Do your players draw maps?

[Mark Skarr]

Originally Posted by Anders

For some reason my players refuse to draw proper maps. They want me to do it instead.

What about your players?

I'd have to ask:
"maps for what?"

Do they make maps while dungeon delving? No, because we don't play those types of games.

My sister will, spontaneously, make world maps for other games, and, on occasion, when a game lasts in one world long enough (and we don't have a map), she'll give it a shot.

But, really, your question is too vague.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I long ago switched to drawing the map as GM, on the grounds that the PCs can see their environment, which gives them far better information than verbal descriptions from me, and saves a lot of time and frustration. The quality of the maps does depend on how much of a hurry they're in, and if anyone has Cartography skill.

For games in real-world settings, the characters usually have a reasonably accurate map from in-game sources, and I'll just screen-share the relevant bit of an online map.

Originally Posted by Anthony

Maps are a classic case of 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. The easiest way to give the players sufficient information to draw a map is... draw the map yourself.

This works fine for a tactical map, especially if you are doing miniatures based combat - and, as you say, out of combat for a modern setting where PCs have access to online maps or an Ordnance Survey landranger or something.
For survival horror, or exploration type games, especially dungeon crawling, figuring out the maps for themselves is part of the fun. Make those points spent on navigation and cartography skills, or advantages like absolute direction count for something if they want help. And anyone who has done Officer or NCO training can tell you that sketching a good map from ground ain't easy...

[Anders]

Thank you for the input.

I was thinking about dungeon maps, not overland maps.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

The only catch is that sometimes just handing the players a map gives them too much information. The most obvious case of this is when the risk of getting lost is important to the adventure. Also, conspicuous "blank" areas on a map can tip players off to a secret area that's intended to be difficult to find—imagine two rooms appear to be about the same size, but if you measured them one would turn out to be smaller for seemingly no good reason, because the "smaller" room has a false wall concealing a treasure cache.

Draw your map not to scale, and make it clear to the players it's not to scale. You can also put false information on the map, much as one might put false information on a blueprint if intending to make a secret room - maybe instead of a suspicious void, their map shows a path leading there from elsewhere but - too bad, so sad - the ceiling has collapsed over where the path should be, so the characters can't get past (or there's some other apparent obstruction). Naturally, their characters might come across the secret door that leads into that area, but it won't be because the players were using OOC knowledge to guide them.

If you're rather clever, you could also do it by making the areas where encounters take place (and thus you use a battlemat, making it clear to the players what the dimensions actually are) be drawn to scale, but then have the areas where the players aren't going to see the exact dimensions be not to scale, and do it in a fashion that makes everything fit. So, instead of a room that's 50% larger on the map than during the fight that takes place there, or one that has a mysterious void adjacent to it, you just draw the hallway leading up to it longer than it really is. This scheme probably doesn't work that well if you use wandering monsters, of course (unless you still only have the encounters occur in properly-mapped areas).

Of course, mysterious voids are a non-issue if you're dealing with a cavern or similar rather than a manmade structure.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Varyon

If you're rather clever, you could also do it by making the areas where encounters take place (and thus you use a battlemat, making it clear to the players what the dimensions actually are) be drawn to scale, but then have the areas where the players aren't going to see the exact dimensions be not to scale, and do it in a fashion that makes everything fit. So, instead of a room that's 50% larger on the map than during the fight that takes place there, or one that has a mysterious void adjacent to it, you just draw the hallway leading up to it longer than it really is. This scheme probably doesn't work that well if you use wandering monsters, of course (unless you still only have the encounters occur in properly-mapped areas).

Yeah. You could also wait to draw a room in dry-erase marker on your battle mat until a fight starts.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Yeah. You could also wait to draw a room in dry-erase marker on your battle mat until a fight starts.

I assumed that was the case to start with, it's just that you run into a problem if the room you draw (that is, the room as it actually is) doesn't match up with the room on the map (where you made it larger than it really is, so that there isn't some big blank area on the map that happens to be about the right size for a secret treasure room). So, you draw the map with the room as it appears to be, but have it actually in a shifted location (via a longer-than-actual hallway leading up to it, the room on the other side being shifted, etc) so that there's no big blank spot on the map. The issue with wandering monsters is that if you get into a fight when in one of the areas that are purposefully wrong on the map. If the map shows a 30 yard long hallway, then when you get into a fight and the GM draws it out it turns out to only be 20 yards long, you're going to suspect something is up.

Personally, I'd be more inclined to just make a map that isn't to scale - maybe just make all the rooms smaller on the map than they really are, so there are voids all over the place and the players can't know if this void is actually a hidden room or just the map being poorly-drawn.

Another option is to just map out the visible sections normally and have them all fit properly, without bothering to worry about where the secret rooms actually fit. If anyone calls you out, just shrug and say "I guess the map isn't quite right." Or invoke otherworldly-geometries, pocket dimensions, etc as necessary.

[Anaraxes]

I'll sketch maps in play, mostly for my own benefit, focused more on connectivity than exact measurements so as to spot that empty area begging for a secret door. The goal is to have some idea where we've been in relation to where other things are, and not to forget spots (if it's a dungeon-like area). We pretty much never do the old-skool D&D "the corridor goes 20 feet, then there's a door on the left and the corridor opens up on the right. The corridor you're in goes 30' beyond that and dead-ends into a T intersection" kind of mapping.

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Anders

For some reason my players refuse to draw proper maps. They want me to do it instead.

What about your players?

Much the same. The exception being when they want to experience "True Old School Dungeon Crawling." The form described in Moldvay basic.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anders

Thank you for the input.

I was thinking about dungeon maps, not overland maps.

I haven't run anything with a dungeon in decades. I've run a couple of things with perilous dark domains that sort of approximated dungeons, but their geometry was fairly subjective.

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

The only catch is that sometimes just handing the players a map gives them too much information.

Among my group's war stories:

This uninhabited wasteland forest must be important -- it has a map.



Dude, you're getting married on a hexgrid.