Is mapping a lost art with adventurers?

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Voted yes, but I will also reiterate the same points made by others. Mapping as a player in an RPG is boring, especially if you're mapping solely by verbal description. As a player, keeping a map of the dungeon is something of a necessary evil and thus its tedium should be minimized. DRAWING UP the map as the DM is often quite different. In meta-game terms mapping the dungeon as a player means all you're doing is making a copy of what the DM already has. If the DM is actively trying to confuse you in doing so with meandering natural caverns and mazes for that specific purpose of causing mapping errors that's not fun - that's frustration. Mapping the dungeon from the perspective of the character is something else again. The larger and more complex the dungeon, the more any SANE adventurer is going to want a map to refer to just to GET OUT again with a minimum of bother.

Use of battlemats facilitates the whole process immeasurably as the DM can rapidly draw and erase areas to give players immediate and graphic display of a dungeon and save his breath for describing mood and detail rather than tedious, technical dimensions and orientations. A map of anything is a tool for navigation and for helping those who are not AT a physical location (re: the players) gain an understanding of the physical space. I dislike deliberate attempts to use the map and the copying thereof BY the players to cause difficulties for the players.

Characters obviously don't know everything their players know; that's what we call meta-game or OOC knowledge. But the reverse applies as well - just because the PLAYER has been inattentive and doesn't know how many left-hand turns have been taken in the dungeon doesn't mean the same MUST be true for his meticulous-behavior, super-genius 18 INT character. Isn't it enough then that if the player declares that his CHARACTER is keeping a map of their progress through the dungeon that the DM can assume that IS what is happening whether the PLAYER draws his own copy of it or not? If the PLAYER makes a mistake in the accuracy of his map isn't it perfectly feasible that the CHARACTER has made no such error? Isn't it possible that even if the player has a carefully drawn and exactly accurate map of the dungeon that the CHARACTER can either have a crude but functional charcoal diagram or be hopelessly lost because he's made an error in his attempts at a detailed map?

The game is roleplaying, not "copy-the-map".

 

[Jaguar]

The only way for us to map the dungeon is if some character has a feat/skill that allows the group to do it.

If not the characters has to rely on memory alone.

 

[reanjr]

I voted yes, but I'm the only one I know. I think most of my major players gave up on mapping after playing Dragon Mountain and Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga back to back.

I think the problem is that most people seem to think that mapping means getting the exact dimensions of a room and putting it to a grid.

I just draw generally sized circles, squares and, and rectangles with lines connecting rooms.

This is also a hassle when someone wants to map something and I'm DMing. I have very good spatial relations and good math skills, but it still breaks down to coming up with a language to communicate these ideas without slowing things down and without sounding like a drone.

This is very important to effective mapping if someone wants to do grid based mapping. For example, when coming to a T-junction, I describe it in one of three ways depending on which direction the players are coming from.

A----------B
     |
     |
     |
     C

A: a hallway splits off the to the right.
B: a hallway splits off the to the left.
C: the hallway comes to an end and splits off in both directions.

But if you vary from these descriptions, people start getting confused. And if you always use these descriptions it sounds like formulae instead of description.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Mapping was one thing I absolutely detested in early D&D. I still hate it as both a player and DM and generally just map for my players to give them an idea what the dungeon/town etc layout looks like.

I think I would actually quit a game that required me to make detailed maps of encounter areas.

 

[Starglim]

Our DM draws a map as we progress, but a player often has the responsibility to draw up the battle map for an encounter, based on the small-scale exploratory map.

 

[grodog]

The consenus seems to be that it's lost, and that it was definitely an unappreciated art

Some of that lostness may be more pronounced in 3.x, for a variety of reasons: dungeons are definitely smaller, and PCs also have skill options that can---in game---manage mapping for you as a player (navigation, dungeoneering, etc.). Therefore, you can finesse mapping via skill checks, just like with you can avoid roleplaying a meeting with a king via a Diplomacy check if that's easier/more the style of play you want. 3.x builds that flexibility in, which didn't exist in previous editions, and that's consistent with 3.x's challenge paradigm---challenge the PCs moreso than the players.

I like to get PCs lost when I DM and to avoid getting lost when playing, so mapping is something I value (and most of the groups I've played in value as well). When DMing, if PCs don't map and/or are terrible at it, then they're more likely to get lost which heightens the game's tension, which is a good thing. As a player, I simply can't imagine not mapping: the map becomes the session log, the notes about traps/treasures/hazards/what to do next/etc., etc. For larger dungeons, I even take the session maps and then do a 2nd pass on them so that we have a more clean, master map (I generally only do this for larger dungeons: stuff that I map on 11x17 graph paper with 10 squares to the inch).

 

[Mouseferatu]

Don't care for mapping, and never have.

But then, I also don't often tend to care for running or playing through sprawling dungeon crawls.

 

[Hussar]

Some of that lostness may be more pronounced in 3.x, for a variety of reasons: dungeons are definitely smaller,

Dude, I'm on my fourth poster sized map of sixteen in the World's Largest Dungeon. Smaller dungeons? Speak for yourself. Heck, Rappan Athuk, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, Dungeoncrawl Classics. There's some honking big dungeons out there.

 

[Digital M@]

Mapping a dungeon? Who the hell wants to do that? The DM would have to spend lots of time describing exact door locations etc so the the player even had a chance in mapping it correctly and it really has no bearing on the game. So many adventures take place in large dungeons that the tedium would kill the game for me.

Heck, as a DM, I don't even draw my own maps, I use others I dig up

 

[grodog]

Dude, I'm on my fourth poster sized map of sixteen in the World's Largest Dungeon. Smaller dungeons? Speak for yourself. Heck, Rappan Athuk, Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, Dungeoncrawl Classics. There's some honking big dungeons out there.

Obviously WLD, RA, and RttToEE are the exceptions that prove this rule How many other "mega-dungeons" are being published these days---very very few, given 3.x's 13.3 encounters per level rate of PC advancement.

FWIW, I'm not aware of any DCC large dungeons out there: don't they basically follow the 1-3 levels per module model from the heyday of TSR?