there's a certain responsibility to either advertise it, or offer the opportunity for escape. For example, if the troll den isn't mentioned by the locals, then there might be hints dropped at the lair itself (such as a sleeping troll in the first chamber). Or in the case of the griffons, they might be spotted by the party with time to scamper, as opposed to a surprise ambush which they might receive at higher level.

But both of these scenarios rely upon player metaknowledge in that for a 2nd level party, griffons and trolls are out of their league. This is why I think the game calls for a new Knowledge skill for this sort of purpose, Monsterology...there must be design reasons why it was excluded, though, because it seems to be an obvious candidate for a knowledge skill in a D&D world. To hold that the denizens of a fantasy world with trolls in it don't know that they regenerate and are harmed by fire and acid isn't very likely, to say the least...word about this sort of thing spreads quickly you'd think.

 

[Painfully]

I rarely map out more than I need to keep the players engaged. It's more fun for me as a DM to make the terrain as I go. The players will know in which direction certain famous landmarks exist, but little else. Keep it simple.

As the PCs gain levels, and access to traveling spells, I have no problems with using sections of maps from other campaigns to fit into my own campaign map.

 

[rounser]

I rarely map out more than I need to keep the players engaged. It's more fun for me as a DM to make the terrain as I go. The players will know in which direction certain famous landmarks exist, but little else. Keep it simple.

Fair enough, but do you improvise your dungeons as well? What I'm getting at is that there seems to be a consistent double standard whereby wilderness is deemed as not worthy of the same effort that might be put into other areas (and deemed in general unimportant to the campaign).

 

[AeroDm]

Fair enough, but do you improvise your dungeons as well? What I'm getting at is that there seems to be a consistent double standard whereby wilderness is deemed as not worthy of the same effort that might be put into other areas (and deemed in general unimportant to the campaign).

I disagree. I know that for me at least the elements required to create an interesting and dynamic wilderness encounter and continue that is very much different than the elements needed to create an interesting and dynamic dungeon. Dungeons are far more compact, and thus need more thought/logic to be believable than wilderness does.