Maps Have Three Parts – Part 1: Lines
When mapping, I tend to just focus on the corridors, rooms, streets, caverns, and buildings. However, every map has more than just these areas; each has three zones in your design control. Next map you build, think of these zones and how you can change things up to be fun and interesting for your gaming.
Zone 1: The Lines
Most of the time, the lines represent walls and boundaries, and these things have shapes and textures. Lines are often hastily sketched on battlemaps and player maps, and then overlooked during descriptions. GMs draft their lines without much thought for mapping in-game.
Beef Up Description
When drawling map lines in dungeons and civilized areas, take a moment to think about what the lines represent, what the PCs would see and touch. Make notes about this directly on maps, with arrows, for easy reference. Use these notes to feed your descriptions of these areas.
Players groove off extra details like these to become immersed, and the little bit of time taken for this counteracts some of the hyper-efficiency of some game systems where it seems like you just get whisked from one battle to the next without much breathing room – without much living.
Use Evocative Materials
Notice how it gets boring telling the players the same descriptions over and over? “You are in a 10’x10′ inn room. It has the usual furnishings.”
Don’t give up. Instead, get creative. Fantasy offers so many options, thanks to strange materials, magic, slavery, potentially infinite project lives, divinity, and esoteric knowledge. Get yourself out of modern, scarcity-based thinking. Think big. Think wild.
- Gems
- Precious metals
- Magically hardened wood
- Strangely transparent – wood, stone, metal
- Alive
- Evil, demonic, or cursed
- Liquid
- Gaseous
Check out this rock and mineral directory for more ideas. Bend anything from this web page to your imagination.
The Lines Are A Lie
Lines narrow vision and creativity. They trick you into thinking there is less in a location than there actually is. During games, I become too focused on the path, direction, and distance. The lines are a lie. There’s more to any space than just its boundaries. More on this in part 2 of this series.
Faster Mapping
Cavern maps in modules are a pet peeve of mine. So is sloppy battle-mapping. Both involve such sins as partial squares, lines you can’t possibly recreate on player maps, and useless spaces.
Avoid Partial Spaces
If your game system has rules for partial battlemap squares, then this is not an issue. For my game of choice, though, you are screwed. What is the movement cost of half a square? Third? Eighth? Can a PC fit into such spaces? Can a large creature use those spaces?
If your game system rules only support full squares, then just map with full squares. Otherwise, it’s confusing and problematic.
Some designs might require partial squares. Ok. I support this. If you want to create rooms with interesting shapes, or decide builders would have used the shortest, straightest paths for connector spaces, ok.
Be prepared for interaction in these spaces though. Whip up some house rules, perhaps, or talk over general guidelines with players. One player thinking those spaces are just for show, while another uses them for advantage, creates group friction.
Take your average cavern map, for example. A tiny creature can fit into almost all the folds and creases, as can various rewards and other game elements. Just not the PCs. Unless they reach in. Are they allowed? I’ve played and GM’d games where it’s assumed those spaces were of no consequence.
Make Mapping Easier
Draw lines that are quick and easy to reproduce during sessions for players or by players, for battlemaps or progress maps.
For example, cavern maps are killers to reproduce. So, what ends up happening is the player map or the battlemap just gets rounded off. Fancy, curly walls and passages become straight or jagged lines. Who has the time and patience to turn an 8.5″ x 11″ map into a huge map for minis by hand during a session?
If the players aren’t going to see the benefit of complex lines and maps, then do yourself a favour and make your lines simple to recreate during sessions.
Same goes with weird shapes and complex areas on maps. Anything you can do to make in-game mapping faster and easier on you, the better. Keep maps simple, make descriptions and encounters rich.
What Goes On The Lines?
The lines themselves aren’t empty. They have strange inhabitants often overlooked during design. These inhabitants get quickly added on or neglected.
Entrances and Exits
Entrances and exits sometimes have strategic value. They restrict movement or enhance it. Do you want a villain to escape easily? It would be a shame that an ill-placed portal traps an important NPC.
Dead ends eliminate choices and stop progress. Plan exits with pacing and exploration in mind.
Notice how the area around a door needs to be kept clear? This can carve up your game space in undesirable ways. For example, placing a door in a narrow, end part of a room makes that area unsuitable for furnishings and interactive bits. Or, placing a door in the middle of a line might split a space into two, limiting other design and encounter decisions.
Strategic exit and entrance placement helps guide trap and hazard placement. For example, a defile determines movement, and traps can be more precise with better triggering success. Traps in high traffic areas are hazards to the locals, though, so consider hidden entrances for them to use, or use traps that have better precision. A pit in front of the kitchen door means all the orcs go hungry.
Doorknobs
Be prepared for the doorknob question. This trips me up often. Can the entrance be locked? If so, how? From what direction? Check out this sequence of DMing mishap:
DM: You come before a door. It has glowing runes on it.
Group: What is the door made out of?
DM: Wood with bands of metal for reinforcement.
Group: How does the door open? Can it be locked?
DM: The door has hinges, and there is no keyhole. It’s probably barred. [Looks at map. Realizes it has to be barred from the players’ side to make sense.]
DM: There is a length of wood nearby, resting against the wall.
Group: Great! We bar the door and camp out here for the night.
DM: Damn you dirty apes!
Yeah. That’s happened to me. Many times, in many configurations. Logic traps for everything from door location to door material to locking mechanism. One giant DM hazard if you’re not careful.
Light Fixtures
Light fixtures are another interesting element. Their regular placement might create a pattern that you can interrupt as a clue, perhaps to point out a secret door or important furnishing.
How are the lanterns, torches, or other light source fixed to the wall? If you are planning to use darkness for effect, be wary of placing portable light sources without thought. If you have cunning space-based challenges, such as chasms or traps, be wary of fixtures that grant advantage, such as rope tie-off spots (better yet, place these with intention as potential solutions to such puzzles).
- Maps Have Three Parts – Part 1: Lines
- Maps Have Three Parts – Part 2: Adventuring Spaces
- Maps Have Three Parts – Part 3: Negative Spaces
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January 7th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
I play D&D too, and understand the square grid concept, but I see a world not made up of 5 foot squares. I see square grids as a guide to movement for PCs/NPCs/monsters. I don’t see it as necessary to enforce the game system.
For me the grid is guide. I create my maps – caverns, dungeons, buildings, etc. with proper scale in mind and place a grid on last. Sometimes my walls don’t land on edges of squares. I don’t build my map around grids. My caverns are never squares or rectangles…
Sure house rules will become necessary if a PC desires to do some type of action in a partial square – but I don’t see that as a problem.
Sometimes I even create narrow passages as through a secret door that is less than 5 feet wide. This means a character can move through the narrow space, but cannot swing a sword as there is no room. These narrow tunnels never dominate the scene though, and eventually end up in a wider room where combat can occur.
I almost always place door knobs on my doors, and sometimes even indicate which way they swing open, though sometimes not and let the DM using the map decide for himself.
That’s my philosophy on mapping, anyway!
GP
January 8th, 2009 at 2:27 am
Great feedback, thanks GP. Good point about the tail wagging the dog, thanks. I’ll see you at http://forum.cartographersguild.com/ !
February 1st, 2009 at 1:08 pm
I’m a 3.5 tactical junkie.
But still, the point must undeniably be made that a grid is only relevant once combat starts; and is only relevant when and where tactical movement occurs. The whole map doesn’t have to be on a grid; and it doesn’t have to be on the same grid. Know the dimensions of rooms, and be prepared to draw a grid for that room if combat occurs. This individual care and grid-mapping seem to work well; though I haven’t observed it long enough to be sure.
February 1st, 2009 at 4:02 pm
@John: Good call. I remember DMing Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth for my 3.5 group in Vancouver. I just propose that map designers keep DMs and the re-draw step in sessions in mind when crafting their works of art. :)
January 28th, 2010 at 7:31 am
Who has the time and patience to turn an 8.5? x 11? map into a huge map for minis by hand during a session?
I do it beforehand on one of those 27×30 pads of easel paper from Office Depot. You can usually fit a whole dungeon from a Goodman Games module on one or two pages. I like it because it’s faster in play and when you spring traps you always know where everybody is.
January 28th, 2010 at 11:13 am
@Noumenon Thanks for the comment. I tried that a couple times but found it took up planning time that I needed to use for other things. I guess it only took about 15 mins per map though. Is that your experience? Got any tips for reproducing maps quickly on those big pads?
Also, how did you keep the unexplored sections of the map secret during play?
January 29th, 2010 at 8:17 am
I haven’t timed it but it does take a while with counting squares to make sure things fit. But I imagine all the time I spend on it is multiplied by 4 when my players don’t have to wait for me to draw it. I sometimes get a little inspired while reproducing it and add terrain or wall hangings or whatever.
I hid the map with pieces of paper — the group can kind of tell when there’s more dungeon coming but they seem to do that even when I don’t use a map. When there’s a secret door I don’t draw the whole tunnel in so it looks like the paper is covering blank space.
January 29th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
@Noumenon – I did something similar for DCC#3. At first I just laid out the major areas of the map during the game and then filled in details like doors and corridors as I went along.
After the session my players gave me feedback that they preferred complete fog of war and asked that the entire map be kept secret until they explored.
For next session I cut up my pre-drawn big maps and just laid down the pieces as the PCs entered them, which worked well. But at that point I realized I might as well use my Dungeon Tiles collection and forgo drawing all together.
Assembling tiles to match pre-existing floorplans took time too, as I found out. So I quit doing that as well.
My most recent solution is to map out encounter areas during sessions on a gridded whiteboard laid flat on the table, and to draw a “stick figure” adventuring map on regular graph paper as the PCs explore. This is working well.
March 7th, 2010 at 7:27 am
I use adobe and enlarge the maps 5X. then I use a wide format printer to print the rooms I think I’ll need. I cut them out so there is still mystery as to the size of the dungeon. It saved a ton of table time. The trick is getting access to the printer.