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).

Got writer’s block? Draw a map. This is one of the best ways to get focus, organize your thoughts, and get moving again on your campaign preparation.

Mapping out Writer's Block

Sometimes I’ll stare at a blank computer screen with a game session only a couple days away and wonder if I’ll have anything designed in time. What always works for me is to grab graph paper, pencil, and eraser and draw a map.

Best Maps to Draw

• Small maps. Drawing a huge map, such as a continent, to get your planning going again is going to open up too many options and create too much downstream work.Draw a small map instead. They are fast to create and have minimal footprint in the game so you don’t waste time and effort. You can add to the map if your idea takes off. If you are struggling for ideas, however, then you don’t commit to a big map until you’ve got something you’re happy to extend.
• Draw for encounters. I find encounter maps work best. Encounters are the building blocks of sessions. If you get no planning done other than a few encounters you can drop into next session, then you are covered.Encounter maps are small by nature, keeping inline with the tip above. You might even try drawing a five room dungeon.In addition, I find encounters inspiring to build. They are fast, and once I get one or more built, ideas for the rest of the session, world, or campaign start to return again.
• Regions. Small gameplay regions often give exactly what you need to get unblocked and creative again. With a space in the game world defined, you can start adding regional points of interest. Note ideas down at they come to you for each of these points.If the exercise is fruitful, then once you’ve got a few items added to the region, start to flesh out those items. If you get blocked on this, then draw maps for those items.

Example Mapping Session

It’s two days before game night and preparation feels uninspired. You take out a piece of paper and draw a triangular region bordered by a river, mountains, and monstrous territory. Within the region you locate a few villages, lairs, historical sites, and a couple of long-forgotten dungeon and ruin locations.

Next, you pick one village called Styrge, break out a new piece of paper, and map it. You add a few buildings, a road, some paths, and a few points of local interest inside the village and in the nearby area.

You are still not feeling creative yet. So, you crank out another map. You pick one of the stores and draw it out on another sheet of paper. It’s three storeys and has a cellar. You even add a secret room – what would the shopkeep want to hide in there?

Still stumped, you copy the store map and build an encounter in the basement. Subterranean creatures have dug into the basement and set-up a lair there. The PCs might here noise while passing by and investigate, the shopkeep might hire or beg the PCs for help, or kids might be overheard daring each other to go into the “haunted” cellar.

You are still blocked though. It occurs to you that the tunnels from the creatures might have touched upon an interesting location, such as a cavern or small dungeon a couple hundred meters underground. You draw a map for this and place a few hazards and encounters.

Blocked again. Back to the village looking for encounter opportunities. Maybe those kids know about other things going on in the village. If they have a mean streak they’d try to pull a prank on the PCs. Perhaps a boy has fallen into the well and floats unconscious. Just as a PC makes his way down the slippery well wall to the water, the boy opens is eyes and yells gotcha! Surprise might turn to pain as the yelling wakes the creature who calls the well its home….

You are still not feeling the ideas flow, so you turn to mapping out the tavern. Perhaps a tavern brawl might be a fun encounter. Another might be a ghost story told by the oldest living man in the village who sits by the fireplace each evening. Maybe his story is true. Sounds like you need another map.

A couple hours have gone by and you put down your pencil. DM block has won again because you still feel uninspired. Or has it? It seems like you have a region built, and one of its villages is mapped out along with some NPCs, and you have a session’s worth of encounters ready to drop in. Hey, you didn’t be too badly at all.

Many authors advise new writers to write all the time, even when they don’t feel like it. I think that’s why this mapping technique works so well. Even when you don’t feel inspired, you still get the work done, one map at a time. If you do get into the mood after drawing a map or three, then that’s a wonderful – success either way!