Using maps in my adventure

[Sotomonte]

Hello all. I've been lurking for a while and now I want to ask you something.

I ran my first D&D 3.5 adventure with 3 players recently. I used a map of a city, forest and stuff that I draw on a battlemat. Not very good drawing as I did it the same moment we were going to play. Previously, I have set up every location with NPCs and things, so my players just pointed in the map where they wanted to go and I told them what was there. Adventure and role playing parts were funny, although combats resulted to be boring for them.

Do you use the same when you GM, or you just narrate everything and let the players do whatever they want? I once tried to do like that, but it was like the player just didn't know where to go, and I need to start to make up things I didn't thought of previously... in the end I think it was pretty crappy.

Have you had any similar experience? I wish to know how some of you do narrate, and how much detail do you go in showing the world to your players.

 

[Dandu]

I use Excel to make a battlemap.

 

[Pergentile]

I use Excel to make a battlemap.

As do I. You can edit each dimension of the slots to make squares.

 

[Sotomonte]

But.. my question was not how do you make a battlemap.

 

[Pergentile]

"I wish to know... how much detail do you go in showing the world to your players."
Were the answers given not acceptable?

 

[Sotomonte]

Well,uh.. I was talking more about... if the players are in a town, do you need to show them every house, shop, alley, etc. in a map.. or you just tell them they are in a town ..?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Well,uh.. I was talking more about... if the players are in a town, do you need to show them every house, shop, alley, etc. in a map.. or you just tell them they are in a town ..?

I'll do both; sometimes, we actually lay out various buildings on the table we're playing on (we play at the house of a guy who has a lot of miniatures and wargaming stuff), and other times we'll just have a map of the town with key locations mentioned on it.

Still other times, I won't have the map at all, and I'll just describe things.

It all depends on what you're going to use it for.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Well,uh.. I was talking more about... if the players are in a town, do you need to show them every house, shop, alley, etc. in a map.. or you just tell them they are in a town ..?

It depends on your own style and what your group expects, really... and you only really learn that after playing with the group for a while. Imxp, it's a LOT of work to do a city in great detail, and much of that work is usually wasted. However, it's also overwhelming for many players if they're told they can do "anything they want" with no instructions or obvious hooks.

Personally, I take a middle road. I usually have a very general map of a town with most streets and districts marked. Important buildings, and ones the PCs are likely to go to are indicated, along with a few notes on each (basic descriptions, main NPC names, possible encounters, etc). The rest is just vague and unfinished. Think of a traveller's guidebook, with a simple map and a few X's marking interesting things, and a few sentences about each X on the map.

In addition to that, I have a few generic tac-maps and encounters on hand to refer to if the PCs do something unexpected: things like pubs, pier and docked ship, warehouse, office building, generic shop, guardhouse, graveyard, shrine, etc, plus a few generic NPCs to drop in them. And for everything else, I just improvise-- and keep notes!

In the end, the town sort of "builds itself" from what you create explicitly, plus what the PCs decide to do.

 

[Sotomonte]

Thank you for your answers, it helps to know how others are doing their GMing... for this group particularly... they know very little about D&D, so the map was very useful to put the game in a good direction.

 

[JohnRL]

If you have a particular adventure plot that you would like to take your players through then it is relatively simple to anticipate which areas you need tactical maps for - i.e. where you expect combat encounters to take place. If you are running a sandbox game (i.e. letting the PCs do their own thing and wander all over the place) then you're going to need to improvise a lot more. Having stock combat maps that you can simply pick up and use in an unexpected encounter sounds great - just as long as you don't keep using the same one over and over.
I don't normally do combat maps for within towns unless I am expecting a fight to break out there, but if the PCs are staying there rather than just passing through I will often do an overview map of the town (like a street map with notable places a tourist would appreciate).