2017-02-20 Dungeon Mapping

Noisms recently wrote Elementary Principles of Dungeon Drawing and his first point is this: “Snazzy weird shapes and arrangements of rooms look good on paper but in my experience are really hard to explain at the table without ending up with the DM doing lots of drawing, which defeats the purpose of having players do the mapping.”

Elementary Principles of Dungeon Drawing

The longer I run _Castle of the Mad Archmage_, the more I agree with this assessment.

If I can’t communicate it at the table in a reasonable amount of time, it’s a waste of time.

Check out the maps of Castle of the Mad Archmage for an example of what I’m talking about. This is the absolute limit of what I’m willing to communicate to my players.

the maps of Castle of the Mad Archmage

I get questions by the mapper because they want to get it right and everybody just zones out after “The one in the north western face heads westerly…” it’s not a question of difficulty in describing it. It’s a question of time taken to describe it before the game breaks down.

One could argue about verisimilitude, or how the referee should be drawing maps, or I could just *simplify all the maps*. After all, it’s a game for all of us to enjoy at the table.

Generally speaking though, I’ve found myself drifting towards node-based dungeon maps. The question of mapping now has a simple answer: draw a beautiful map to represent the nodes and entertain the referee. That’s it.

Back in 2010 I wrote about quality dungeons. Here are some of the points I made regarding the map:

quality dungeons

Good looking maps. A good looking map appeals to the referee and says “Pick me! Pick me!” Hard to say what this is: an interesting density?
Notes on the map itself make it easier to get an overview of the place.
Multiple entrances for players to choose from.
Multiple exits for referees to append to.
A map that suggests multiple goals. Rescue prisoner here, kill boss there, find hidden treasure over there. That adds replayability. That is, the map must have visually distinct areas: prison cells, water ways, treasure chests, large caves, small caves, throne rooms.)
A map key that is easy to skim by using bold keywords for monsters and other stuff of prime importance to players.
A setup that can be exploited in combat by tactically minded players. A bottleneck, a ledge, a bridge, a fortified position, a sally port.
An opportunity to spy on enemies for the stealthily minded players. A murder hole, a grate, a tiny tunnel, a scrying ball.

Recent examples from my own games trying to strike a balance between these points and my free time:

Crown of Neptune

Garaskis Monastery

Cloud Giants vs. Djinn

2022-06-30 How to communicate dungeon maps to players

#RPG #Maps

Comments

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You have a ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE on the end of the “quality dungeons” link that makes it point to a missing page (that the Wiki offers to create for you).

– Derek 2017-02-23 05:22 UTC

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Thanks! This is not the first time it happened. I’m not sure who appends these – I suspect it’s something about the G+ app on my phone.

– AlexSchroeder 2017-02-23 05:45 UTC

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cecil howe writes a long argument about maps as art, maps as a tool to get you excited and into the groove, and how flowchart and pointcrawls might put you into the mind set of meetings, accounting and maybe taxes, more or less. It’s long, but I think he’s right.

a long argument about maps as art

– AlexSchroeder 2017-04-25 22:17 UTC