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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8236664" data-attributes="member: 42582">To elaborate a bit on this (and I think also pick up on an earlier discussion in this thread), consider two ways a map can be used at a RPG table:(1) The map is secret to the GM and used to adjudicate action declarations made by the players for their PCs. The players don't have access to the geography and/or architecture as input into their action declarations until it has been told to them by the GM as the output of a prior action declaration (which might include things like "We go up to the corner and look around" as well as more elaborate things like "We lift the rug and search the floor for secret trapdoors"). (2) The map is public information at the table which the GM and players use together to frame checks, and to establish who is where and able to do what. When the checks are resolved, the constraints imposed by the imagined geography and architecture are already factored in by everyone at the table.I think that (2) is pretty different from (1) even if the GM is the one who provides the map.Recently I've used a couple of old Traveller scenarios in my Classic Traveller game: Annic Nova, and Shadows, both from Double Adventure 1. Both have maps. In both cases I've laid the map out, and pointed to it to tell the players where they (ie their PCs) are. In the case of Annic Nova, the interest was not in the map per se but the Aliens (capitalisation intended) on board: the players didn't know their disposition or precise number. Having the map to make it visually very clear how the PCs were separated from one another over the four decks of the starship they were exploring seemed to me to enhance play, and also make it easier to adjudicate in a fair and transparent way who could get where to help whom in time.In the case of Shadows, what was interesting was the contents of some of the rooms, and piecing together the puzzle they revealed about the fate of the alien civilisation that had built the complex 2 billion years earlier.In both cases, there were various moments at which the players had more information than their PCs did about the architecture of the places they were in. This didn't seem to have any significant consequences for play, because (as I've already said) the focus was on the content of the places and not the architecture per se.</blockquote>

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