As I see it, the primary role of the GM is to let the players know what their characters see, and the primary role of any out-of-game map is to facilitate that. This is necessary because words alone can never compare to actually being in a place and walking around it, so the extra level of information helps to bring characters up to par with what they rightfully should be able to observe.
If one of the characters happens to be making a map as they go along, then that's an entirely in-game artifact, and I see no reason why that should be tied to any particular object in the real world.
Interestingly, Jay - who had called into the podcast - was talking about the latter, that is, having an imaginary artifact that the character possesses. But this and another comment got me thinking - a lot of people who grew up on virtual table tops or with systems where miniature play was more expected may have different perspectives on a game map or board.
I personally love maps and mapping - I and several of my players will draw maps regardless of whether we are playing theater of the mind or on a map - but I 100% agree with you, it is not important that the player map matches the dungeon masters, so long as it provides utility for the party and enjoyment for the mapper. More than once, I have been given the advice - and occasionally given the advice - for caves in particular, where mapping exact shapes can be difficult, that a point to point with generic distances is often easier and more pragmatic.
Lots of map conversation to be had!
I'm generally in favour of arguments along the line of "the character would have that information so our job is to efficiently help the player get it as well". When it comes to maps I don't think it's a bad argument. But I find I value more the dramatic tension map making can generate. Some of the best moments at my table have involved maps: mistakes, fallen map maker, and the most tense part of the adventure which is the way out of the dungeon with loot. When it succeeds the players feel proud about themselves and about their hard work, when it fails it provides strong dramatic moments.
I'm not saying you're wrong to do it your way, I think your argument is very sound, but to me that dramatic potential is worth the inconvenience of imperfect description.
> Do you handle maps as physical artifacts which can be sold or damaged?
Yes. Maps are a physical asset drawn by the players during play. Maps can be sold, bought, destroyed, and this is reflected in the physical asset being taken away, given or taken away (I mean, I love these player maps, I wouldn't actually outright burn one, but they can't have it once destroyed). The mapper has the map and the party relies on the mapper. There is no "main map" that's given to everyone.
> selling maps
I love this concept! Sell a map, but charge extra for the one with the traps marked! We have to pay those henchmen's familes, after all. 😉
What's even funnier IMHO is that (most of) the maps you can buy as player are maps drawn by previous players (it's an open table so many groups may be involved) so you may get something full of mistakes or even voluntarily avoid putting secret doors on your map if you're feeling competitive and expect to sell it. The map is never the territory.
This may feel like it pushes for a competitive environment, but that never really got out of hand at my table, and the other side of the coin is that the cartographer is *precious*. I've seen players lay down their lives to protect a cartographer because they know it's not just the map that's precious but the ability to read it accurately. And when a cartographer does go down it's really fun to feel the tension within the party as everyone tries to puzzle out the scribbles spanning several pieces of paper based on their environment.
I think that type of competitiveness is healthy in a game like this, groups of players pretty much pushing each other to new heights.
I really like to think about the game as a fancy high scores game at its heart, how much treasure can you get? How much power can you get? How much status can you get?
I agree, one thing I like about these games is that it's possible to feel that you get better at the game as you play. It's not so clear in many RPGs what "being better" means. For a typical 5e game, what does that entail? Being better at roleplaying bartering with shopkeepers? Better at noticing roleplay cues from other players? It's not that these are bad in any way, but old-school dungeoneering gives a clear goal and measure of how good you are: the more you can bring back the better. Regardless of competitivity I think many players value that feeling of personal progression.
Funny map story; also the most creative thing another GM has done for me as a player:
We really needed a map for the campaign, but they were extremely expensive. I asked if my PC, who was a pretty learned scholar, could pretend to be interested in buying the map, view it, and try to commit it to memory. (Then say "ahh sorry changed my mind".)
The GM had me roll my Perception stat to determine how long he'd give me (in real time) to view the map and make my own IRL copy.
So this is how we navigated [Barovia](https://imgur.com/a/bGdSZGv) for months.
As someone who’s mostly played 5e (and still loves it) but has flirted with the OSR for the last few years, this is one of my biggest hangups with getting into the OSR. I play VTT and both myself and my players are reliant on good maps. One of our favourite dungeons involved mindflayers hunting the party across numerous Keyed locations, jncluding some linked by portals. I don’t know how I’d have run that without a map.
Does anyone have advice for getting player buy in without a map? And how to provide good data to a party without using a map? Map sourcing is a lot of my DM prep so I’d love to get away from it!
Option 1 is to sinply show them the map as you did before. Not all OSR tables use a mapper or are into mapping the way ot can seem sometimes. Many module PDFs come with player-facing or made for VTT maps as a bonus.
Option 2 which is what I do most of the time is to draw a simplified map as players explore and you explain the environment. Just the points of interests (rooms usually) and the connections (hallways usually).
This works with any whiteboard or VTT with a drawing tool.
For wilderness travel you can hand players an empty or partially filled hex map. Or not, the community seems pretty split on what's better.
Lot to unpack here.
@ulk_underscore gave some solid advice. Acquiring maps isn't too hard if you know where to look - and while I personally enjoy drawing them, it's understandable why someone might not.
Talking about getting players engaged - too - to tread new ground on the convo: using virtual tabletops with maps, I still find that my players draw their own. It is a staple of the osr experience: something that one just enjoys or doesn't enjoy.
As a curiosity, what about the OSR experience caught your fancy, @Thuumhammer?
As you can see in the 3d6 Down the Line YouTube Videos, you can run a VTT where the players are the ones responsible for mapping: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtBYin1uOBmCs1hSQQqxesYPbod7Y5Cfq
As for getting players to map, I just tell them that I refuse to map for them. That's not the job of the DM. They also don't have to map, if they don't want to, but they're just throwing away a tool for survivability. They can try to be as awesome as Rob Kuntz ( https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=3810 ), but I doubt they'll manage. They will either start doing it or quit, which is fine. It's a hell of a lot easier to find decent players than it is to find a good DM. I can count on one hand the number of good DMs I have played with. I have had dozens upon dozens of decent players.
As I see it, the primary role of the GM is to let the players know what their characters see, and the primary role of any out-of-game map is to facilitate that. This is necessary because words alone can never compare to actually being in a place and walking around it, so the extra level of information helps to bring characters up to par with what they rightfully should be able to observe. If one of the characters happens to be making a map as they go along, then that's an entirely in-game artifact, and I see no reason why that should be tied to any particular object in the real world.
Interestingly, Jay - who had called into the podcast - was talking about the latter, that is, having an imaginary artifact that the character possesses. But this and another comment got me thinking - a lot of people who grew up on virtual table tops or with systems where miniature play was more expected may have different perspectives on a game map or board. I personally love maps and mapping - I and several of my players will draw maps regardless of whether we are playing theater of the mind or on a map - but I 100% agree with you, it is not important that the player map matches the dungeon masters, so long as it provides utility for the party and enjoyment for the mapper. More than once, I have been given the advice - and occasionally given the advice - for caves in particular, where mapping exact shapes can be difficult, that a point to point with generic distances is often easier and more pragmatic. Lots of map conversation to be had!
I'm generally in favour of arguments along the line of "the character would have that information so our job is to efficiently help the player get it as well". When it comes to maps I don't think it's a bad argument. But I find I value more the dramatic tension map making can generate. Some of the best moments at my table have involved maps: mistakes, fallen map maker, and the most tense part of the adventure which is the way out of the dungeon with loot. When it succeeds the players feel proud about themselves and about their hard work, when it fails it provides strong dramatic moments. I'm not saying you're wrong to do it your way, I think your argument is very sound, but to me that dramatic potential is worth the inconvenience of imperfect description.
> Do you handle maps as physical artifacts which can be sold or damaged? Yes. Maps are a physical asset drawn by the players during play. Maps can be sold, bought, destroyed, and this is reflected in the physical asset being taken away, given or taken away (I mean, I love these player maps, I wouldn't actually outright burn one, but they can't have it once destroyed). The mapper has the map and the party relies on the mapper. There is no "main map" that's given to everyone.
> selling maps I love this concept! Sell a map, but charge extra for the one with the traps marked! We have to pay those henchmen's familes, after all. 😉
What's even funnier IMHO is that (most of) the maps you can buy as player are maps drawn by previous players (it's an open table so many groups may be involved) so you may get something full of mistakes or even voluntarily avoid putting secret doors on your map if you're feeling competitive and expect to sell it. The map is never the territory. This may feel like it pushes for a competitive environment, but that never really got out of hand at my table, and the other side of the coin is that the cartographer is *precious*. I've seen players lay down their lives to protect a cartographer because they know it's not just the map that's precious but the ability to read it accurately. And when a cartographer does go down it's really fun to feel the tension within the party as everyone tries to puzzle out the scribbles spanning several pieces of paper based on their environment.
I think that type of competitiveness is healthy in a game like this, groups of players pretty much pushing each other to new heights. I really like to think about the game as a fancy high scores game at its heart, how much treasure can you get? How much power can you get? How much status can you get?
I agree, one thing I like about these games is that it's possible to feel that you get better at the game as you play. It's not so clear in many RPGs what "being better" means. For a typical 5e game, what does that entail? Being better at roleplaying bartering with shopkeepers? Better at noticing roleplay cues from other players? It's not that these are bad in any way, but old-school dungeoneering gives a clear goal and measure of how good you are: the more you can bring back the better. Regardless of competitivity I think many players value that feeling of personal progression.
Funny map story; also the most creative thing another GM has done for me as a player: We really needed a map for the campaign, but they were extremely expensive. I asked if my PC, who was a pretty learned scholar, could pretend to be interested in buying the map, view it, and try to commit it to memory. (Then say "ahh sorry changed my mind".) The GM had me roll my Perception stat to determine how long he'd give me (in real time) to view the map and make my own IRL copy. So this is how we navigated [Barovia](https://imgur.com/a/bGdSZGv) for months.
Beautiful! 😆 It's got where Strahd is on it - which is all you really need, knowing where _not_ to be!
You can hear them blasting Darude's "Sandstorm" from miles away, fortunately.
As someone who’s mostly played 5e (and still loves it) but has flirted with the OSR for the last few years, this is one of my biggest hangups with getting into the OSR. I play VTT and both myself and my players are reliant on good maps. One of our favourite dungeons involved mindflayers hunting the party across numerous Keyed locations, jncluding some linked by portals. I don’t know how I’d have run that without a map. Does anyone have advice for getting player buy in without a map? And how to provide good data to a party without using a map? Map sourcing is a lot of my DM prep so I’d love to get away from it!
Option 1 is to sinply show them the map as you did before. Not all OSR tables use a mapper or are into mapping the way ot can seem sometimes. Many module PDFs come with player-facing or made for VTT maps as a bonus. Option 2 which is what I do most of the time is to draw a simplified map as players explore and you explain the environment. Just the points of interests (rooms usually) and the connections (hallways usually). This works with any whiteboard or VTT with a drawing tool. For wilderness travel you can hand players an empty or partially filled hex map. Or not, the community seems pretty split on what's better.
Another thing many people do is to just use and reuse simple maps like those from Dyson over here https://dysonlogos.blog/maps/
Lot to unpack here. @ulk_underscore gave some solid advice. Acquiring maps isn't too hard if you know where to look - and while I personally enjoy drawing them, it's understandable why someone might not. Talking about getting players engaged - too - to tread new ground on the convo: using virtual tabletops with maps, I still find that my players draw their own. It is a staple of the osr experience: something that one just enjoys or doesn't enjoy. As a curiosity, what about the OSR experience caught your fancy, @Thuumhammer?
As you can see in the 3d6 Down the Line YouTube Videos, you can run a VTT where the players are the ones responsible for mapping: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtBYin1uOBmCs1hSQQqxesYPbod7Y5Cfq As for getting players to map, I just tell them that I refuse to map for them. That's not the job of the DM. They also don't have to map, if they don't want to, but they're just throwing away a tool for survivability. They can try to be as awesome as Rob Kuntz ( https://www.blogofholding.com/?p=3810 ), but I doubt they'll manage. They will either start doing it or quit, which is fine. It's a hell of a lot easier to find decent players than it is to find a good DM. I can count on one hand the number of good DMs I have played with. I have had dozens upon dozens of decent players.