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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8371824" data-attributes="member: 42582">My response to your examples is a bit different from [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]'s.The BW advice quoted in the OP refers to "brush strokes and vague pronouncements, punctuated by a handful of details" and to "Sketch[ing] out the broad lines - some geographical, some political, some cultural" while "leav[ing] the precise details to be filled in later as needed." It says that "Population, geography and culture are all secondary." What counts as a precise detail is quite contingent, or rather is quite context-specific. The context, as the BW advice indicates, is provided by stuff the players bring to the game via their PC sheets:  traits, skills, gear, Beliefs, relationships and Circles.If the players have Beliefs about exploring the wilderness, or uncovering lost cities, or similar sorts of things than maybe your maps are too front-loaded with detail. But if the players have Beliefs about finding people or avenging people or becoming Grandmaster of Assassins, then your maps seem fine to me. They sketch out the broad lines, but don't seem like they would create any "impediment to thoroughly and accurately challenging Beliefs."In this respect, I think what is key is not imperfect information but incomplete information, so that actions can be declared and resolved without preconception that flows from outside the context that the player has brought to the game with his/her PC. An overly-detailed city map can do that, because if the player declares I look for any alley to hide in, so that the guards won't notice me, then we can find ourselves resolving that declaration not by drawing on what has been brought to the game by the player (eg Alley-wise or City-wise skills) but by looking to the pre-authored fiction of the map. Likewise, if the map is overly-detailed then the possibility and threat of guard patrols becomes determined by looking at the map, and the locations of guard-houses, and trying to estimate patrol times and cycles etc, rather than by looking to the context the player is brining (like eg a past failed Circles check that established an enmity with a city guard captain).This post also probably helps spell out a bit my post just upthread of it, about the difference I see between the DW and the BW advice.</blockquote>

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