Sitting on the sofa, drinking Pu Er tea from Jinggu, and sweating. It’s late but we don’t have to work tomorrow.
I want to talk about how I like to communicate maps to players. I try to do this as a referee, and I would like the referees I play with to do the same. Sometimes I’m trying to map and it’s not possible because they’re skipping essential details, or deferring essential details, or losing time talking about non-essential details. So this is what I want to talk about: what I think are essential details, what I think is the best order to mention them, and what to skip and why.
Before we start, I want to talk about the reasons for mapping: why I like it as a referee, why I like it as a player, and what is sometimes said about mapping that doesn’t work for me.
I like players mapping as a referee because I don’t have to draw the map and I don’t have to show it. When I’m playing online, I don’t need to share a screen, and I don’t need to uncover the discovered parts. This frees my attention so I can talk about the things happening.
I’m totally honest about my reporting, though. If players don’t want to map, that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll tell them if they’ve seen this place before, whether this passage seems to leads back towards an area they already know, which corridor to take if they want to go back towards the exit, and so on. There’s no trickery involved, here.
I like to map as a player because it gives me something to do when the game slows down. Perhaps we’re too many people, or we’re undecided, or cautious – it sometimes happens that my mind wanders. I can’t keep hyperfocus and mapping gives me something to do instead of toying with dice, looking at the phone, doodling, or interrupting my fellow players.
People sometimes say that mapping allows for a part of the game where players look at their map and try to figure out where hidden rooms and secret doors might be. I find that the be a very small payoff. It’s interesting two or three times, but then it gets old. You can have the same experience by carefully uncovering a shared map online, and I find that’s not very exciting, either.
OK, that said, let’s talk about the language I like to use. The following examples assume a visibility of 30 feet using torches.
You’re in a 20 by 20 foot room. There’s a door in the northern part of the western wall. (Players open the door.) You see a corridor going west for at least 30 feet.
You’re in a 20 by 30 foot room, taller along the north–south axis. There’s a door in the middle of the western wall. (Players open the door.) You see a corridor going west for at least 30 feet.
You’re in a 20 by 30 foot room, taller along the north–south axis. There’s a door in the northern part of the western wall. (Players open the door.) You see a corridor going west. After 20 feet it turns south.
You’re in a 20 by 30 foot room, taller along the north–south axis. There’s a door in the northern part of the western wall. (Players open the door.) You see a corridor going west. After 20 feet there’s a corridor branching off to the south. The corridor seems to continue west.
You’re in a 20 by 30 foot room, taller along the north–south axis. There’s a door in the northern part of the western wall. (Players open the door.) You see a corridor going west. After 20 feet there’s a T-junction with the corridors going north and south.
You’re in a 20 by 30 foot room, taller along the north–south axis. There are two doors in the western wall, one in the northern part and one in the southern part. (Players open the northern door.) You see a corridor going west for at least 30 feet.
You’re in a 20 by 30 foot room, taller along the north–south axis. There’s a door in the middle of the eastern wall. This is the door you came through. There are two doors in the western wall, one in the northern part and one in the southern part. (Players open the northern door.) You see a corridor going west for at least 30 feet.
OK, enough examples. Let’s quickly go through the details of interest and the order they come in.
Monsters first! Surprise, initiative, reaction rolls, whatever needs to happen immediately comes first. But then we need to talk to the mapper.
How big is the room? Most of my rooms usually 20×20, 20×30, 30×20, or 30×30 feet. There’s of course the occasional hall that’s bigger, but many rooms are just that, and the only problem is describing it concisely.
How many doors are there? On which walls? Where along the wall? Which is the door we came through? How long are the corridors, where are the stairs, what about junctions and corners. Note how distances basically describe squares. “After 20 feet there’s a T-junction…” One confusion to avoid is “but to reach the junction I have to walk 30 feet…” In programming, there is a related source of bugs, the fence post problem: if you need a pole every ten feet and the fence is twenty feet long, you need three poles, not two. And in this case, since we know that we’re talking about a map consisting of squares, base your measurements on the squares.
Treasure, statues, columns, altars, wells, pools, curtains, everything else that is of no concern to mapping comes after mapping is done.
Note that many details don’t matter. In the following example, the room might look more interesting, but is it worth it?
You’re in a 20 by 30 foot room, taller along the north–south axis. There’s a door in the middle of the eastern wall. This is the door you came through. The north-eastern corner is cut off. There is a door in the middle of the western wall. (Players open the door.) You see a corridor going west for at least 30 feet.
Funny shapes are harder to communicate, and if they don’t bring an appropriate amount of joy to all involved, it’s a net loss. This is why my rooms might have a tiny bit more detail on the map, but it usually doesn’t matter whether I communicate it.
You’re in a 20 by 30 foot room, taller along the north–south axis. There’s a door in the middle of the eastern wall. This is the door you came through. There is a door in the northern part of the western wall. There’s also a niche in the southern part of the western wall. (Players open the northern door.) You see a corridor going west for at least 30 feet.
Does the niche bring joy? Does the niche have to be on the map? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. I usually don’t describe exact extra detail so that it can be mapped accurately.
There are three alcoves along the north wall.
There is a niche in the south-west corner, in the western wall.
Sometimes, things are more complicated.
You’re in a 20 by 30 foot room, taller along the north–south axis. There are two doors in the eastern wall, one in the northern part and one in the southern part. The northern door is the door you came through. You closed it behind you. There is a door in the northern part of the western wall. There’s also a corridor in the southern part of the western wall going west. (Players take a look.) The corridor goes west for at least 30 feet. (Players open the northern door.) You see another corridor going west for at least 30 feet.
Anyway. I think it’s all about having a structure for how you say things, and a benefit to using the same phrases over and over again. This makes communication between referee and mapper easier. You need to think about the map details that are worth communicating. Not everything is going to generate entertaining play at the table, so don’t spend time mapping it, don’t spend time talking about it.
Related:
#RPG #Maps
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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If you always give the East-West first you can skip the taller part of your description.
– Ruprecht 2022-07-01 05:24 UTC
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True. I’m not sure how well it would work in practice. I think we implicitly need something like “30 feet wide and 20 feet high” otherwise there will always be a bit of confusion remaining.
– Alex 2022-07-01 07:55 UTC
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I love this thank you for writing. I struggle with this
– Oliver 2022-07-01 18:07 UTC
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“I’m totally honest about my reporting, though. If players don’t want to map, that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll tell them if they’ve seen this place before, whether this passage seems to leads back towards an area they already know, which corridor to take if they want to go back towards the exit, and so on. There’s no trickery involved, here.”
This is so key in my experience.
– Sandra 2022-07-02 05:55 UTC
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I ended up writing a longer reply ♥
– Sandra 2022-07-02 07:29 UTC
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You talk a lot about hand gestures and I agree, when we sat around the tables I would do a lot of pointing, left and right, and there in the back, left again, lots of lines drawn in the air. But lately I’ve been trying to switch off video in online play. I don’t do it often, but I’m trying to move back to audio only. Looking at a bunch of faces is distracting, and it puts some focus on how people look, how they present themselves, what they do, and so on. And perhaps, in a small way, I am rebelling against YouTube, Twitch, and other visual media.
– Alex 2022-07-02 11:00 UTC
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Actually when I describe rooms its not east to west so much as (party facing into the room) its left to right distance, then depth.
– Ruprecht 2022-07-02 14:41 UTC
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Yeah, the problem I see there is that it makes communication for the mapper harder. Sure, it’s more of a first person perspective but it comes with a drawback.
– Alex 2022-07-02 15:23 UTC
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Looking at a bunch of faces is distracting, and it puts some focus on how people look, how they present themselves, what they do, and so on.
A huge amount of my play, I often express myself or my NPCs wordlessly ♥ Just to have an NPC sob or smile. Miss super hammy over here ♥ Oh! And our fights! This is gonna sound dorky but they’re super larpy! Drawing back bows, swinging swords, somatic components for spells etc.
Yeah, the problem I see there is that it makes communication for the mapper harder.
Here we are again with how words can have a lot of aspects to them.
Communication: What do I wanna communicate? What the character experiences? Then left-right makes that essier than south-north.
Mapper: The word “mapper”, as you know from your own mapper apps, and maybe if you like me have dabbled in some NES dev, in the sense of “accurately and quickly lay out the game board”, then you’re right, south-north is way more efficent. If the “Hero Quest” style game board map is your desired ludeme. Ss a game piece for conveniece, or as an accurate record of the expedition. But, if the ludeme you want instead is the experience of feet on flagstone, sounds and smells of the charnel or gold vault or fey rabbbit hole, the sweaty corsair hands on a piece of parchment with quill in hand, then left-right is so awesome, and up-down and back-forward too.
Harder: Maro once said that if a game designer were to make a lamp, they’d make the lamp difficult to turn on and off. Game design, unlike product design, can sometimes have a challenge aspect. Now, we don’ wanna go overboard with this. If the d20 weighed 20 lb, that would be cumbersome and detract from what we want the experience to be about. I don’t know about other game setups, but I want dice rolls to be unobtrusive, to give us our RNG quickly and get out of the way. So it’s easy to think that a map should fsll into that “keep it easy” category (especially since mapping is already super difficult and error prone and time consuming even when made as easy as humanly possible). But it comes back to what role as a ludeme we want the map to have. To what extent it’s diegetic or symbolic. To what extent it’s the territory—part of our interface to the game reality—or, as in my game: very much not.
I always wanna focus on what do you see, hear, smell, experience right here, right now. Who do you meet, who are you with, how do you feel about them.
Making the dice weigh 20 lb would make something that should be easy difficult. But, before Video Era, we’d have the rule that “you can take calls (because that’s usually an emergency, but you can’t text”. Making phones a li’l bit more difficult. Same, I feel about maps. I’m not saying it’s the case for you but I’ve seen mapper’s focus on mapping detract from the experience. Half listening, half doodling, not looking up.
We have the worlds fiddliest inventory and logistics rules, and I think it’s worth it, because decisions and challenges being brought on by them are moments when you’re facing the same difficulty as your character would. You and your character vulcan mindmeld for a moment. Same goals, same desires, same obstacles, same options. Whereas with north-south description, that completely bypasses the character’s ears and is directed only to the player.
Which is a legit way to play, and I’m not trying to be patronizing about that—again, what you want out of this thing can be so different and all legit—but I’m also saying that my way is legit and effective and deliberate.
– Sandra 2022-07-02 21:27 UTC
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As for players mapping, this is from Gus L.:
Traditionally a second puzzle was added to the basic one of learning a dungeon’s corridors; the puzzle of mapping the dungeon based on the GM’s descriptions. This might still be a fun challenge for the right players and the right GM, especially for an in person game. It’s difficult to manage online (it’s hard to show a map to a GM for clarification), is generally time consuming, and can be boring when the GM goes over every room’s dimensions and entrances as the first part of description, but in certain circumstances player mapping adds an interesting fear of getting lost to dungeon exploration. Mapping also makes certain players very excited because they have a strong incentive to create a record of the adventure, but it’s an acquired taste and providing mappable descriptions is an acquired skill for most GMs. – Exploration Play
– Alex 2022-09-27 16:24 UTC
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If you're interested in a video, here's Jon and Ted talking about on 3d6 Down The Line, In-Session Player Mapping - Tips & Techniques.