Maps and gaming.

[gridlore]

pauldrye makes an excellent post about his upcoming D&D world based off this quote from the new Dungeon Master's Guide

"The World" in which the D&D game takes place doesn't have a map -- not until you create one. And you shouldn't feel in any great hurry to create one. A map is important only when the characters seek out the places shown on it.

I love maps. Reading them, creating them, using them in my job, just admiring them for their artistic value. I've read magazines about maps, spent hours in the San Francisco Library's map room, and have tortured Kirsten by spending far too long at the USGS Map Store. For me, a good map is as engaging as a good book.

But... I can see the point. Take the Thomas Guide I use daily. It gives detailed street maps for dozens of towns and cities, has odd little back roads, and all the loving detail you can ever ask for. But I use it when I need to find where a specific place is, and how to get there from where I am right now. All the intervening detail becomes scenery at best, ignored at worst.

Every GM has had this moment. You've labored over a setting.. a town, a solar system, a bar. you know every detail down to the genealogy of the bartender, the average daytime temperatures of the gas giant's moons, etc. And what do the players do? Either ignore it all or assume that because there is detail, it has to be a vital plot point. Everyone remember the infamous "lone cow" story?

One of the greatest settings ever written for gaming has to be Hârn. The sheer volume of material for Hârn is staggering. I stopped actively collecting Hârnworld stuff 15 years ago and I have two thick binders crammed with material. Yet that volume of detail means that most of it will never be used. Hârn has become more an exercise in cooperative world building. Hârnies have more fun "filling in the grout" and never get around to throwing a party in the mansion they've built.

Another good example is Traveller's Third Imperium. Over the last thirty years fans and pros have heaped detail onto the setting. What was once a "distant government" became this all-powerful state. Again, the level of detail begins to choke off creativity, and most of it never gets used. Despite the near-universal accolades I got for GURPS Traveller: Ground Forces I often wonder if anyone actually uses half the stuff I put in there.

So do we really need a detailed map? Let's try an experiment.

You're standing on a high hill, looking north. You're at the end of a peninsula; around you the ground slopes away to meadows to the east and north and a long stretch of sand dunes can be seen to the west. Peering into the fog, you see that the water to the west appears to be an ocean. To the north is a narrow straight, with highlands beyond. To the east the straight opens into a broad, calm bay with several large islands. You can just make out the far shore, about ten miles away, with a hint of high hills in the distance. Turning around, you see that the hill you are on is just the start of a chain of mountains. There are two peaks about the size of the one you're on to your immediate south, and you can tell that the group rises and gets steeper the further south you go. But judging from how the fog is blowing in the steady wind, there might be a pass down that way. The vegetation around is mostly long grasses, with clusters of oaks and other trees.

Got the picture? I've just described the view from Mt. Sutro in San Francisco with all works of man deleted. Now not one of you pictured that scene in the same way. When I described the Marin headlands as "highlands", some of you pictured cliffs, others a beach reaching up to hills. Same for the Coast Range. Some pictured the Rockies, others a range of hills. I could do a quick free hand map of the region with rough approximations of "mountains" "marshes" and settlements. Everything else is in the details, and if I need a village, I write one in. If a detailed map becomes necessary, I can make one using my notes and rough map. But I don't need to know that the Altamont Pass is 1009 feet above sea level (it is, I drive past the sign twice a week) to be able to accurately describe the scene.

This movement towards less "stuff" on the table isn't overly new. Thousand Suns has as it's default FTL drive a jump line system. Since this means that travel requires a jump line, you don't even need a map, just a list of what stars a particular system can reach. Lois McMaster Bujold uses a similar system in the Vorkosigan saga.

I think we're seeing a new phase in tabletop RPGs. We can't match the MMORPGs for shiny stuff. So I think the focus is swinging back to streamlined rules and good opportunities for adventures and storytelling. Given that we can get (or make) good maps, the producers of RPG materials are going to focus more on their core product. I think we're going to see less in the way of additional rules and more in the way of generic campaign support (books like ...and a 10-foot Pole are going to be strong sellers.)

The new D&D books have been ordered, and we'll see what this brave new world of RPGs holds.

Comments

[claidheamhmor]

You're right. And huge amounts of detail can make preparation so overwhelming that it takes years to get started.

My D&D campaign has a rough world map, and areas are detailed as the characters go through them. When that happens, I fill in the exact terrain, towns, people, roads, etc., and store it all in my campaign wiki for the next time any character passes through.

[pompe.livejournal.com]

I think there is a difference in detail as such and maps as a presentation form, which need not to be detailed but simply be a more effective way to convey information. Just as a picture or sketch or flowchart can be more effective than a page of text.

The second problem is that a lot of people in RPGs can't make good maps nowadays, or the maps in RPGs would be much better. The maps in Traveller I've seen were never that good, as an example.

Sometimes I get the feeling that people think that while you need some sort of artistic skill to be an illustrator or some sort of formal training to write in enough depth about a given subject making a map is a purely amateur occupation. That anyone with a pen or a 39.95-dollar computer program can cough up a decent map fit for a print run. That's not true. Very few good cartographers are untrained. They've studied land survey, cartography, visual arts or GIS on university level or have extensive professional field experience.

The third problem is that in order for a good visualization of say, an alien world or a medieval duchy, it isn't always enough to take a piece of the surroundings. What we do if we don't have good maps is to transplant our world, and that is not necessarily a good thing for the sense-of-wonder of SF games or the grit-and-heroics of a fantasy setting. But if we have good maps to start with, we can use them for inspiration when we retrofit our world more believably.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Agreed. I'm not arguing against maps as a whole, per say, but instead against the massive setting infodumps that we've seen in the past. A sketch map of the Bay Area would give you the rough outline of the Bay, where the bigger cities are, and where the hills and mountains are. You can fill in detail as needed as you go.

I can see both sides of the issue.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Funny you started describing it and I said, That's Mt Sutro! I know where he is. Hey, when I'm doing Geography, I don't put in the streets and buildings in my minds eye.
I find some mapping useful. And I do hope that when I read a book or play a game the creator has some sort of map. Rough Outline is fine. But at least know where the mountains and the seas and the continents are. Cities would be good and main roads if it is that sort of world building.
Or if it is in outer space, get the general distances right. Either check with a good star map or make up a consistent one.
I get annoyed when the creator isn't consistent, after that, they can play any way they want.

[grimmwire.livejournal.com]

For me, much of the appeal of running AD&D and Traveller campaigns was that it gave me an excuse to spend insane gobs of time drawing fantastical maps. I larded them with lovingly-rendered detail, even the hidden maps that were for my eyes only. It's a sickness.

A map is important only when the characters seek out the places shown on it.

Er, but if you don't have a map at all, then they won't know those places exist to be sought out, no?

This was one of the central functions of maps in my campaigns: they sparked off adventures. I would draw a ludicrously impregnable citadel in the center of town, somehow never imagining that the players' first thought upon seeing it would always be: "That King looks rich. Let's break in and see what he's got to steal!"

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I think Traveller's problem was more "too many authors" than "too many maps".

In a low-tech world you can get away with large blank spaces, because they really are unknown. (A fantasy world with skrying or flight spells, though, has the equivalent of aerial photography, which means their maps should be pretty good.)

A modern/SF world, though, should have a lot of information potentially available to the players. The problem here is that there really should be a lot of information on the map. Maybe the GM shows the players a map that contains only the relevant information (because they aren't as familiar with the setting as their characters are), but the GM needs to either know when else is there, or be able to invent convincing stuff quickly if the players wander off-track.


A final note: the problem with your word-picture is that, unless I ask a whole lot of questions, I don't know what the place is like. Are the Marin Highlands cliffs? My character would know, instantly, just by looking. A good map, or a drawing, would show that better than a description. Chances are, I'd remember it better, too.

One stat we go in Teachers' College: about 70% of the population learns best by seeing. Visuals, whether maps or sketches, are much more memorable than words.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

The nice thing about rougher descriptions is the players can flesh things out by asking questions. For example, your Marin Headlands question, I could decide on the spur of the moment that they are cliffs on the north side of the Golden Gate. A note in on my pad for later inclusion in the setting bible, and they've always been towering granite cliffs.

Good point about visual learning, but even then I can see a simpler is better approach at least at first. If you were flying into SFO and needed to know how to get to our place, what would be more useful to you at first? The Bay Area Metro Thomas Guide or a Google Map (http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=San+Francisco+Int'l+Airport&geocode=&dirflg=&daddr=5751+Almaden+Rd,+San+Jose,+CA+95118&f=d&sll=37.61476,-122.39188&sspn=0.046981,0.075188&ie=UTF8&ll=37.448697,-122.149429&spn=0.753357,1.203003&t=h&z=10)? Later on in your trip you'd need detailed maps of downtown, etc.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

The problem with asking questions is that players often don't. I may know that headlands means cliffs, because every headland I've seen has cliffs, so I don't bother to ask. I choose my actions based on them being cliffs, only to find out later that they aren't.

I've had this happen to me so many times it's become a bit of a sore point.


As to maps, I navigated Beijing using satellite pics from Google Maps. Satellite pics would be ideal for an SF game like Traveller—the only problem is that they are even harder to create than a good map :-(

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

In Traveller the blank spaces were those Jump Space did not touch.

I speculated that there were "lost" Suerrat colonies in deep space established when they used STL dives and maintained as being refuges beyond the Pale.

I used Ground Forces to redo the OOB in Fifth Frontier War which I have not done anything with.

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

I've swiped stuff from Ground Forces and dressed it up in different cloths for different games I've run.

As for maps, on my own I usually have fairly vague maps, enough that I have some idea where the players are going, though in my latest game ( Battle Star Galactica ) there's no maps at all, let alone detailed deck plans.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

What's the lone cow story? (I tried googling, but either didn't find it or didn't recognize it.)

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

If I recall, it's something to the effect that if you take the time to mention a detail of the terrain (like a single grazing cow), many players will tend to assume/fixate on it as something Important and Meaningful. They're mistaking it for Chekov's gun rather than mere set dressing.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Exactly. It's also known as the Name Problem. Give a NPC a name, and suddenly the players assume he is vital to the plot.