Requiring Players To Draw The Dungeon Map!

[tzor]

I'd like to start off my remarks with the notion that what I experienced in the early 80's may not have been what you experienced in the early 80's and your mileage may vary and all other sorts of legal disclaimers.

Having written all that, why did we draw maps? Remember this was AD&D, before the invention of the fancy video game (trust me we never based our game play on anything on the Atari) or massively multi-player dungeons (it would be years before the ASCII Island of Kesmai on Compuserve would be available on their dial up serivce) so why oh why did we map?

Paper thin walls. Hey I kid you not. Look at all the drawings of dungeons in the early 80's. The averge dungeon wall was a thick line of pencil. God knew how those dungeons didn't collapse from the lack of any structural support but that's how we all drew them. Given the lack of any real solid areas of black on the map, the significant portion of void space in the player's map indicated one thing. A SECRET SPACE WHERE THE TREASURE LIES!

Secret doors were a staple of dungeons, after all what else was the elf for if not for the "hey guys I found a SECRET DOOR." Aside from an elf the only other way to find a secret door was to map like hell and search the perimiter of the void again and again.

Then again I started gaming when in an engineeting college, where map paper flowed like water among the students. Crib sheets were a high art form. A good Dm map required colored pencils. Life was graphical.

 

[Virel]

It helps and is ideal to be able to have the players draw it out. It adds imersion as mentioned above.

I started back in 1981 and we tried to draw stuff. It tended to work best with our simple layout home brew dungons, than with the printed maps for the reasons mentioned above. To save time, I tended to draw it out. If it's a prepared module, I'll trace over it and give to the players as DM. Othertimes, I'll put post it notes on the map and pull them away as the party advances to reveal the areas.

Sometimes for customer stuff, I'll draw all the stuff out as a DM map, then trace the base outlines for the players on another sheet before the game. I know with tech, it's easier to scan and copy but that takes away the old school feel.

Sometimes, we still map stuff out if the layout is simple enough and it won't kill the pace of the game.

As a player, I don't like for the time spent mapping to go over board.

Oh, and we still play 1st ed AD&D.

 

[Bloosquig]

I prefer to have an accurate (more or less) drawing of what I can "see" if you expect me to draw an accurate map or get my party lost.

And just a description will not cut it usually. I've painstakingly tried to describe rooms before for players but the map was still way off. I ended up having to correct "their" map just so we could get with the gaming. Having to draw up maps for my adventures is timesink enough without having to overlook their maps as well.

My irritation at descriptive mapping may be because I had a DM who would describe a room once and never again saying, "You should have paid more attention / wrote notes etc." There is nothing more aggravating then trying to map a complex room with a 5 second description.

 

[Raven Crowking]

My irritation at descriptive mapping may be because I had a DM who would describe a room once and never again saying, "You should have paid more attention / wrote notes etc." There is nothing more aggravating then trying to map a complex room with a 5 second description.

Player: Wait a minute. How big is this room again?

DM: You should have paid more attention or taken notes. I refuse to describe the room again.

Player: What? My character's eyes stopped working or something?

 

[Janx]

In my group, here's how we tend to handle it:

If the DM can rationalize a reason for it, he gives the players a map of the dungeon. The map is usually hastily hand drawn on line-less paper (to reflect it's probable source, a non-mapper made it). It will tend to leave off secrets, and may have deliberate inacuracies. Usually the PCs find the map early on, or get a chance to buy it.

During the game, if there is party map, the DM draws a "mini-map" that is just lines and boxes for halls and rooms. This helps the Players retain a sense of location. It is not to scale, and sometimes has mistakes, as things don't fit.

During an encounter, the DM will draw the party's current location on the battlemat. This will be too scale on the grid, so the party knows where they are, and where every other "relevant and visible" thing is. This map will likely be erased and redrawn for the next encounter.


We found that the old way of party mapping slowed play down, and did not generally add value.
Janx

 

[Oryan77]

I don't require mapping but I will allow players to do it if they want. I've seen some DMs not allow players to map unless one of them has ranks in cartography or something.

Plus, I like to look at their version of the map to see how accurate it is to the real deal

 

[Superj3nius]

well i begin to draw maps cuz we once got lost and it took us an hour to draw a quazi acurate map and it was hard so now i dram maps from the begining, though no one else cares until its too late then its
PC-"well why didnt i draw a map earlier? DM as a character i draw a mpa what do i know?
dm- " i dont know what do you remeber, should have drawn a map earlier"
PC- "well lets see here........"

 

[ruleslawyer]

To all the "I require mapping" DMs:

What's your take on a PC with a supra-genius Intelligence and/or a Survival skill modifier (which incidentally includes Intuit Direction, in 3.5) of +20 or so? Could not such a character figure out where he's going, how many turns the party took down x or y corridor, the rough dimensions of a room, and so on?

I've always hated mapping as a DM; I've had many players who insist upon it, and it's driven me crazy having to sit around correcting their drawing and helping them sort out matters based on my dictation. If a PC has the time, light, and ability to draw a full-on map, I'll just give them a copy of my map. OTOH, if the player just wants a map to figure out where the characters are in the dungeon, what side corridors they passed up, or whether they need to go back and search a somewhat casually looked-over section of passageway, they can make a Survival check to gain such information.

For those DMs who do use mapping: I highly recommend using a line map instead of a full-on 2D drawing. It's nice and fast, players can simply notate the corridor's dimensions next to the line they draw, and the same "challenge" of exploring is there.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I'll disagree with you here. In my opinion, the purpose of the game is to have fun. I may also be challenged by any number of activities, from advanced physics to abstruse mathematics, but I don't want to do them while I'm playing D&D. Likewise, if it's faster and easier for the DM to draw them, that means we get to the fun part of fighting monsters and taking their stuff that much faster. I'm totally okay with that.

My comment was response to the players vs. characters dichotomy.

If your referee wants to draw maps for you, that's fine; however, you are missing out on part of the challenge of dungeon exploration which is part of the fun of the whole game-play experience.

I don't require maps, nor do I require the players to take notes, but they are certainly tools a skilled player will make use of as situations require.

As referee, I will not draw maps for the players unless some sort of divination is used or the characters have access to a pre-drawn map (with no guarantee of accuracy).

 

[Mallus]

If your referee wants to draw maps for you, that's fine; however, you are missing out on part of the challenge of dungeon exploration which is part of the fun of the whole game-play experience.

Challenges still have to be fun. If the players don't find pleasure in the act of overcoming a specific kind of challenge, then it's got no place in that game.