Is mapping a lost art with adventurers?

[Old_Man_Fish]

When I am playing I will generally map, sometimes with great attention to room dimensions, and other times not. When I DM people generally do not map and I will usually hand them cleaned copies of the dungeon they are in (Often from Dungeon Magazine), or, if there are no clean copies of the map they will have to do it from memory or draw childlike maps (room represented with a box connected to another room by a line) to give a simple relationship map. (exact dimensions are VERY RARELY kept with this group of players)

 

[buzz]

Mapping is boring.

Amen. Didn't like doing it when I was 11, don't like doing it now. (And I'm a mini/mat lover.)

IMO, mapping is a holdover from old-school styles of play where it was simply one more way to hose the players. "You defeat the dargon... but you can't find your way out! Muhahaha!" Requiring the players to do it is like requiring the guy playing the wizard to memorize the spell descriptions from the PHB, or the fighter's player to join the SCA.

If it's honestly relevant to the adventure, just make the characters do it, and maybe ask for a Survivial check to determine if any errors crept in.

 

[lukelightning]

A bit more on my wierd mapping methods: I also doodle a lot all over the map and draw in dead bodies of the things we killed, funny roadsigns like "Druid's Fishin' Hole" (a deep pool where the party druid turned into a croc and got attacked by slime monsters), etc.

They're fun to look back on.

 

[jasper]

NO. I got tired of describing the same room a different way for each new person mapping.

 

[jasper]

IMO, mapping is a holdover from old-school styles of play where it was simply one more way to hose the players. "You defeat the dargon... but you can't find your way out! Muhahaha!" Requiring the players to do it is like requiring the guy playing the wizard to memorize the spell descriptions from the PHB, or the fighter's player to join the SCA.

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

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I haven't required my players to map anything aside from actual mazes (and even then I don't require them to..) since playing in a game in the early eighties where the DM (Wm. John Wheeler) had some very nice maps already drawn out to a scale that the figures would fit on.

Lost? Perhaps. Missed? No.

The Auld Grump

 

[Infiniti2000]

Mapping is boring.

And that's being politically correct about it. Good riddance to mapping, I say.

 

[Nebulous]

I only recall a player mapping out a dungeon once, and that's because i told them ahead of time it was rather large, and there would be a lot of backtracking and spending some considerable time here. I found it the other day, stuffed in the bottom of the closet. It was a mess of a map i don't think they utilized much, but she seemed to have enjoyed having the "job" at the time.

 

[grodog]

You remember incorrectly. I really hope the lost posts can be restored soon, so the full thread is available to refute these incorrect claims.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=160909&page=1&pp=40

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

Mapping-wise, I definitely map as a player, and as a DM if my players choose not to map, and they get lost, then they know why they got lost I certainly will sketch out an area on a battlemat for combat, but don't generally map out the adventuring environment for the players. It's entirely in their court.

 

[diaglo]

Mapping is boring.

diaglo "loves the shape of his maps -- in bed" Ooi