Lessons From The West Wing II: The Psychology Of Maps
It’s time for another of my occasional Lessons From The West Wing. This draws heavily on concepts put forward in a single episode, Episode 16 of Season 2, “Somebody’s Going To Emergency, Somebody’s Going To Jail”.
Some people have decried the episode as one of the weakest in the West Wing’s repetoir, others found it illuminating. As it happened, it was the first episode that I actually watched on free-to-air TV, and it hooked me pretty solidly.
The A-plot of the episode connected an act of infidelity with revelations of a Soviet Spy from the WWII era. That’s an OK plot but not brilliant. The B-plot involves world trade protestors, and that’s a lot more interesting in a lot of ways, and the summation of the principles of Oratory is also useful. But it was the C-plot that hooked me – a plot thread that doesn’t even rate a mention in the Official Companion to the series, much to my annoyance.
That C-plot revolves around a proposal by the “Organization of Cartographers For Social Equality” – a fictional organisation so far as I know – to replace the familiar Mercator-projection map with an inverted version of the Gall-Peters Projection Map – something like the one used to illustrate this article. You can find out more about this map at the Wikipedia Page and you can purchase copies of these and other unusual ways of viewing the world from ODT.
But while the map itself was fascinating, what really grabbed me were the arguements proposed for the impact of the traditional Mercator projection map on social attitudes.
Stretching A Globe to fit a square page
The problems with the Mercator Projection are shown by the illustration above, where three identical yellow rectangles are positioned, two at the top and one directly south of the first.
The second picture shows these rectangles arranged on the section of the globe indicated by the first picture, and the third shows the effects of Mercator Projection.
- Errors Of Scale: The top-left rectangle appears much larger than the bottome left one, even though they are the same size.
- Errors Of Location: The scale problem means that the distances between the two top rectangles are also exaggerated.
- Errors Of Relative Position: And the distortion affects the aparrant relative position of the left-hand rectangles, as well. In fact, they don’t appear to be due south of each other any more!
Any map has one latitudinal line where the scales are perfect. Anything closer to the equator will be shrunken to fit, anything closer to the poles is stretched. There’s no way to accurately map a globe in every respect except with a scale model, ie a Globe.
Mercator Projection was first produced in 1569 works by maintaining straight lines of constant bearing for longitude and latitude at regular spacings. This makes the map especially useful for Ocean Navigation, the purpose for which it was designed. For just about any other purpose, it is deceptive.
Germany appears in the middle of the map – the central point chosen by Mercator (who was German) – when in fact it’s in the Northernmost quarter. The Zero-error line chosen by Mercator runs right through Germany, in other words, and stretches Europe to fill the top half of the map, while shrinking the Southern Hemisphere. So Mercator’s projection doesn’t just distort horizontally, it also distorts vertical size.
The Peters projection works by preserving the true relative sizes of the continents. That makes it useless for navigation purposes, as it has to distort the map in a different way to achieve this, and consequently a “straight line course” from point A to point B would actually be shown as a curve on the map – but in many other ways, it’s an improvement, at least according to the proposal aired on The West Wing.
Size Equals Importance
…at least in the mind of the beholder. Or so runs the arguement from the West Wing, at least, which argues that the distortions of the Mercator Map play on that subconscious association to distort social perceptions of the non-European nations. The specific examples cited are:
- Greenland appears to be the same size as Africa, and Greenland is not very important, so people think of Africa as also not very important. Africa is actually 14 times the size of Greenland.
- Europe is shown on the Mercator Map as being considerably larger than South America, when the latter is almost double the size of the former. Consequently, according to the theory, South America is diminished in importance.
- Alaska appears three times the size of Mexico, but Mexixo is actually a fraction (100,000 square miles) bigger. So Mexico is percieved as having the importance of a single US State.
Of course there are many more, but that’s enough to go by.
It was while pondering this that I started to think about the way most GMs produce Maps.
Maps In RPGs
More to the point, we don’t do them in the ways that were common in the Middle Ages, even for our Fantasy campaigns. Instead, we go for satellite photo land-use style area maps, similar to those we would encounter in a modern atlas, simply because we havn’t thought about it.
Why do it that way? Surely the “as the crow flies” distance and absolute position of locations is not the most important thing about them?
For Fumanor, the maps that I created when setting up my original campaign are NOT topographically perfect. Instead of using an absolute distance as my guideline for drawing the maps, I used a relative travel time. I also deliberately enlarged areas that were supposedly important and shrunk areas that were not considered important.
The PCs have never figured this out.
Whenever a map comes up in the game – like the one above – they have assumed that it was an “accurate” map, and that the hexes referred to a fixed distance. They even calculated that distance as 50 miles per small hex, and had me mark that on the maps as I produced them within the game.
In fact, each small hex represents Two Days’ March, or one day’s Forced March. Or, roughly a week of casual travel, or travel by wagon. A horse can cover two hexes in a day – but after a week of this, the horse will be exhausted and need a week’s rest. If you change horses regularly, you can fly across the map.
The Elvish Forest is shown to be roughly the same size as the Orcish Domain to the Northeast and the Trollheim to the Southeast – in fact, the Elves home is about 1/4 the size, end to end, or about 1/16th the area, of these two domains.
Terrain plays a big factor. The mountains on the left look huge – but they aren’t, it’s just that it takes a considerable amount of time, even following the trails that exist, to cross them. They aren’t 1500 miles across – they are barely 150 miles across – but they have been distorted in size because the terrain makes them slow going.
Once you already have a map, it’s hard to convert it to work in this way. The secret is to draw it like you would any other map, and then assume that what it is showing is the relative positions and distances and not the true positions.
A step farther
But why not go a step farther? Make marks on a map to show the relative size or importance of a town or city, as usual – but have them equally spaced apart, with a straight line for any roads or other means of transport, and – if you have to – you can show a travel time in days next to the line.
This is a far more compact and abstract map – but one that can be extremely useful. Here’s a small example:
This shows a small Kingdom with sea to the East, wastelands to the northeast, swamp to the south, and a ring of impenetrable mountains to the north and west. There’s also a forest, roads, rivers, and towns – assume that a real map of this type would show town names, as well. I could also have drawn dark heavy outlines around areas that are fortified, or not done so if I preferred. But that’s all – there’s virtually nothing about the terrain, the distances, the sights, the climate – which means that whatever needs to be dropped in, can be. The result is highly abstract and purely functional.
You can even develop such a map as a “strip” as the party travel – you indicate each road that they don’t follow, and where it goes, and anything of interest that they find along the way. Use a scale of half a cm or 1/4 of an inch for each day’s travel. This then forms the backbone for future explorations by the characters – they can branch off at any point to follow a new path. The result is something like the transport maps that became popular a few years back, like the example above (which shows the Madrid rail system).
Top And Bottom
Another arguement made in the course of the West Wing – which fell on rather less friendly ears – was that people subconsciously impose a superior capability to countries that appear on the top of a map. This arguement, if it held water, would indicate that Canada is percieved as more powerful and globally significant than the US, that Finland is seen as more important than France, which in turn is seen as more important than Spain – it doesn’t wash.
Nevetheless, it’s a fact that the most powerful nations, with a history of contributing to global civilization, generally lie in the Northern Hemisphere, while much of the third world does not.
So perhaps there is something too this, but it is easily overridden when we know better from other sources of information.
What, then, is the result if we – or more specifically, the PCs – don’t know any better? No matter how much you’ve heard about a place, it’s mever real until you go there and see it first hand. Until the characters interact with it, all a new country is to them is a splodge of colour om a map. Under such circumstances, it’s entirely possible that these ‘impressions of importance’ actually occur. In which case, GMs can deliberately play to the stereotype, or choose to invert it.
Or you can choose to avoid the question altogether by changing the directions of the map. Again, this is something that I chose to do in Fumanor, where the principle direction that orients the top of all maps is “Sunrise” and it’s opposite is “Sunset”. If you face the Sunset, then “Dexter” is to your right, while “Sinister” (named because that’s where all the trouble seems to come from) is to your left. The world has no compass or equivalent; those directions are all that they’ve got.
Even the fact that it gets hotter as one travels to the Dexter and colder towards the Sinister is explained by the fact that there are Deserts in the former direction, and tall, snow-capped mountain ranges in the latter.
In this environment, it’s not that stars move across the night sky; it’s more important that they rise and set.
So exercise a little thought in advance and look for an alternative to the obvious North-South arrangement, and you will alter your characters’ thinking.
Like Neighbourhoods
Another assumption that a lot of people make is that one country will tend to be very much like their neighbours – that the climate will be similar, and the behaviour of the people will be similar, and so on. People have a tendancy to generalise by region.
This is a fact that GMs can take advantage of, with a little thought. Putting two nations that are socially and superficially very similar can be a great way of disguising the key differences until they catch the PCs off-guard. Placing two nations far apart that are superficially very different, but are very similar when you get down to the bottom line, is another technique that can be useful.
There are, of course, good reasons why the similarity between neighbours is often a fairly reasonable assumption. Not only would they be likely to experience similar climates, as already noted, but what affects one (eg an invasion by a third, or a shortage of some particular raw material) will probably also affect the other. They are likely to trade with each other, which is a great way of subtly signposting the differences, but that brings with it an exchange of ideas and techniques that makes one seem to resemble the other more closely. They may originally have been a single nation, giving them a shared heritage, common language, and so on.
I don’t tend to think too deeply about this when designing worlds for my games, and it’s something that I think I should pay closer attention to.
Maps reflect the thinking of their makers
In the middle ages, many European maps placed the religious centre of their ‘world’ in the centre of the map. In some cases, that was Constantinople, in others it was Rome, and so on. The farther away from the centre of authority the map went, the ‘fuzzier’ it was likely to be in terms of accuracy and detail. Some mapmakers went so far as to flesh out these extremely distant regions with dogma and superstition.
Maps that were wildly inaccurate have a tendancy not to be easy to track down in modern times; we tend to ignore them, they aren’t readily accessable over the internet, and so on. There were maps that tried to reconcile Columbus’ discovery of The New World with his mistaken belief that this was a distant region of India, for example, but these are hard to find referances to.
Whenever you produce a map for the players to digest, always take a moment to consider the question of who supposedly drew the map, what mistakes did they make, and what dogam and superstition did they incorporate?
A lot of people draw their maps early in the world-building process, and use the geography to guide them in the writing of their campaign history, the defining of national boundaries, and so on. This approach certainly makes it quicker and easier to do so, but these development maps should get thrown away afterwards and fresh maps created from the descriptions and history that you have compiled. These should make no attempt to be accurate to the development maps, but should instead be accurate exclusively to the history – and the GM should have no qualms while creating that history about ignoring any inconvenient “realities” on the development maps.
Maps affect the thinking of the viewers
The final point to be made is this: what’s shown on a map has a big effect on the thinking of those who view it. They help define the relationships between nations, the geographic boundaries that divide and the geographic connections that unite.
I once came up with an idea for a campaign that I never got to play (and I’ve long since thrown away the notes, so I can’t post it – or I would). A central element of the campaign was a continent-wide conspiracy, and the first manifestation of that conspiracy was going to be the existance in each nation of that continent a small town named Jel’tvech (some spelling variations – Jelveck, Chelech, etc). These words would all mean different things within the dominant language of the nation in which they were located, often things that would not naturally occur to people as inspriration for a town name. I can only remember a couple of the literal translations now – there was “City of Shadows”, “Passionblood”, “Usurper’s Refuge”, “Crown of Eggs”… about two dozen, in all. These were all that remained of the mythic tale of the founding of the kingdoms, when they were all provinces of an Empire ruled by Lovecraftian Horrors, and of the overthrow and exile of those Horrors. But now, they were coming back…
The map that I had created – a sheet of A4 paper with a coastline in blue pen, some forests in Green, some cities in red, some mountains in black, and some political boundaries in pencil – wasn’t just a map of the area, it was to be a map of the entire campaign, of the plotlines and narrative that were going to unite the adventures of the PCs into a single structure – in other words, it was a map of the metaplot.
I never finished it; the map and notes got set aside because I saw no prospect at the time of ever using them in play (I had no D&D players at the time) and later, they were ruined when an accidentally-left-open window let the rain in.
But the general principle remains. When you draw a map, think about the residents of each city and nation that you place on it, and ask yourself how they would percieve their place in the world according to the map you have drawn?
Which reminds me of another undeveloped idea that’s relevant. Once each PC had chosen which nation of several that they were going to derive from, I was going to draw maps for them of their homelands using vector art software, then subtly change each. No one player’s map would show the political boundaries in exactly the same places; some of them would have dates that indicated that they were out-of-date, others would reflect disputed borders, and still others would be drawn by foreigners who got some of the details wrong for whatever reason. This was to be a way of bringing the background of the proposed campaign into the lives of each of the PCs in a different way. I would then generate an adventure based around each of the differences, which would establish the camapign in a way that was interactive for the players. Again, this was an idea that I never got around to developing because I would never have had the time to run it.
A map is more than a representation of the geography of an area. Take advantage of that fact.
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 1 of 5: Don’t Compromise With Mediocrity
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 2 of 5: A Perfect Vision Through A Glass, Darkly
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 3 of 5: Laying A Campaign Foundation
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 4 of 5: Evolving The Campaign
- The Pursuit Of Perfection, Part 5 of 5: Character Evolution
- Lessons From The West Wing II: The Psychology Of Maps
- Lessons From The West Wing III: Time Happens In The Background
- Lessons From The West Wing IV: Victory At Any Price
- Lessons From The West Wing V: Bilateral Political Incorrectness for RPGs
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August 15th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
I can further expand on that undeveloped idea of the PCs maps from an example of our experiences at trying to creat a world map for the Legend of Zelda Roleplaying Game. There were a number of issues we had to deal with to go about creating a world map of Hyrule and beyond, and the samples that we managed to get together were quite good considering our limitations.
The series was set around the franchise of video games, and many of the video games were set in the Kingdom of Hyrule and beyond. All of these games came with maps, either in game, or compiled from screenshoots, because exploring the land was a big feature of the game play of the series.
However, there were two sigificant problemsn that we had to overcome. The first of these is that there is very little consistancy within the Legend of Zelda franchise. Each game is essentially a retake on a similar story with different gameplay features, and the focus is put on making the game fun and stand out, rather than making it consistant with the rest of the franchise.
Some of the games had their own areas, but those set in the Kingdom of Hyrule had another issue as well, they were all supposed to represent the same area throguhout an undefined period of time, despite having very limited consistancy between versions, scope, and naming conventions.
The second problem was that the maps were all designed for different purposes than as a geographical representation, and therefore were in no way to relevent scale. You had settlements that took took up more screens than deserts than wastelands, although on a world map, this would simply be an icon. A forest could be a wall or maze of trees, mixed with a few spaced out individual trees, each of which could be the same size of a significant geographical feature, such as a mountain peak, a tower, or a lake.
We ended up solving this problem by having to take a step back and drawing the world map from scratch, essentually reversing the ideas and procedures you defined above. The game maps represented the individual takes of the maps for different purposes, but we had to create the original development map for the GM.
This was quite a challenge, but in the end, by exploring options behind the history of the games to help define the worlds, and working out various constant ways to conect like areas, we came up with such a map – and were in fact the first to do so, even before Nintendo had themselves produced such a map. We readjusted scales as needed, to make the world map more realistic, treating the game maps merely as representations and ideas rather than exact placements.
For the Kingdom of Hyrule, we even went one step further, and by connecting the history of the games and the maps, managed to expand on the backstory of the Kingdom of Hyrule beyond that of the canon, simply by explaining how there could be so many inconsistancies between the maps. We looked at why things could have been percieved in the wrong place – were they misnamed versions of something else, was a new area that wasn’t of the Kingdom of Hyrule on previous maps, or just a site that wasn’t important enough to the adventure in the later maps to be marked, but could otherwise still have been present?
Even now, Nintendo continues to procude new games for the Legend of Zelda franchise, and they continue to focus on the individual game rather than the franchise as a whole. That is why the fans like the video games, and designing a map for a video game is defferent to designing a map to a roleplaying game. We continue to update the Legend of Zelda Roleplaying Game with this new wealth of material, simply by treating the game map, and the rest of the game source material, as representational and making it fit into the larger context rather rewriting everything for the latest game, as we would probably have to do if these games and their resulting maps were taken literally.
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August 15th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Another insightful contribution, Da’Vane – thamks! A different possible solution that your comments have suggested is a map in which the geographic topology is mutable, changing from time to time. We’re accustomed to thinking of geography as providing fixed landmarks; take this constancy away, and the best map-makers would choose more abstract representative depictions rather than a ‘modern’ style map.
Another possibility is that perhaps the terrain is different depending on your direction of travel. Going west from the town of Ashon (to pluck a name from thin air) might involve traversing a trackless swamp, while travelling east TO Ashon over the same terrain might involve a desert crossing.
Heck, even a map with different scales in different directions in different terrains would be possible. That stand of trees that took ten minutes to pass through in one direction is a huge forest going in the other; that small lake is now a vast ocean. It’s certainly a different idea!
I sometimes feel that modern games are lacking some of the sense of the fantastic that was present in my early days as a roleplayer, back in the early 80s. Our techniques as GMs are far more polished, supplemented by various computer-based and online tools and a vast gaming industry, but some of the magic has been lost, subsumed by a greater realism. In some cases, the change has been beneficial; certainly a mediocre GM in modern times sets an infinitely higher standard than was the case way back when. But sometimes it has compromised creativity and imagination and a sense of the fantastic.
August 16th, 2010 at 4:12 am
Even the world maps is somewhat representative, as there is always room for GMs to add their own sites into the specific regions of the game, and a big part of the game comes from exploring the regions, which is better handled in a more abstract way, where the players get to draw their own maps.
The world map serves mainly to allow the world some more reaility, as you can see connections between regions, possible trade between racial homelands, pilgrimage routes between shrines, and so forth – all features which make for great plot hooks in an RPG that the GM can easily choose to ignore, which are rarely important in the video games themselves which revolve around a specific story.
The most popular type of campaign in the Legend of Zelda Roleplaying Game is that of a globe-trotting campaign where the players get to travel between regions in the video games, and explore these connections, doing things that couldn’t be explored in the video games themselves. the world map itself is a representation – in this case, of how the smaller maps fit together into a more cohesive whole, with a host of interesting sites to explore further!
It also shows the classic “Here be monsters!” features of early maps, highlighting good places for GMs to place their own lands and worlds. In a setting where flying, sailing, and teleportation portals are fairly common, as well as exploring two co-existant planes, there’s plenty of scope for adventure that any world map simply couldn’t do justice if it tried to fully cover every opportunity. So it doesn’t – it covers what the fans expect – the contents of the video games that serves as the backbone of the setting and the world, and an excellent springboard into classic adventure that is often missed in fantasy roleplaying games today, like you mentioned.
Da’ Vane recently posted..Mission- Infinity
August 16th, 2010 at 7:02 am
Yeah, blank spaces on a map are definitely a good thing – and that’s exactly what you’re talking about. There might be some aspects of the content of the blank area that can be discerned – for example, you might be able to state that there’s a mountain in there, because it can be seen from a mapped area – but the unknown dominates.
August 16th, 2010 at 7:36 am
One of the best advantages of this method is that it frees your mind from seeing a specific map as set or real, but as just one perspective, and men you get to ask questions about the features on the map, if not the maps themselves. If the maps feature different featurs over time, you’ve got a visual representation of history’s effect on the landscape, so you can start thinking about the story behind those changes. If similar things are possibly connected, you can start looking into plot hooks exploring the connections. Often, you can get more mileage from a specific piece of mythos if it’s combined with other aspects of the mythos from other sources, rather than automatically assumed to be different because it has a different name or representation – for example, the trials of the mythical Fire Temple and the monstrous beasts of the Cave of Flames have great synergy if these two tales actually refer to the same location, even though the source material and inspiration comes from two different games in the franchise, possibly set millenia apart.
Imagine if your players came across a different version of the same mape they’ve already decided represents a fixed distance. Maybe this one does represent a scale of fixt difference. Maybe this one is based on political power or demographic bias, or something even more abstract, like the fuel/mana cost for assisted flight or transportation. Or based on profitable trade routes. The players would then have the fun task of trying to relate the multiple maps and working out what they mean – things would be similar, but also different – and like cryptography used to break a cypher or code, would present a different challenge and mindset to the campaign.
Da’ Vane recently posted..Mission- Infinity
August 16th, 2010 at 10:04 am
I like the ideas in your last paragraph, Da’vane. What makes life for us GMs easier is that we can make up such maps out of whole cloth and simply state, OK, this is what it represents. The results can be a whole different source of inspiration – for example, if your whole-cloth trade-routes map indicates really substantial trade between two relatively barren townships, you should certainly be able to use the reason for this aparrant contradiction as the springboard for an adventure!
August 16th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
Even better, the GM doesn’t neccessarily need to know in advance what the map is supposed to represent. That way, they can easily come up with inspiration based on the assumptions of the PCs. Most reasure maps are like this – the map itself is often abstract and obscure, with all aspects of the map needing to be figured out by the PCs. They might assume that a certain icon represents hidden treasure, another represents a certain mountain, and so forth. The GM can use the consequences of these assumptions as springboards for adventure as much as their own devious plans and story hooks.
In the Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, maps took on two new roles not seen in the franchse before, and some of these were later following up in Spirit Tracks. The first was that because these games were set on the DS, you could actually make notes on certain maps, helping you solve puzzles. This meant that there were often maps and notes on walls that the player needed to look at, work out what they were for, and then apply properly. Did it look like a pathway through an area of the dungeon, or marks on an otherwise empty patch of Sea. This use of maps isn’t anything new to GMs though who often put such puzzles in games, and it’s not all that new to the franchise, except that it was now integrated more as part of the core gameplay.
A second, more interesting, use of maps is the classic standby – the treasure map. There have been an ever increasing number of secrets to explore in the Zelda games, and in the Phantom Hourglass this often resulted in discovering a treasure map. Upon finding one, a mark was placed on your sea chart (the world map) and if you sailed ther, you could salvage for treasure. It’s not all that inspirational, and in most cases this would easily be resolved by a Decipher Script skill check and then telling the PCs the location of the treasure. They travel there, do whatever to get the treasure, and the game moves on.
But why remove all the fun with a Decipher Script skill check? If the maps themselves were visible, then the players would then get a chance to be engaged in deciphering the puzzle and trying to figure out where the treasure is themselves, without needing a Decipher Script check. PCs with this skill might be able to use it to get the GM to provide a few hints, like maybe a few possible translations for some early landmarks on the trail of the treasure, and leave it to the players to figure out. This way, something simple becomes much more engaging, and even if the PCs do guess wrong, they are pretty sure to find something when they head off into the trackless wilderness following a random map in search of untold riches.
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February 15th, 2011 at 6:04 am
In Russia, it is impossible to find modern projection of the world. Only Mercator is used, which shows Russia as twice bigger as Africa – where it’s actually the other way around. On the world map in Russia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia are shown as fully independant countries – whereas they are not recognized by most other States.
Most countries nowadays use a world map which is centered on theirs. Apart of the traditional “Europe-centered” map of the world, with America on the left and Eurasia on the right, and the Pacific ocean cut in two (most often leaving out of the map all small Pacific island nations), Australians, Chinese, etc. use a world map centered on the Pacific, with Eurasia on the left, and America on the right – with the Atlantic ocean cut in two.
Some world maps in America show America in the middle, with Eurasia cut in two – Europe on the right, Asia on the left.
February 15th, 2011 at 10:35 am
In most places, you would have to order from a specialty store or website to get them. Some atlasses show a couple of different projections to the standard Mercator, Polar (north and south) being possibly the most common. More important (in real life) than having access to a different map is that you are aware of the inlfuance that the map you are used to has on your thinking and that of the people around you, and can factor that out when making decisions. In gaming terms, it’s exactly the opposite – ensuring that the appropriate bias IS built into the attitudes of the characters, and/or knowing how existing biases would affect their maps.
April 11th, 2011 at 4:06 am
[…] time ago, Mike Bourke wrote an article on maps and their construction – focusing on the psychology and intent of the map. He asked why the maps were made, because […]
September 11th, 2011 at 3:16 pm
Fascinating article – I have a real love of maps, going back to spending hours poring over the atlas at the age of 6.
I’ve made a few for my own RPG campaigns over the years and have never thought of the idea of using time rather than distance for the scale. Did you find it affected how you rendered the landscape? Did it affect the country/landscape outlines?
Cal
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September 11th, 2011 at 10:53 pm
Absolutely it affects how you render the landscape. It has the effect of compressing habitable locations so that they seem to be closer together than they really are, while difficult terrain expands to occupy a larger space on a map, making things appear farther away. The danger comes when people (inlcuding players) who are used to geographically-accurate maps get the idea that different places really ARE that far away – they can run out of food, get caught out in the open without shelter, or leave themselves vulnerable when someone finds a passage over, under, or through the previously-impassable, especilly if the GM doesn’t inform them that they have based their decisions on incorrect assumptions. A shortcut or new trade route literally brings formerly distant parts of the world closer together.
There are other benefits as well – proximity in such a map can also be equated to strength of political and economic significance. The closer you are to another town, city, or kingdom, the more heavily that town, city, or kingdom will weigh apon your own policies – either as allies or as enemies; trade overheads are smaller, making trade between the two locations more readily profitable, and so on.
June 13th, 2012 at 7:35 am
Of course how the maps show the something or even that they show it, reflects on people possessing them. In London in 1780 those aren’t “The United States” they’re the American colonies, and don’t you forget it. Having maps that disagree with the official story can be as bad as books that disagree. For example the Emperor rules from sea to sea, the area your maps shows as “Controlled by fractious tribes” can’t possibly be so.
Not to mention that certain information shouldn’t be in unapproved hands at all (e.g. passes into the kingdom that circumvent defenses, location of secret trade routes known only to merchant organizations, the location of things that certain people deny exist, placenames that bring up inconvenient facts). Even if the PCs are allowed this information, are they allowed to take it anywhere they want, risking it’s capture (“we’re losing eat the map!”). Knowledge is power, who said you’re allowed to have power, let alone share it with your friends?
Then again the authorities might take the attitude of Lord Melchet in Blackadder, who asked Blackadder to fill in details for the map of The Sea of Certain Death. The initial map, prepared by the best cartographers, is a completely blank sheet.
January 10th, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Interesting analysis-kudos. Just watched that episode of netflix though, and I think you may have missed one interesting part of this recursive loop. The soviet spy’s (blackwater) name was Galt. If you don’t ‘cross the t’ you have Gall, the guy who first presented a map based or area instead of distance from the equator.
January 10th, 2013 at 3:41 pm
You’re right, Eric – that had completely escaped me, though it’s certainly the sort of in-joke the writers of The West Wing liked to perpetrate. Thanks for the heads-up, and for the kind words.
May 10th, 2014 at 2:11 am
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