D&D 5E Player roles that no longer exist, and why

[the Jester]

Mapper: Back in the day, you were lucky to have graph paper, let alone a gaming map with inch grids. Minis were few and far between, and easily accessible, and expensive. Most groups I played in back in the early 80s as kids, we did ToTM except for marching order or really complex battles, and then we used paper minis I drew myself, or dice, or some other toy. So there was a need to have a player keep track of the dungeon exploration on a piece of paper. Very similar to those old RPG video games of the 80s. However, now it's very common for someone to have a battlemap with erasable markers and minis are all over the place, and very cheap (with the move to plastic minis about 10 years ago or so). With the battlemap, the DM takes an extra role now in drawing out the area, and there is no need for a player to be a mapper any longer.

I'd say this still depends on the group. Even when I am using battlemaps, the pcs never see too much at once, and find it very useful to map. Groups that don't map risk getting lost and killed in a hostile environment. I'm quite unforgiving when it comes to describing directions with "right" and "left" instead of cardinal directions (unless you have Keen Mind!), and it often leaves a non-mapping group disoriented and turned around- as dungeon exploration should.