Requiring Players To Draw The Dungeon Map!

[Treebore]

One of the huge advantages of playing in a Virtual Table Top is that your mapping is done automatically. Just remove fog and presto, instant map.

Unless your using the "free hand" mapping option like on maptools. Which is how I am going to have my 3 groups map for the Ravenloft (I6) game in October. Online.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

In my group, all serious indoor combats are done on laid-out tiles, which the DM made himself (corkboard painted to look like stone with a hard board backing).

I map the rooms, not really to have an accurate representation of "the dungeon" - it'll never really happen, so why bother trying? - but rather to have a place for my notes. "This is the room we fought the lizardmen in. Spiders lined the ceilings of this corridor. Here's the pit trap my wizard fell in ... again." Etc.

The maps serve as reminders to me and to my fellow players, but they are in no way necessary. We do not have an adversarial DM-player relationship in my group, so the DM would never pull something like, "Well, you didn't map this accurately [or at all], so you're lost now." Our characters are more competent at mapping than we are.

Gentlegamer's opinion is regrettable, but hardly surprising.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I don't see any posters here saying that they force players to do anything. How would you go about that, anyway?

What I see is "If they enter a complicated space, don't map, and don't pay attention to where they are going, the ensuing chaos is on them, not on the DM." This is a philosophy that I, for one, endorse. No matter what side of the table I am sitting on.

RC

Emphasis mine.

The players aren't entering that space; their characters are. Forcing players to literalize their characters' own conceptions of the space is an absurdity. True, if a player doesn't say to me "my character walks around the space and takes note of x, y, and z details," then yes, I won't go easy on them for failing to have their characters map the space out. Having the player do it creates a big translation gap (spatial-to-visual-to-verbal-to-aural-to-spatial) and wastes a lot of time, not to mention creating the cognitive disconnect involved in Bob the 4 Int half-orc being the best mapper because his player is an architect, or Zeb the 25 Int mage with Knowledge (dungeoneering) +28 being a terrible mapper because his player is.

I wasn't suggesting that supra-genius or genius Int really exists in this edition of the game; I will point out that 24 is beyond the normal human maximum these days (18 + 5 level bumps) and thus quite arguably equal to a 19 ("supra-genius") by 1e standards.

 

[T. Foster]

My philosophy is different, and terribly simple: The challenges in a D&D game have to be enjoyable to overcome in and of themselves. They shouldn't merely stand between the players and some reward. A rigorous challenge for the characters should equate to fun for the players. If they don't derive any pleasure from solving the puzzle (including an act like mapping), then it doesn't belong in that game.

That's a perfectly rational philosophy that I have no objection to whatsoever. However, as a player, I find the act of mapping to be enjoyable and pleasurable just like you describe -- I like, for instance, wandering through mazy areas with lots of turns and intersections, knowing that if I weren't mapping (or weren't mapping well) I'd get lost and probably have a hard time finding my way out (or, assuming I did manage to get out, finding my way back to the point where I left off my explorations on a later expedition) but that I'm able to at least partially overcome that challenge through careful (which is not the same as obsessively anal) mapping, or that by careful mapping I might be able to deduce the location of a secret area that otherwise would've gone overlooked. That kind of stuff is fun for me, and denying me this activity (either by making dungeons so simple that there's no challenge-element in mapping them, or drawing the map for me, or worst of all telling me I can't map because my character didn't take enough ranks in Cartography skill) is decreasing the fun of the game for me.

And, as a DM, I tend to both design and administer games in a manner that I would find to be fun were I a player in that game, which means that I tend to favor complex maps that would be a challenge to map, but if the players don't map they're likely to get lost in. I realize that not every player shares my same criteria of what's fun, and that some players may find things fun that I don't and vice versa, and to an extent I'm willing to adjust my DMing style to accomodate the preferences of the players (if they happen to prefer more or fewer puzzles, more or less combat, more or less roleplaying, more or less plot than I would) but, honestly, if I find that a player's fun-sense is too far afield of mine, if the game the player wants to play in is totally different from the game I want to run, then I'd just as soon not DM for that player.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I don't require them to map, but they have to deal with the consequences if they don't.

Bingo. Its more of a challenge to the players of course, but I prefer that to challenging numbers on characters sheets all the time.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Bingo. Its more of a challenge to the players of course, but I prefer that to challenging numbers on characters sheets all the time.

Exactly.

Of course, the argument against also produces ideas such as

The players aren't entering combat; their characters are. Forcing players to literalize their characters' own tactics is an absurdity and wastes a lot of time, not to mention creating the cognitive disconnect involved in Bob the low-level Wizard being the best tactitian because his player is a wargamer, or Zeb the higher level fighter being a terrible tactitian because his player is.​

RC

 

[Raven Crowking]

Remember that the ultimate function of that 'complicated space' is to entertain a group of people playing a game. It doesn't (well, shouldn't) exist for it's own sake.

Yes, and the idea of that complicated space being complicated is, IMHO, part of playing that game.

Why should a game include not-fun parts? It's a curious design philosophy.

Because what appear to be "not-fun parts" on the surface can be surprisingly necessary for particular types of fun. Getting sent back to "Home" in Sorry isn't fun; sending others back to "Hoime" in Sorry is fun. The "not-fun" part of the game is a necessary part of the "fun" part....indeed, it enhances the fun part quite a bit.

RC

 

[The Shaman]

I like mapping, both as a player and as a referee. Then again, I have a degree in geography and worked as a surveyor and cartographer, so that sorta follows, I imagine.

I have relied on verbal descriptions and turned those into maps, and I have played with referees who mapped for our characters, but my favored approach is to use either a battle mat or some sort of tabletop representation of what the characters see and leave it up to the players to map or not as they like. For many years I used Legos as walls and passages, and would build out as much of a dungeon or other space as the players and their characters could reasonably see. I've recently gotten excited by Dwarven Forge products, and again I use them to build out what the characters see and leave it to them if they choose to map or not.

For me it's always been a part of the game, and I enjoy it very much.