Is mapping a lost art with adventurers?

[buzz]

but if the fighter is a knight in the sca can I then make the guy playing the wizard memorize the spell descriptions?

Only if you arrange a subsequent cage match. Don't forget to post the video!

 

[Glyfair]

The number one reason, as many have pointed out, is that mapping isn't fun. It's incredibly boring and the only fun I've ever seen from mapping is from DMs who have tricked the players into having a wrong map.

My players expect me to make a map for them as we go along...and as of now I've decided that I'm not going to do that anymore. If they make a map and its wrong..well that is the nature of the beast. If they get lost that is part of the fun.

This brings up another reason mapping has disappeared. In the old days, you were your character. If you had poor mapping skills, you character did. If you had great mapping skills, your character did. In these days, if you give your character Craft (cartography), then you can make a roll and do the map. (Admittedly, most DMs don't penalize characters without mapping skills).

 

[Umbran]

A lost art? No. But I don't feel it was an art to begin with. I think it was a necessary evil, to give the players a sense of the space the characters were working in.

These days, most of the adventures I run don't call for it - the spaces just aren't that complicated - a quick DM sketch will do. And if I did use such a space, I'd use something better than handing the players graph paper and pencil.

 

[WayneLigon]

Very seldom, and in general it's not needed anyway. It was just another waste of time.

I did play in one totally-in-dungeon game. Myself and this other guy were the mappers. We mapped everything. And we were darn good at it. Then about, oh, nine or ten sessions in, we are about to link up to a portion we'd been to before... and the tunnels don't match up. We go back over everything and finally realize that what we thought was maybe two levels was, due to a teleporting/elevator room, probably four or five levels with countless passages we had not been down in our search for the Thing We Needed To Leave The Dungeon. All our hard work had been for nothing. We took the twenty or so sheets of graph paper and tossed them on the DM's living room fire, and never bothered with it again.

 

[Quasqueton]

Is there any realy hope for an old posts restoral at this point???

Well, there's mention it could happen in the Meta forum; it's just taking a long time. I have all the data I posted in that thread, but there's also a lot of explanation/discussion that was lost. And I'm hoping I don't have to retype all that data.

Quasqueton

 

[Mycanid]

Hmm ... I was not as opposed to mapping as many of the other posters in here seem to be. Yes - I found it boring at times, but that was only because there was rarely an "shorthand lingo" for mapping.

Kinda a hard balance. It sure helps to know where you're going and where you've been. (Especially if you have to get out quick!) I am not a fan of miniature based gaming myself, so for me this is not really an option, although I kow many really like this. I prefer the old school of leave it totally to the imagination....

I (whether as a DM or as a player) enjoyed the aspect of having the map be messed up or just wrong, b/c this seemed more "real life" to me. Practical wise it was helpful for the DM to draw the map for the characters as they went along - made things go along much faster and everyone was "on the same page" with things.

I don't know of it was ever really an "art" though....

 

[Dracorat]

My current game is being run using GameTable (its a program). My players have really appreciated the ability to not worry about maps, yet have them available at all times.

 

[mcrow]

I tried to get the players to map out as the go because that is how we did it on the "olden days".

I tried it when 3.0 came out. I was DMing for RPing total noobs and maping didn't work with them so I junked it. Haven't missed it since.

 

[Lanefan]

I have to admit to being very surprised here...I thought *everyone* made maps of the dungeons....that it was a mostly-integral part of the game and rather essential for finding one's way out.

The only time we don't bother with maps is if it's an outdoors setting; then the details just get drawn on the chalkboard if there's any reason to e.g. an encounter of some sort. Otherwise, I either describe the details or draw it on the chalkboard, and if the players don't map it before it gets erased to make room for the next area, too bad.

That said, I tend to run old-school 1st-Ed. type adventures where the map of one level can easily spill off both sides of a normal sheet of graph paper; the players need it to remind them what they've seen and in some cases what they've missed...

Lanefan

 

[Voadam]

In over 20 years of D&D I have never mapped as a PC. I have written up more than a few as a DM.

Map confusing dungeon issues are annoying, not fun IMO.