Using maps in my adventure

[Gilladian]

I tend to LIKE drawing maps. I use pencil and paper to prepare them ahead of time. I draw many towns out in fair detail, but not exact. You can see one large town map here: Vishteer Campaign / Marig

But this is a large posterboard laminated (and photographed to put online). I use it over and over in many campaigns. For quick towns, I use graph paper and colored pencils and just tend to rough out the most important locations and streets.

For big area maps, I download online real-world maps and edit them. Maps of state parks can be very useful and interesting!

For combat maps, I use a battle-mat and wet-erase markers, drawn by me as the PCs explore. They're quick, ugly and efficient. Sometimes for locales where they'll come back again and again (the Inn in town, or the dungeon entrance) I'll draw it on oversized grid paper (you can buy gridded pads for presentations) and save it for future sessions.

My players like to doodle on these maps, and they're often fun to look at again months or years later, as a record of what went on and when...

 

[steenan]

I rarely use maps. I also don't spend much time detailing a lot of places and NPCs - I have a few bullet points with what is important, and improvise the rest.

It's quite easy to imagine what should be in a town, for example. So, if players ask about something I feel that should be there, they will find it. If they don't ask, I have my bullet points with things I'd like them to notice, so that is what I'll describe. And the rest is filled with color: there's a lot of difference in how a town looks and feels during a festival and during a siege, obviously.

There is also a matter of how familiar are the characters with given location. If a PC spent all his life in given neighborhood, he'll know it inside out - and I'll let the player tell me what's there on the fly. If the party just came to a new place, they'll need time or help of locals to find anything that's not obvious (and in game, it probably requires some rolls). In the first case, using a map would restrict player's creativity; in the second, it would give much more information than the PCs have.