Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 708344" data-attributes="member: 4937">I did not say it was necessary for an adventure to have a completely new twist.  I said ideally it has a completely new twist.  Simply a fresh approach to a well worn idea will work.   I think I saw a list somewhere with every possible type of module that could be written.   I dare say that we've covered the list.I don't think it is too much to ask that the person getting paid to do maps be professional.   He doesn't have to be an architect, but it wouldn't hurt if he thought like one.   He doesn't have to be an architect, but he should have more than a layman's familiarity with a palette of architechtural elements.  I've scarsely met the DM who hasn't read books on history and mythology and folk lore to flesh out his creations.  It isn't too much to ask a guy who is planning to get paid for making maps to do some research on architechtural technique.  Gygax's modules are typically short on story.  And a quick glance at his maps will show that they are no better drawn than the average DM with a sheet of graph paper and a pencil.  But in his really best work what isn't quite so obvious to casual observation is the depth of understanding he shows in making a dungeon environment.  In alot of ways GDQ are primitive modules which by the standard I laid out above are pretty pathetic.  Nostalgia aside, they continue to be remembered fondly in large part to the careful sculpting of the maps and other basic DMing.  Very few modules published since approach GG's simple but powerful use of the environment.  The map of S1 looks superficially like something I drew when I was in junior high, but it very much is not.  It is a map with the elegant simplicity of a choose-your-own adventure book.  It is a carefully crafted sequence of rooms with wonderfully descriptive touches that carry through into the illustrations.  I've walked down those halls.  I've felt the horror from inside them.  It takes more art to achieve that than is generally credited. I3, I4, I5, I6 and the DL modules have been unsurpassed in map quality since thier publication nearly 20 years ago.  Why is that?  Why do so many modern maps feel like well, maps on peices of paper, rather than an actual locations?  I can't help but feel that there is a failure in someone's imagination somewhere.Some critics have said of JRRT's work that he made his setting the most important character in the story.  Whether that is true or not, it can't be denied that he had a powerful visual understanding.  That visual texture is far more important for transporting someone in time and place than internal narrative or other aspects of story telling.  As a DM, I can't tell players what they feel.  I can't tell readers what my NPC's feel.  What I principally finding myself doing above all other things is telling my players what they see.  Humans are primarily visual creatures. What my players see is principally above all other things the result of the map principally, and how it is dressed secondarily.  It is not a trivial element of the story.  Given the limitations of space, a professional module author is better off selling a picture of his place than a thousand words about it.When I buy I module, I accept that I will have to do some work to bring the module up to close the standard that the writer would have played the module at, rather than the standard of what he could fit in 64 pages.  I will add and flesh out NPC's.  I will take away treasure that doesn't seem appropriate.  I will dress rooms that are otherwise barren, and add notes and details where it seems appropriate.   I will spend some time imagining myself in rooms and trying to get an idea for how it would feel to be there to ready myself for the description.   But I think I'm being asked to go just a little too far if I have to rework the maps of your dungeons.</blockquote>

Verification