Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Yeah, that's the hard way of doing it.During the last campaign I played (ToA) our GM expected us to map EVERYTHING. And it was awful. Just horrible. When 2-3 people just watch the DM for 10min as she tells one other player "left, right, 45 degree left, 10ft. further then a 90 degree angle to the right".... oh man.... it was awful.
Far simpler is to have a gridded board of some sort (I use a chalkboard) and for complex rooms like that just have the DM draw it on the board. Way faster than trying to describe it.
But it's trivially easy to say "the passage goes for 20' after which there's 10' openings to the left and right and the passage continues beyond that" and have someone map it either on the board or on paper or both.
Mazes are a headache, but in fairness that's kind of the point.Granted, ToA might take the cake for mapping, but after seeing my GM argue with the mapper if 45 degree angle to left meant "to her left or his left" for 2min straight just to start the mapping of the 20th maze from scratch...... I never want to play a single DnD session with player mapping again.
Sounds good in theory but in practice I've found published battlemaps always end up showing the PCs areas they can't yet see, while utterly defeating the point of secret or concealed features.I am quite new to the hobby, but my approach is that it is a fun and fast RP game where everybody gets a chance to "shine" and express themselves (doesn't mean to win, failing is fun too, sometimes it just means RP at the campfire). And mapping just doesn't fit with that. It keeps the table waiting for something that could have been printed out (or prepared on a battle map by the GM).
This lasts exactly as long as it takes for the first "My character's here" "No, you said it was there" argument to erupt.Also most dungeons can be easily resolved with theater of mind.... I guess....!? Even if the cobold lair has 12 different rooms - good communication by the GM can solve that (as mentioned before).
That's not really how the caller works.The caller would be weird in the games I play or master. Again: In my opinion everybody should have their special moment (winning or failing, doesn't matter). Just watching one player do all the social interactions would limit that way too much.
Social interactions proceed as normal - if you're the character talking to the guard then you speak as your character and the caller has nothing to do with it.
Where the caller comes in is when the whole party are discussing plans or marching order or watch sequence or whatever: once it's all figured out and decided the caller relays the results to the DM in a batch, rather than forcing the DM to try to listen to everyone at once. (this also means the DM can use this discussion time for other things if needed e.g. prep or note-taking, needing only to return attention to the table when the caller demands it)