Having Your Players Create Maps
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- Опубликовано: 30 июн 2024
- Maps are a staple part of fantasy adventure. But how do you get your players to create them as they explore?
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00:00 Intro
00:40 Mapping in Three Styles
06:28 Virtual Visual Aids
08:10 The Value of Player Mapping
#DungeonsAndDragons #DnD #TTRPG #Animatic 
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To deal with the line of sight issue when revealing rooms as you go, just have a conversation with your players. Tell them "sometimes the map of the current room will show an alcove or side chamber that you cannot see until you explore. Please choose your actions accordingly." Not all players will be willing (or able!) to do that, but it's worked well for me. If that doesn't work well for your group, then you can always carve your maps up into finer pieces. To create a surprise, don't draw monsters or treasures on the map. Use tokens or minis that can be placed on the map when those things come into sight.
in the case of roll20, you can just leave tokens on the GM layer where players cant see.
My method: drawing on the grid. I use two mediums; a dry erase (or wet erase) battle mat so I can quick sketch things or erase as I go, or if I want a permanent map I use gift wrapping paper that has a 1" grid on the back (intended to help with wrapping gifts, but works perfectly for dungeoneering)
Giving the group a rough map early in the campaign can get the group into the habit of using maps. First session, the group needs to go into a mine, have a miner give them a basic map that was quickly drawn in front of them.
One "map" type I used for a VTT game I used for most of our non combat scenarios during that campaign.
Rather than a map of any given city or other location I found a nice piece of art that resembled what I had in mind, added a small frame and a location name and sometimes a little town motto, turning each location into a postcard.
I then had a big board with a lot of empty black space around it that got populated with portraits of important people living in that city or any important location or landmark that wasn't worth its own "map" but served a purpose or became re-occuring. Very much a variant of the mind map.
My hope was for the players to draw out red lines and make connections like a big conspiracy theory board as the people and places unfolded. That didn't happen as I never told them too and there wasn't a need for it most of the time but I think it was appreciated as several notes were written down next to people and places instead of the usual drawings of random or lewd additions to the more traditional maps.
I went the oposite way of making it easier. I gave them a blank piece of paper and a pen and just told them when the tunnels of the cave system went left or right. It had multiple loops and they split the party, so when they got back toghether they had to work out what parts may be the same.
Was realy fun too.
The way we do it in my game right now relies on a characters backstory as a 'waybreaker'. It makes it easier for me as DM because I'm practicing improve a bit more this campaign. Here's how we do it.
In prep, I make a relational map instead of the real one, and then the cartographer is the one making the real map. I'll make adjustments, but I'm watching her map it and basically designing the look of the room (unless it's a puzzle room or what not) as we go. Then, what she draws is what exists.
I do the same with monsters. One player is in charge of noting resistances, Weaknesses, AC, etc.
Then, to Gameify it a bit more, they can sell their maps and bestiary for profit.
Line and circle maps, while not super informative, are SO Easy and rudimentary for anyone to Make that we even find them drawn on the back of old Roman shields xD
It's easy if you've been to the physical location. Just from descriptions though...
@@mnm1273 Das true!
Each circle has a name, a feature and a note about the area. Each line has a distance and direction attached!
From romastan; beautiful views, good food, salt sea air, traveled two hundred miles north (via the dotted line) to Ravennastinople; large cliff sides, braying donkeys, big statues!
@@PhilosoShysGameChannel That's lovely.
@@mnm1273 we like to think so!
A Lotta people forget that top down maps BASICALLY didn't exist in any accuracy before the modern era... So back in the day that's how they worked stuff out! ^^
4th option, the DM draws it a little bit at a time. Consider the value of maps, as a player/DM. They become your dungeons later on. The best rule for Player mapping - as a DM, don't over complicate your dungeon. Diagonal walls and rounds seem really cool, but they are a nightmare to describe as the DM and map as the Player.
And don't even get me started on trying to draw/describe areas on a map that have cave walls built into them with natural curves and irregular shapes.
Do a mystery dungeon where you erase as they move out
@@scoots291 Played in a Gygaxian dungeon once where the rooms rotated when you left them. Cool idea, not fun practically. Ultimately we used our dwarf to tunnel out.
I like using modular tiles. I have rooms I made in a program printed onto cardstock and a piece of butcher's paper. The players draw the halls and doors on the butcher paper, and when they come onto new rooms, I hand them the matching tile. They stay in place using poster tack. Stickers mark open doors and windows (yard sale circles; green open door, yellow secret door found, blue window, red trap trigger, etc). At the end of the session, the paper is rolled up and ready for the next session.
Remeber kids, if a relational map is confusing, it is a maze.
It's a "feature"
Elite murderhobos need some advanced trickery for that to work.
You need to give them subtle optical illusions like a downward slope so gentle they risk missing it, or a wallpaper that disguises how the corridor bends off subtly.
This was such a good video. I feel like most videos I encounter ends up with someone just explaining the one way they do it, so having someone go over several methods at once was very helpful.
Talespire is truely a gift for anything map related for DND
I love the tile-mapping method for "fog of war!" This is a really awesome alternative to when my friends are like "Uhh... this is not immersive" when I tell them to draw an entire burning town beyond the theater of the mind's imagination that they haven't explored/saved/ruined further (yes, the third option happened in my third one-shot).
I love each of these tips, and now see the various potentials for them. I'll definitely try using them all in my first campaign for seven of my friends!
Towns can be described using rougher building blocks like city wards, burroughs and blocks.
I do hand drawn modular maps. With rooms going away once they're out of sight for both practical and immersive reasons. It fits how you'd see stuff. With a bit of grey area (I don't strictly take them away the instant they don't see it, just kind of when I remember). I'd definetly cut up a bendy corridor. Bends are part of the stress.
Most rooms are a visual unit anyway.
If you are mapping dungeons, have an adventuring guild pay to copy the maps!
An easy way I found to get my players to draw the map on my sunless citadel game as they went was, I used two printed maps, the printed version with all the details, and the player version was just an outline drawing obstacles and rooms, keeping secret rooms hidden
That circle and line map style looks fantastic - really useful to quickly get a plan out! Will definitely be using that!
Yes but also you need to be careful cause the abstraction can lead to confusion. Speaking from experience from university math with graphs
Thanks for the tip! I was mostly planning on using it for a quick reference guide for myself, both for map building and controlling play. I struggle to get started with creating dungeons, so a framework like that that I could draw at random then flesh out will be really useful!
That style of diagram is almost identical to a bubble diagram, used by architects irl to distribute the rooms of a building before actually drawing the floor plans, so yeah I highly recommend that as a middle point in map making or to keep spacial relations ordered in quick maps
I was thinking the same thing!
@@lyooyiylklykyokyklky Yeah it's definitely a good idea especially since it allows you to design the rooms seperately and then rearange them as you like. You could also use the lines to write an estimate of the length of the pathway or similar stuff to mark down additional information that you want to use later
Relational maps are great for designing your own dungeon.
Especially if you are using multiple levels, branching paths, hidden passages, or loops.
You can plan out routes, connections, shortcuts etc. without muddling up spatial relations too much. Include only notable rooms. And then you can translate the relational map into a spatial map afterwards. Here you can add additional rooms, corridors, or staircases where needed to make everything else fit together spatially.
The hardest thing I found to make map for was the surface, like open roads, forests, desert. Basically any none closed environment. That fear they’d take the fighting off from the prepared space space made me nervous. But adding a convenient patch of thorn shrubs, boulders, fallen trees, and pound edges certainly help. I even gave them cover bonuses if they stand right nest to these natural half walls across from things that can shoot at them.
If you want to see some examples of the circle & line maps, go look up the maps from old text based adventure games like Zork.
I never ask my players to draw out maps themselves (but sometimes they do anyway) and I don't use VTTs, but I have used the handout tile style you describe to great effect!
As for ideas to get players into exploration, Pathfinder 2 has a pretty decent designed Hexploration system.
It is a optional system in the GMG. But used in both the 2E Kingmaker remake and the Fist of the Ruby Phoenix, I think.
This is a (very) “unexplored” topic in D&D! Would love to see more on this if possible. My players groan at the very thought of having to undertake mapping. Since 4th Edition, they have grown very accustomed to a VTT visualizing everything for them. And I agree, there should be much more advice in the rulebooks for this. Wouldn’t that be great?
I do things pretty old school, in the "describe and draw" model you describe. I have plenty of graph paper, which I hand out to players if they wish--they never *need* to map if they don't want to, they just probably *should*--and encourage them to ask plenty of questions if something's not clicking.
Having ran and played in old school style tournament dungeons we would usually make multiple maps. We were not supposed to have the GM correct player errors outside GM error for mapping.
The circle and line map was used for generic guidance through the dungeon so we didn't get lost this important in dungeons that have portals and verticality. A detailed map like a normal map was also often done because gaps in our map could reveal secret rooms and doors which could give us more treasure and win the tournament.
Darn, I was hoping this would be a video about roping my players into drawing the dungeon maps FOR me.
I just doodle as they go along. The end result is rarely pretty to look at but gives me (and players) room to improv :)
Having players draw the map can be tricky but it can also solve so many problems!
I find it's one less thing for me to do, adds to the feeling that they are exploring and best of all it's helped me see where I need to improve with my descriptions!
If they just aren't listening... 🤷♂too bad! That's your map now! 😂
But if they are listening and I see that it was my fault for not explaining better I'll point out what needs to be altered and it's really helped me describe things better!
I ran a totally random dungeon once...
Dice and random tables for everything in the dungeon and even the tunnels and chambers.
Told the players that they needed to map it. They didn't, until they tried to turn around to get out and found a blank wall.
Wherever they didn't map, I hadn't mapped either so I just had it magically seal off the tunnels past what was on the battlemap in the middle of the table.
It took them several sessions before there was a random stairs out.
Miss seeing stories and advice from you guys.
I scribed a 1" grid in a dry erase board, and draw in the current area on an appropriate scale. When they leave that area, I erase the board and draw the new area.
Past that, if the PCs fail to map accurately, or at all, that's on them. If they get lost, they have to find their way back out the old-fashioned way.
Having said that, as a player, unless our group agrees that we want to be completists and ferret out every single secret door and such, I tend to make maps more like flow charts than the map the DM has,
I don’t remember which video introduced me to this channel, but I love how you guys approach making these vids
I had a game where the whole campaign was basically just to create a world map (they'd landed on a newly discovered island chain). Every time they set out, I'd roll a die behind the screen to see how much they deviated from their path, modified by the player actions/abilities/etc. So, they'd head out due west for 3 days, but end up heading west north west. They'd still write that location down due east from where they set off. It was great seeing them try to figure out which places weren't exactly where they thought they were as they built up the map more, and after they'd finished the main story (ancient lich got locked away for a thousand years), I showed them the /actual/ gods-eye-view map. Ended up with some places shockingly close and others embarrassingly far off
For the last many years (several before the pandemic, even) I've GMed primarily online, so have used VTTs for my mapping and using fog of war to reveal it. Before then, when I primarily did it in person I would rely on theater of the mind for most areas, but pull out a wet/dry erase battle mat (whichever was on hand) and draw out an area for combat or other tense situations where placement was critical. The last in person game I GMed was a one shot taking place on a train, so I drew out the train cars on index cards I taped together (2 cards per train car). I had two versions, one inside and one on top, so they had additional movement options during the adventure.
I'm not sure quite what I'll do for the next time I actually GM in person, as my friends all live in other states as I've moved since the last in person game I ran. I could see using the dry/wet erase battle mat again, but I might instead make dungeon tiles. Either sturdy, generic ones to set up into different configurations, or make the maps digitally like I've grown used to for VTT use and then printing the areas out to put down as they enter each area. Or, I might decide to do a cross between mapped and theater of the mind, and use either the Ultimate Dungeon Tile from Dungeon Craft, or zones like are done in Index Card RPG.
I'm a visual person. I'm also a "standing" DM. When I describe a room, I'm usually gesturing to show shapes and locations. I might even walk about the room were in such that a PC will know where two objects might be in relation to each other.
7:03 Well, conditionally pretty well.
This can be a _huge_ performance impact, especially on big maps. Or if there is a per-player exploration map (rather then group shared exploration map).
So that is a major caveat to those systems.
Mini handouts for each room is perfect for a puzzle dungeon I'm working on where each door is a portal that leads to a room where significant events have taken place in the campaign so far (some laced with heightened threats hehe). I was trying to figure out how I would present this, but a patchwork dungeon is perfect!
I think every gaming group has a favourite way of doing this. I've had groups who never mapped anything and groups who did so to the fines detail.
Overall, the computer does offer very fine tools and can be a great assistance for a DM. There is however one major and gigantic drawback to using IT at the table. It will inevitably make the players, especially those who have grown up with video games, treat the RPG as if it were a video game, in effect killing the RPG. Many games which adopt younger (-35) players face that problem. The Video gaming industry has told them that Diablo, Skyrim, Baldur's Gate etc. are RPGs and that is obviously a lie. You can not play an RPG alone "against" a computer. RPGs are, at their core, social interactions and a video game is not, can not be.
Confronted with computer graphics and computer-based tactical combat the players inevitably revert to the same set of thoughts they use when playing a computer game.
It's always a good day when Master the Dungeon uploads 😄
Kinda weird that this is the only video on this topic. thanks for the valuable info!
I love mapping as a player. I often, as a GM, will draw a reference as I go, though, as I don’t want to rely on a player that enjoys mapping 😊
The DM Describing and the players drawing whatever they understood was how it was done in the old school. And it was really fun.
I'm not saying that that is the "right" way to do it. I'm just saying that that can be fun too (even though requires attention from the players and good descriptions by the DM).
Old school core books even encouraged complex Dungeons to be used (as opposed to avoiding making them complex). But that was because D&D was very different back then and a lot about mapping (and stealth and resource management and negotiation).
Excellent video as always. 10 out of 10.
I hope you upload videos again. It's been 9 months doce the last one. You guys rock!!!😊
PS: I have just gone to your website. I now realize you have been posting great content there even though not uploading videos. I'll be sure to check your website often. Thanks and congrats 🎉.
Hey so, inspired by this, I was having a blast earlier this evening making my own dungeon tiles, and I just gotta say, the illustrations you guys bang out are wonderful. Like, it's common to see art improve over time; I'm watching a video you made about crafting healing potions from over a year ago, and the art is still banger. Well done. Love the channel. Linking to my two friends.
I make so much use out of Dungeondraft and Owlbear Rodeo I don't think I'd be able to run a game without them.
When I first started playing D&D in the late 90s the DM insisted we make the maps. He explained there should always be a mapper and a scribe within the player group and this always stuck with me.
one tip if you want to make a map but not spoil it to your players, and you a are in a face to face campaing, draw the map and them cover the section you want with black paper and tape, uncover the sections as you go
It would be interesting to have a "Mapping" skill for characters. It'd work sort of like a perspetion or knowledge skills to ask questions to the GM about places you've already been and the DM would answer based on the roll. DMs could also "twist" the maps of characters that rolled really poorly or "fix" and add extra details the maps of players whose characters rolled well. It would also be a kind of "craft" skill. By the end of an adveture a map done with consistently high rolls, could be sold for quite the price or be requested by NPCs as part of a quest objective.
This is amazing!
I had a DM require us to map as we went. I had 1/4" grid graphing paper and my engineering scales out to make the map. I did a lot better than expected (the DM in question is my best friend and somehow forgot I went to college for construction technology) , but it really slowed the game down and while I didn't mind flexing my ability to hand draw blueprints, it was really crummy to do while trying to play. We opted out of it after a few sessions as he had maps from the module.
What animal is this?
*has a long neck
*has a beak
*has 2 rows of teeth (one set in its beak and one set on it's tounge)
*has soulless eyes
*wings that are larger then its body
*has both feathers and scales
*has webbed clawed feet
*honks and hisses
*both water proof and cold resistant
If you said it's a Canadian goose then your right.
Great video!
That bird thing was a DINOSAUR in MY dungeon!
i love your videos sm
A great was to age paper like maps is to lightly and heavily in spots brush on cold black coffee on white blank paper and you can rip and lightly singe the edges with a lighter or smoke with a match. As soon as it looks like it's going to catch on fire blow on it and pull the fire away. Also if you fold a large piece of writing paper up tight and wash it in the pocket of blue jeans and dry it in the dryer the paper comes out like that soft map quality sort. Wash on whatever wash cycle or setting you normally do for jeans. Just some fun cheap tips so you don't have to buy the fancy looking paper that's prestressed.
Also player made maps are GOLD mines of adventure hooks!
(Standing just outside the city gate)
Player 1: So where did we have to go?
Player 2: A place called Death Hill.
P1: Ok! ... Which way do we go again??
P2: Right! ... Umm let me get the map out
(whips out a slightly detailed area map)
Gate Guard walks up: Hey where did you get that?
P2: Oh I drew it myself! (Proud af)
GG: Nice! Can you what a little? My Captain will have a couple questions for you. Might be willing to buy that off of you too! 😇
(player greed tripped)
P1 & P2: SURE!
(a few hours later)
P2: huh what!?!? (slowly wakes up with a headache)
P1: Finally up. Good.
P2: Where the @#$ are we?
P1: City prison. Charged as Traitors to the empire.... 🤬
You describe the room as it appears, starting with the basics. You see through a door facing north. The room extends two squares west, one square east and three squares forward. On the third easternmost square, there is a closed door also facing east.
They jot down the basic information, and you can give them further details. The hammering you heard turns out to be a golem methodically smashing up an abandoned homeless camp, there's nylon sleeping bags and empty kerosene cans flying. It does not appear to notice you.
If they want further details, they are free to ask and even encouraged to do so. Most things will not be obvious at the first basic glance to get. "Are the sleeping bags modern or older than the 80's?" "Is there any bodies being mangled?"
I'm really looking forward to my players exploring Castle Ravenloft next session and trying to have them understand where they are without spoilers, /sarcasm lol
At 1:24 I said out loud "why yes, yes I am." I'm also a DM. Edit: Ah yea - great content by the way!
oh I thought this was going to be about the players making the world map.
I believe Perilous Wilds has a section in it about the players all creating a regional world map together. They all take turns to add something to the region. Once done, the adventures start.
Basically it helps cement the idea that the player characters are from this region so of course these characters should know something about where they grew up.
Love the Combat Cross at 9:00! I was thinking the way Castlevania's maps appear as you explore & you have to idea what may lie ahead until you do through a door. Always wondering if you're near a save or should fall back to heal.
I've experienced the Roll20 fog of war with line of sight lighting & it's very cool but features like this are often a premium feature, so my budgeted group created a basic equivalent: black squares! Upload simple black shapes to cover parts of the dungeon & delete them as the party progresses through. Works really well if you have a separate GM map layer.
Gygax was always in favor of letting the players do it and figure it out for themselves. (But he was a bit of a sadist.) I like some of these ideas, especially the flowchart style for lazy mappers, and only handing out the map room by room once they've explored it. But imo, player maps generally shouldn't be exact or even accurate, unless they spend a lot of time carefully measuring etc. And even then, their mapping should raise questions and/or have room for improvement. My favorite exception to this was the original Ravenloft (I6) in which our DM carefully drew on our map each of the isometric areas as we entered them, just to keep the feel of the incredible maps in the module.
I'm currently building my world for a new group. I'm debating on sketching a main map with some note cards and letting the players know that the Cartographers Guild and some other potential points of buy/sale or even NPC adventurers might buy their more updated maps of some areas. I haven't decided on a scavengers guild yet, but there may be a market for diving a dungeon after the adventurers have removed what they want, especially if carry capacity is limited. Perhaps a colonizing organization might see the location as a place to put an outpost or some such.
I'd love a video about Foundry VTT! :D
5:34 I see you, Dark Souls 3 reference
My group of famous for Very Accurate Maps (TM). So accurate. You might even be able to use the map to know... something... about what the map describes. Maybe.
I'd say the point of making the players draw the maps is so there will be discrepancies between their map and the actual dungeon layout, it makes the maps more in line with how maps were made by people exploring new lands anyway, those weren't accurate either.
I had an idea for something non dnd but, here goes.
In the west, is the badlands. Think wild west but with magic. Many of the factions arr tribalistic or outlaws.
In the East is a combination of imperial japan and feudal china.
And the central continent is undergoing a revolution after being relatively isolated from the rest of the world. Things like sailboats, ketches, caravels, frigates, flintlocks, muskets, and other advanced weaponry is finally coming to fruition after a relatively long darkage.
All the continents are part of the world Aethir and are entirely seperate and isolated from eachother.
Magic is only really present in the West, but it surges throughout the entire world nonetheless.
Idk I just thought it was a cool idea.
Oh also its not ENTIRELY seperated but the seas are very hard to traverse.
If I tried do to a relational map my players would become triggered because there would be no corridors for them to bottleneck every single combat encounter through
This has changed so much since we moved to roll20.
Players of call of ctuhullu (no maps allowed, no minis allowed, only character sheets and dices) will never have this problem
my DM's campaigns are too lacking in the adventure aspect for this to be a worthwhile endeaver
I'm having a player make the region map.
It's working well so far, I just kind of add little corrections here and there.
Are there any good videos on that subject?
It seems similar, but different enough that I'd love some specific pointers
I've been toying with the idea with making maps a little bit unreliable, especially when it comes to ancient crypts and dungeons. With how old dungeons tend to be, things are bound to change. Maybe the map indicates a room that has had it's doorway collapse from a cave in, or a band of goblins boarded up a tunnel after an encounter with something nasty. I have yet to try it, being new to DMing and all, but i imagine that it can both give dungeons a bit of history or even inspire creative thinking.
Have y'all ever made any adventure modules? It would be sweet to see all your good dungeon design and adventure advice integrated into an adventure to buy.
Do you have any ideas on how to run an escape room scenario?
Next time I have a dungeon for my players, I think I'm going to use the board tiles from Betrayal at House on the Hill, but have it set up before hand
*yes* this is what ive been saying for agess!
Hi sorry for been 2m late ❤️
great video but the audio is really poorly mixed. New mic?
yeah but why would you do this? i think dms are responisble for drawing the map and players are responsible for their tokens and speel area of efects
Back in the old days players drawing the map was the default expectation. The GM would describe the dimensions of the rooms and corridors, and it was up for the players to represent them accurately on paper so that they could see where they were exploring.
@@tuomasronnberg5244 just seems like more trouble than its worth
@@tuomasronnberg5244 back in old games, there were just pen and paper plus dices
@@levigreene9451 I think it was part of the fun. Drawing the map gave you a feeling that you were really exploring the place and not just following along a theme park ride, if that makes sense?
Would like to point out to method 1:
If you are running a dungeon, that is supposed to be rather large and labyrinth in nature. Dont correct your players on their map.
It reminds me of one game that absolutely sucked. Mapping wasn't the only reason, but one of. It wasn't even dungeon, but something like a point and click quest, with the main difference of us not being able to properly see the map. We got lost pretty quickly, and GM not just refused to do anything about it but also mocked us for it. And yes, we played online and the GM had his map in vtt, and I'm pretty sure he could use a fog of war, but he just refused to let us in.
The animated background bums show an important feature of making your own map.
"There should be a door here." Yeah, you're right. There should be a door there. Maybe a room in this weird "empty space" you now see on your map. Get to searching.
Distance is important. If you don't understand that room A is next to room B, you can't anticipate that the beholder in B will hear you tipping and dragging furniture around and get more pissed than its usual murderously xenophobic mood.
*promo sm* 🙄
But to be honest, I don't think this is fun, sounds like a class or homework. People come to the table to have fun, not to experience indentured slavery again. If any of my masters told me to do this, I would be playing golf instead.