Why the focus on *geography* in RPGing?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think @Manbearcat's post above covered most of what geography might add even if de-coupled from a specific map, but your question about the kind of adventure prompted some thoughts about what else geography might add. I think for many people, different kinds of "geography" (fictional spaces that we might include in RPGs) inherently carry with them different tropes and traditions of story elements that we expect to find in those places - probably most people expect to have different RPG experiences in an adventure set in the cryptic and menacing swamps of Dagobah as compared to a bustling market or onboard a ship. And I suspect it's a natural step for some GMs to start using these elements for foreshadowing, to set (and perhaps later subvert) expectations, and to start highlighting different themes. From there, it's not too far a jump to have different environments signal different stages in the game, and by this point, the geography has started to move beyond description and colour, and is starting to do actual work in the game.

Yeah, the very most classic example is in the D&D hexcrawl. The 1e version, if you follow the defaults, gives different sorts of terrain wildly varying encounter frequencies. For example marsh and forest get 6 checks per day, while mountains get 1. The encounter tables for these terrains are significantly different as well. If you stick to the plains, especially more inhabited ones (which is usually taken to be agricultural land) then you find that the encounters are mostly social in nature (at least potentially) and monsters tend to be of the less daunting types. OTOH if you go to the mountains, you won't find a lot, but what you do find will be extra nasty. Going into a marsh (swamp?) is strictly not a good idea if you aren't exceedingly well prepared! Most sandbox/hexcrawl setups thus put 'home base' in the plains, and then locate forests, hills, and finally mountains and swamps, at a discrete distance, leaving them for more high-level play...

 

[Committed Hero]

It's traditional: not only in the games themselves but also fantasy literature.

If exploration is a pillar of the game - which RAW and statistically speaking, refers to a large majority of all rpg play - you need some place to explore.

Geography can be used to emphasize different parts of the overall setting.

Making a map is usually fun.

 

[pemerton]

I've run a fair bit of Classic Traveller in the last few years.

In 20+ sessions I can think of six maps that were used:

* When the PCs assaulted a military installation I drew a map (building it out of the roll for encounter distance); on a second occasion, when some PCs were prisoners in an installation, I sketched a map (maybe using the same technique? I can't remember now);

* We've had two ship plans: the St Christopher (from an old White Dwarf) and the Annic Nova (from Double Adventure 1);

* The alien installation in the module Shadows;

* A gradually-expanding star map.​

Why did you have/make/use any of those maps?

In order:

* Because the encounter rules say to first roll for range of encounter. So I did. And then made up a description of the military installation that would make sense of the roll (from memory, it was a long-ish corridor). And then drew a picture of that with some doors that led to places that seemed to me to make sense in a military installation. I think at least one of the doors ending up mattering because NPCs holed up behind it. The map was drawn freehand on a bit of scrap paper, so was not particularly to scale but roughly represented the layout of the place.

* The PCs had been taken prisoner. Narration had established a compound with a yard where the prisoners had started, an interrogation room where they were interrogated, and a sick bay where they had been placed after being knocked unconscious during interrogation. When a PC in the yard escaped and entered the building, I drew a map (again, freehand on a bit of scrap paper) so that the player could see his options - eg he would have to walk past this doorway to get to the interrogation room (he knew it's location, having earlier been interrogated in it).

* I had a copy of the St Christopher map because nearly 40 years ago someone gave me a copy of Best of White Dwarf Adventure vol 2. When the PCs were taken prisoner in the St Christopher, using the map enabled me to show them where they were when they were taken into the vessel, and where they went when they were taken up to the bridge.

* I had a copy of the Annic Nova map because 20-odd years ago I bought a second-hand copy of Traveller Double Adventure no 1. When I decided to use the Annic Nova for my version of an Alien(s) scenario, I pulled out the map. Having it out on the table made it easy for me to tell the players where their PCs were in the vessel, and for them to say where they wanted their PCs to go.

* I had a copy of the alien installation map because Shadows is the other adventure in Double Adventure no 1. So when the PCs went to the ice world of Zinion to find a 2 billion year old alien installation, I decided to use the Shadows set up, suitably adapted. Using that map was the most exploration-heavy RPGing I've done for many years: the players declared actions for their PCs like going down a shaft or through a doorway, and I told them what their PCs saw. Having the map in the middle of the table also made it easy to point out to them where their PCs were in the facility.

* I am not using the standard Traveller technique for creating a star map (ie roll for each hex to see if it has a system). Rather, I have a table where I roll for the number of worlds within jump-1 of a given world. In the first session I established a series of worlds (that I had pre-rolled) at jump-1 distance because the PCs' ship was only jump-1 capable. Then I made a list of worlds and their jump distances from one another. Then when the list started getting a bit unwieldy I also converted it into a map which visually represents the jump distances. The action resolution rules for travelling from world to world are highly sensitive to the jump-distance between worlds, so a visual representation of that (together with my list that I still maintain) is helpful.

Why do you update the star map?

Because I make up new worlds. On the "edge" of the map are worlds with links to other worlds within jump-1 indicated (based on the roll I made on my table) but that I haven't rolled up yet because I haven't needed to.

 

[pemerton]

Why did you feel a map was useful?

Because the action resolution rules for travelling from world to world make jump distance matter.

 

[pemerton]

MUCH of Traveler's subsystems are built upon the supposition that you generate a star map according to the procedures provided in the game. There is an elaborate system which generates worlds and some other system details that are significant in play. When, for example, a character who owns a Free Trader needs to pay their mortgage, they would need to engage with the Trade subsystem, and that will inevitably require a determination of the sorts of cargoes and their destinations which are available to take on in order to make credits. While you could simply not use many of Traveler's mechanical subsystems it is a lot like AD&D in the sense that many exist, they do a variety of things that commonly come up in play, and replacing them all with some equivalent which didn't really depend on mapping would be inconvenient at best. Beyond that the starship navigation and interstellar travel rules are also built around a particular type of star map, so if you didn't have these detailed concrete maps you cannot adjudicate interstellar travel at all.

As I posted, I do depart from the published system in one respect: instead of rolling for a chance of a world in a hex, I roll for the number of "jump adjacent" worlds, and then put things together out of that.

Suppose that W has two adjacent worlds, and then I roll up one of them (X) and it has two adjacent worlds, and then I roll for one of those (Y), and it has two adjacent worlds, I have to decide whether W, X and Y make a triangle with no other worlds within jump-1, or whether they form a line ? - W - X - Y - ?

Sometimes prior determinations of adjacency will help influence that decision, but given that my ability to imagine distances in 3D space is not that good I'm mostly making somewhat arbitrary calls.

 

[pemerton]

* In B/X or RC Hexcrawls, it integrates with the exploration rules and the spatial values of the map to give players one of their primary inputs to the decision-space that they navigate.

Yep, I mentioned this in the OP.

In Stonetop and Dungeon World, the spatial relationships and geographic/topographic paramaters of the map informs (a) how many legs (procedural loops) and (b) what sort of situational framing and consequence-rendering will emerge for (c) any given course charted for a Perilous Journey.

<snip>

In Torchbearer and Mouse Guard, orthodox Journeys are handled much like Stonetop and Dungeon World with some nuances differences. But you can port much/most of that stuff directly above to here.

In Torchbearer, the key notion is "landmarks". The only Torchbearer journey I've adjudicated we used the GH map (the Bandit Kingdoms/Tenh/Pale area, which seemed suitably "northern" for TB purposes), which is relatively sparse on landmarks per distance travelled, which meant the PCs could travel quite a way!

In D&D 4e, Journeys are Skill Challenges and handled much the same as the above for ST/DW/TB/MG. Distance and relationships/danger level on a map = legs of journey which informs Complexity of Skill Challenge and Level > topography helps to inform GM situation framing + decision-space for players + consequences space for GMs.

I've resoled travel in 4e using skill challenges, but not in the way you describe here. I think I've always just used the PCs' level, and set the complexity based on what seems interesting.

I don't think I've ever used a map as an input into resolving these journeys. I remember one - an Underdark one - where I sketched a map to record the "output" of the resolution as a type of aide-memoire. But most of the Underdark action wasn't mapped. The PCs just travelled to where they wanted to go, or they failed an appropriate check and I narrated where they ended up.

 

[pemerton]

Setting is a key component to story, and whether you are playing to tell a story or watch one emerge from play, it still ends up being a story, so setting matters. It could be a dingy bar or a vast outer plane, but the action still happens somewhere, and that somewhere deeply impacts how the action plays out.

What would an adventure look like without geography as a consideration? Even if the PCs never went anywhere, the geography of where they were still matters.

Most of the time in my Prince Valiant play, geography isn't a big deal. The players are "in a castle" or "in a forest" but that's about it.

There are exceptions: a couple of time, when their warband has fought, we've established some topography (to borrow @Manbearcat's introduction of the term) because the players have wanted to establish tactics by reference to it. One time when they were travelling through a marsh, I called for Brawn checks to see if they got sick/tired. And I resolved their trek from the Dalmatian coast to the Black Sea by similarly calling for a Brawn check.

A couple of times the PCs have fought from the decks of ships or underwater. In the system, that generates modifiers, and affects consequences (eg there is the risk of getting knocked into the water).

 

[gamerprinter]

Short of purely exploration/hex crawl adventures, the value of the a map showing the geography is purely a part of setup, introducing the setting that adventures take place. Some GMs provide entire setting guides (most do not), but a map shows more than geography, distances show scale and time to cross, or what alternative means of travel will be required based on distances known. Political borders, neighboring sovereignties, known potential risk nations that could be problematic for the nation the party serves or is based within. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. Well I think a map shows a million, and provides deep knowledge of a given setting.

In the real world, we spend lifetimes acquiring the knowledge and the lay of the land that we inhabit. In a game, we invent it, but it fits within the context of the environment around us - many (I do) require some backstory to better understand a new setting I'll be playing in. I don't have a lifetime to learn it, so a map provides a good overview, and a direction to the world, my character is supposed to have spent a lifetime understanding the world around them. That is the value of a geographic map for a game - more than anything else, I believe.

 

[pemerton]

Short of purely exploration/hex crawl adventures, the value of the a map showing the geography is purely a part of setup, introducing the setting that adventures take place.

I don't think this is right. Just upthread I posted the value of a starmap in my Classic Traveller RPGing. That is not an exploration/hex crawl adventure, but the map's function is not as part of setup: it's mostly to adjudicate interstellar travel via providing an authoritative record of jump distances between worlds.

In the real world, we spend lifetimes acquiring the knowledge and the lay of the land that we inhabit. In a game, we invent it, but it fits within the context of the environment around us - many (I do) require some backstory to better understand a new setting I'll be playing in.

Would that suggest that if the players are establishing the setting, then a map is of less utility?

 

[Blue Orange]

Seriously: started with the Lord of the Rings (other original sources like Howard didn't bother with a map), and everyone went from there because it's fun to draw maps for a lot of people. The left-justified fantasy map trope starts because of the European origins, but people have pointed out Greyhawk looks kind of like the Upper Midwest.