D&D General Mapping: How Do You Do It?

[Charlaquin]

My point is the characters may well be much better at mapping then the GM-Player combo. A character might have a very high map drawing ability.

The character can’t draw a map, because the character is imaginary.

The same character might be played by a player with drawing challenges or that has trouble understanding what the GM is saying. Die rolls are the player's way to determine how well a character does.

Die rolls are the DM’s way of resolving uncertainty in the outcome of an action the player declares their character is doing. In the case of drawing a map, there’s no uncertainty in the outcome, because the player(s)can actually draw one, and the character(s) can’t.

Player mapping turns this around and the character is relying on how well the player handles the map drawing and later tries to interpret the scribbles.

Yes, that’s the challenge.

Part of the time sink of mapping is making sure the players are correctly drawing out what the GM is saying the characters see.

Nah. If you’re making drawing a map part of the gameplay challenge, that includes the player(s) ability to interpret the DM’s description and translate that to a visible format. If you don’t want that to be part of the gameplay challenge, the DM can simply draw the maps ahead of time and give them to the players if the succeed on a roll or whatever. That’s a legitimate, but very different, approach to dungeon adventures.

As you mention, very possible that what the characters see is misleading. Now the issue for the GM is making sure the players are correctly drawing out the 'improper' map that accurately reflects what the characters think they see.

Now that’s just nonsense.

 

[Charlaquin]

This. My group maps. I as a player do that and as a DM I encourage it.
But the "dungeon" needs to be mappable.
Like, I started playing with Lost mines of Phandelvar, newbie players and newbie DM - and when we got to the lost mines, damn did my DM struggle to explain it properly and it was a pain to map.

In order for a dungeon to be capable by players ...

I actually made a whole blog post about that topic over 2 years ago:

Creating a Structurally Playable Dungeon – Dungeon Design Part 1 – A.B. Funings Blog

Fantastic blog post! I wholeheartedly agree with the dungeon design principles you laid out there. The choice to use Wave Echo cave as an example is also a great one. Did you go on to flesh out the 10 unkeyed rooms in later posts?

 

[M_Natas]

This feels like easy/casual mode for the players' benefit.

It is more acknowledging that we are people playing pretend elf sitting at a table in someone's kitchen or dinning room.
It needs to be simpler or it becomes unplayable at an Inperson-Game (VTTs are a different thing, but quickly that can turn into a bad video game).

And you and your players need to speak the same language of describing the dungeon.
Session 0 - "Guys, when I describe bigger locations you want to explore, like the underdark , bigger dungeons, caves ect.pp. in order for it to be manageable at the table, we use the following rules:

• For directions I use cardinal directions - North, South, East, West, Upkeep and down. In general those are also the possible exits and entrances to a room.
• Sizes for rooms are small, medium, big and gigantic.
• when ever a tunnel makes a (noticeable) turn, I will treat that as another room, to make navigation in the dungeon formplayers more accessible.

Here is a small handout for the way I describe things, so we are on the same page. If I will deviate from the formula, I will notify you of the exception.

That's fine, but it shouldn't be considered "required."

No it is not required, but I find it helps with immersion.

Sometimes the game IS the map.

I don't know what you mean with that.

 

[M_Natas]

Fantastic blog post! I wholeheartedly agree with the dungeon design principles you laid out there. The choice to use Wave Echo cave as an example is also a great one. Did you go on to flesh out the 10 unkeyed rooms in later posts?

Sadly not - Life happens and two kids later I struggle to post anything at all on my blog ^^.

 

[Charlaquin]

Sadly not - Life happens and two kids later I struggle to post anything at all on my blog ^^.

No worries! Just curious. Regardless, I think you have some compelling thoughts about dungeon design!

 

[Charlaquin]

This feels like easy/casual mode for the players' benefit. That's fine, but it shouldn't be considered "required." Sometimes the game IS the map.

It definitely is a set of principles that specifically aims to make a dungeon easier to map for the players’ benefit. While it doesn’t sound like what you need, I think it’s a great way to introduce players to this “mapping as part of the challenge of a dungeon” type of gameplay who haven’t experienced it yet. Giving them a space that is extremely approachable for mapping purposes could help them cut their teeth on the practice. After doing a few early dungeons this way, you can slowly start to introduce more complex elements that throw a wrench in the works and forces them to further refine their practices. Eventually they can work their way up to dungeons that deliberately resist being mapped, but most groups who aren’t used to this kind of gameplay aren’t going to respond well to being thrown straight into the deep end. But they might find they enjoy it if taught more gradually.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

The character can’t draw a map, because the character is imaginary.

Die rolls are the DM’s way of resolving uncertainty in the outcome of an action the player declares their character is doing. In the case of drawing a map, there’s no uncertainty in the outcome, because the player(s)can actually draw one, and the character(s) can’t.

Yes, that’s the challenge.

Nah. If you’re making drawing a map part of the gameplay challenge, that includes the player(s) ability to interpret the DM’s description and translate that to a visible format. If you don’t want that to be part of the gameplay challenge, the DM can simply draw the maps ahead of time and give them to the players if the succeed on a roll or whatever. That’s a legitimate, but very different, approach to dungeon adventures.

Now that’s just nonsense.

What is the purpose of the player drawing map if it does not correspond to any character activity? I really do not see what is gained by the player attempting to draw a map from the DM's description.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What is the purpose of the player drawing map if it does not correspond to any character activity? I really do not see what is gained by the player attempting to draw a map from the DM's description.

It can properly emulate the potential confusion and mistakes in position that can happen in-game, but I'm not sure that's such a universal benefit to justify it.

 

[delericho]

I've done both theatre of the mind and carefully drawn grids. On balance, I vastly prefer TotM except where the system strongly rewards tactical grid-based combat (as in later 3e and, especially 4e).

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

My preference is to show the on-graph-paper maps to the players, but if they want to draw their own, they have to use plain paper. I have an old essay cum rant that touches on this:

Why Game Masters Should Give Players Exact Distances
The usual argument, in a rpg, against giving players exact distances is that one cannot simply tell, without some sort of tape-measure, that a pillar is 5'3" high, or that the distance between two walls is 21' While this is true, it is also largely irrelevant.

First, people can judge distances pretty well by eye. What they can't do well is put these distance judgements into feet and inches, or into other easily-communicable forms. I couldn't tell you, without measuring, how many inches it is to my computer monitor - but I know the distance well enough to reach out and touch the screen, without either falling short or attempting to put my hand through the screen. Likewise, I can toss a wad of paper into a wastebasket across the room: I know, intuitively, the horizontal distance, vertical distance, weight of the paperwad, and expected air-resistance, even if I can't put accurate numbers to any of these things.

Second, the difficulty of "translating" between intuitive distances and measured-number distances cuts both ways. When the intuitive side of the brain looks and says "yaa far", the numerical side is confused: "five feet? four? six? more? less?" But by the same token, when the numerical side of the brain is told "five feet", the intuitive side becomes confused: "huh? What does 'five' mean?" So being told "five feet" is not more precise or detailed than seeing a five-foot distance - it's fuzzy and vague in a different way, but it's just as fuzzy and vague.

Third, non-numeric descriptions of distances and sizes are often far more fuzzy than is commonly appreciated. For example, if a player asks "how far is the bridge above the surface of the water?" and the GM answers "pretty high", then the player might imagine an arch rising 25 feet above the water while the GM is thinking tall pilings rising seven feet above the water. Or vice versa. Or the player and GM might both think "tall pilings", while a second player thinks "high arch". The confusing and argument that can result from this sort of misunderstanding is not amusing, at least not to me.

Fourth, role-playing games suffer chronically from problems of information starvation and low bandwidth. The player's characters can constantly see and hear and smell and feel what the game-world is like, often with keen or even super-human senses, while the players are themselves limited to what the GM tells them. This tends to put the players in the position of the blind men and the elephant. To compensate, the GM needs to communicate well, even if this means giving information in a compressed, or stylized, or "too accurate" form. Even if the GM cleverly gets around the number-translation problem by saying that a railing is "this high" (holds hand above ground) the players only see the indicated distance for a few seconds, while the characters see the railing's height for many seconds or minutes - a difference of a hundred-fold or a thousand-fold.

Fifth, GMs are as vulnerable to fuzziness and distortion as players. When a GM gives an "impression" (or a white-board sketch) from his notes or a module, the result goes into the players' heads through two sets of perceptual distortions: The GMs and then the players. (The players' characters on the other hand, should have only one perceptual distortion to deal with - their own.) To misuse legal terminology, where the PCs should be witnesses to (e.g.) the Great Cavern of Ogg, they often up having only hearsay knowledge of it, in spite of being "there".

Sixth, accuracy is not precision. I'm not calling for GMs to give distances precise to the inch (unless the distance is only a handful of inches total) but for GMs to give accurate distances with a precision within 10%. This means that distances of over 5 feet be given to the nearest foot, distances of 25+ feet be given to the nearest 5-foot increment, distances of 250+ feet be given to the nearest 25 feet, and so on. "About [number] feet" is short and sweet.

Finally, I do realize that players can abuse exact distances given by the GM. However, I think it better to deal with or live with these abuses rather than to suffer the problems of the GM not giving exact distances in the first place. And these problems can be dealt with. For example, I suggested in a long-ago /Dragon/ article that players be given exact distances in dungeons, and allowed to draw maps even if their characters weren't mapping - but that the players be required to draw the maps freehand on plain paper (i.e. no graph paper and no rulers). Not only would this give about the right degree of "fuzziness", it would also produce maps resembling those that the characters would have "really" produced, either then or later. After all, who ever heard of an antique treasure map drawn on graph paper?