Mapping and Exploration

[Soraios]

Does anyone play in an exploration-based campaign featuring mapping of the wilderness and underground sites (either on hex/graph paper or freehand)? Or are you in a "let the battlemat handle the mapping" sort of game?

What would it take to get you interested in exploration and mapping? Can a sandbox style lure you from "adventure path" gaming?

 

[jedavis]

Well, the Traveller game I was playing in did strategic mapping on hexes, with small-scale mapping done freehand... While it was a sandbox, money was the primary objective, with exploration being fairly secondary (though there were a few 'into the unknown' scenarios where were quite nice.).

 

[MortalPlague]

I ran a leg of my campaign that saw the adventurers travel into the Underdark. I did up the Underdark as a hex map, with sites all marked in. To simulate the labyrinthine nature of the Underdark, I had the players roll dungeoneering checks to traverse from one hex to the next; if they failed, they wound up going in a random direction instead. It worked beautifully.

Aside from that, my campaigns aren't hex-map heavy. I love making maps, but my campaigns usually feature the battle map more prominently.

 

[Soraios]

My observation/epiphany is that, for me anyway, the battlemat becomes the center of attention. It becomes the "game board" and injects the "game" element into the proceedings, taking me away from the theater-of-the-mind aspect of gaming. I also find I pay attention better if I'm not looking at the battlemat counting squares for my next maneuver.

Plus, battlemats are generally large affairs ... so there's not a whole lot of room typically to have a large wilderness map out AND a battlemap AND have room for players to actually do their own old-school mapping.

I'm just wondering if this isn't a case of less-is-more ... maybe we'd have a different/more evocative/imaginative experience by going old-school and battlemat-less.

 

[kitsune9]

Probably the next campaign I run will be a sandbox based on exploration.

 

[Ramen]

I've played in games that have used mapping, it's an old school gaming convention so it's not a big deal for me. I've also played in games that used battle mats for exploration and combat. I actually don't mind mapping dungeons and environments but I dislike battle mats unless the combat has become complex. I l like to feel that I can trust my GM enough that the combat will be descriptive enough that everyone knows what's going on. Battle mats c can be y useful though, so I have one for when I GM myself. Just in case.

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[Daztur]

Personally I don't care for Adventure Path gaming at all (I originally abandoned it for more Forgey games, but found that when played properly Old School games avoid the things that I don't like about Adventure Path gaming just as well).

Some good advice on the subject of running a sandbox/hexcrawl game is to plot it just like you were running a fairly railroady bit of an Adventure Path but sprinkle bits and pieces of interesting things that the PCs come across to lead them off the path and then don't make any effort whatsoever to keep the players on the path that you've sketched out and smile a big grin when they go careening off in an unexpected direction.

The other thing that helps is to (at least initially) make it difficult for the players too far from the campaign starting point in one session so that it's harder for them to run into blank space.

What I'm thinking of doing next time I DM is:
-The players start as hirelings for the "real" adventurers and march through the wilderness with them (i.e. railroady as all hell).
-The "adventurers" leave the PCs at the entrance of the dungeon to guard their horses and set off, never to return (unless the PCs follow very close behind them).
-The PCs can now do whatever the hell they want, (probably steal the horses if I know my players) but if they wait too long they'll eventually get killed by random encounters.
-If they search the saddlebags of the horses they'll be a journal full of interesting stuff about the surrounding area.

 

[Quickleaf]

Does anyone play in an exploration-based campaign featuring mapping of the wilderness and underground sites (either on hex/graph paper or freehand)? Or are you in a "let the battlemat handle the mapping" sort of game?

What would it take to get you interested in exploration and mapping? Can a sandbox style lure you from "adventure path" gaming?

My current games lean toward sandbox but neither involve mapping.

I play in my buddy's Mystara game and all the world maps are already created. I think once I busted out my graph paper to map Nelwyn's Shrine but that's it. The game still feels sandboxy.

The Planescape game I run defies normal mapping by it's very nature. The PCs don't spend long at any particular planar site and often travel there is abstracted with skill checks and random encounters. Maybe later they'll start mapping portals but no one has shown any interest.

 

[amerigoV]

What would it take to get you interested in exploration and mapping? Can a sandbox style lure you from "adventure path" gaming?

In the video game world, I got worn out by Skyrim and had to switch to Modern Warfare 3 - those are the equivalent of switching from sandbox to AP. That sudden "jolt" show me that:

1. A pure sandbox is not my style. I do want some story focus. So I imagine hexcrawling would not fit my style.

2. The Modern Warfare (and other FPS) series are pure railroads. They are fun from an action and story perspective, but it certainly does not feel like its your character - you are a part in the play. So the pure railroad is fun for awhile, but that is about it.

A buddy of mine found something called 5x5 (I do not have a link). We played a typical campaign for a time and generated a few loose ends. Then as a group we decided the 5 goals we had. Then we/the GM mapped out the 5 things you needed to do complete those goals. The group decides what to pursue and the GM generates the material. For the GM, they can run a "sandbox" but really they only need to deal with 5 possible directions when something wraps up. It gives a nice cross-over between the two styles.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Did a underground river, players were trying to re-discover a dwarven trade route due to a coming "little big ice age" on the surface. Players had to find the old forts and the route to the south lands. I had an force following them by 20 to 30 days that would setup outpost that the players could treat as a home base.