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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OneRedRook" data-source="post: 8657093" data-attributes="member: 35028">They're cool?On a more serious note, a lot of what a roleplaying game consists of is a way to answer the question "what happens next?"; and using map creation as a process to answer that question has some qualities that I suspect many people appreciate. Notably, it allows some of those answers to be prepared beforehand, perhaps making the process of running a game a bit easier on the GM during the actual game.Also, as a framework for managing content in a game, it scales (literally) quite well. A map of a dungeon or space station can address the question of "what happens next" when the play is focused on moment-by-moment action, whereas a map of the local duchy or asteroid belt might come in handy when play "zooms out" to a more abstract timescale.Maps can also potentially be used to highlight aspects of gameplay around puzzles and riddles and problem-solving in general. They also scale well here, from examples like "this room is too shallow", to "why did they flee east if their camp is to the west?", to "can we lead an army around the forest in time?".I don't want to suggest that maps are the only way to address points like the ones above - I think 50-odd years of game design have shown there's plenty of ways to handle these issues - but they are both easily understood and easily used tools for doing so.A somewhat cynical point is that it also allows the creation of pre-made content to be feasibly marketed, often in quite large and glossy products.One last thing that comes to mind is that they're a kind of obvious partner to the process of roleplaying. Roleplaying (I think at least as is understood for the purposes of this thread) involves people describing a shared fictional reality, and what happens to fictional people doing things in that reality. That process will naturally lead to the participants asking questions like "what does this (fictional) place look like? where is this (fictional) character? can they see this other (fictional) character?". Again, I don't want to suggest that they're necessary to roleplaying, but I feel it's hardly surprising that they have broad ongoing use.Finally, a small point but I feel this is particularly inapt:The whole of the LotR is an epic journey, and every edition of that series I've seen has included the maps of Middle-earth; indeed, it seems that the narrative and explanatory power of those maps has been such that other fantasy books have included their own maps for decades after the publication of The LotR, arguably to the point of over-use. Which goes back to my first point - maps are cool.[edit - small clarification in last point]</blockquote>

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