Settings with no world map - anybody tried?

[ashockney]

In my next campaign, I'm thinking about trying NOT having a world map - just the local and regional maps with the occasional arrow "this way to Staunwark" but being fairly noncomittal on my geography. My games will start with the PCs already involved in things, so long-distance travel isn't a big issue.

Has anyone else tried this?

Great question rycanada, and a great idea. Yes, out of all the campaigns I've run, I've done this twice, and it worked very well both times. Most recently I built a map that was set in Cormyr, between Eveningstar, Arabel and the Stonelands. I pulled in all the stuff that was on the map (which wasn't much). Then I went back through the map and came up with a whole bunch of areas with cool mythical names ala World of Warcraft or EQ. I didn't tie down these areas to mean anything in particular, but we kind of filled them in as we went along. There was plenty of room, and plenty of things to do to keep them busy through the whole campaign. We went from 5th - 16th level, there. Adding things like teleport, flight, etc. opened up their ability to get around the map significantly, but there was no issue and no trips off the map. I found it worked really well, and we had fun in the campaign. However, when I ran the next campaign, and I asked what kind of game people wanted to play, they said they wanted to travel all over! So, it's not for every campaign.

 

[irdeggman]

I'm running Age of Worms using only a vague map.

Basically a sketch on a piece of paper to give rough directins and distances to the various areas and major terrains (since some are very specific to the adventure path itself).

But since I just started, I can't say how well it will hold up.

I haven't found any maps of the AoW generic version world to start with though.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Absolutely -- I never sketch out the entire world/continent. I have a general sense of how the major locations relate to each other geographically -- in this case, the four major cities on my continent -- but I never try to fill in everything.

If the PC's don't have access to a detailed geography of their world and the players themselves aren't likely to remember(or care!) about the tiny details of the world's geography, making detailed maps is just intellectual masturbation that interferes with creativity down the road.

Now, if one of the PCs was a cartographer-type, -then- I would help him sketch out a map of the party's travels, but I'm a firm believer in not trying to come up with anything. It's far more fun to say "Here There Be Dragons" then "Here, there's a dragon."

 

[I'm A Banana]

I haven't just removed the World Map.

I've also removed the Dungeon Map.

And I've added the Navigation skill. Trying to find your way to the next town, or the treasure room, roll me a Navigation check. A low roll means you've stumbled in the wrong direction, wasted some time, and met a monster (the lower the roll, the higher the CR). A roll that beats the DC for the maze or path means that you found the right way. Beating the DC by a wide margin can cause you to stumble across treasure, magic, helping NPC's, shortcuts, etc.

And I'll give you a vague count of time and a vague direction.

 

[Presto2112]

In my next campaign, I'm thinking about trying NOT having a world map - just the local and regional maps with the occasional arrow "this way to Staunwark" but being fairly noncomittal on my geography. My games will start with the PCs already involved in things, so long-distance travel isn't a big issue.

Has anyone else tried this?

I've got a general idea where the nations of my gameworld, and a fairly geographically detailed map of the nation my adventure group started in (three major cities, differentiated biomes, marger rivers, etc), but no map of the actual game world.

 

[Wombat]

I've done this several times. It really works well for exploration-based games, as well as for locales where people simply know little to nothing about the surrounding lands.

I think players in general expect there to be a lot more known about a given land than would necessarily be the case in a standard fantasy-medieval setting.

 

[Umbran]

I find thisto be a fairly useful campaign-starting trick. Unless you intend to start the game with the geography playing a major role in events, having a full map is frequently unecessary. At low levels, the characters are typically dealing with local events, on a local scale. If one keeps track of what one mentions as you go, the rest can be filled in later.

 

[Wolv0rine]

My campaign that began in 1982 and continues to this day has no world map. I didn't want this to be "my world" but instead "our world" for other DM's to use and also to be able to better adapt other published sources to so kept things open ended. We began with a small mapped continent (400 by 600 miles) divided into nine separate Lordholdings, of which I only developed one in detail. Things have added on since then but we're still not even close to mapping even half the world.

When you don't have a full map of the world... how in the heck do you know when you've mapped 'even half the world'?

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

When you don't have a full map of the world... how in the heck do you know when you've mapped 'even half the world'?

You don't need an actual well-drawn map. You can just use a rough outline with a note on dimensions of a continent then stick down circles for locations with a line to nearby cities and distance noted above the line. Terrain types noted in the blank areas in between.

 

[RFisher]

I've never seen much point in a world map. Or even one with a scope as big as the WoG map. Just the campaign region & perhaps its immediate neighbors. Only rumors of what's beyond.

I once tried to run a campaign without any maps. I figured (whether rightly or wrongly) that most people in the campaign world would have never seen an actual map. The players got really caught up on that, though. They expected me to show them a map & seemed to completely miss the point. Of course, that was high school...

Still, I tend to at least make a sketchy, low-detail map to quickly communicate what the PCs would know about local geography even if they'd never seen a map.