Alternate Maps Interpretation

Maps are clearly a staple of D&D games from the very beginning (just look at Hippo’s campaign notes), but it’s clear from posts like this that a lot of people in the D&D community take too narrow of a view of the limitations of maps as a creative medium. I am here to help! As gorgeous as they are, maps don’t need to look like this or this for you to use them in your game! I’ll go over five possible types of map you can use that subvert some of the limitations of ‘traditional’ maps. These ideas are by no means intended to disparage traditional maps (which I love) and are not the limits of what you can do with non-traditional maps (please comment below if you have any additional techniques), I just want to spread ideas to those who might benefit from them! Let’s start with…

Sketch Essentials

The ‘Sketch Essentials’ map is a map that focuses on the essentials of maps to the exclusion of non-essential detail and visual fidelity. Basically, it’s a sketch that’s as simple as possible—a map for people who don’t envy cartographers. To make a good Sketch Essentials map, you should consider what’s important to the people using it. If it’s a battlemap, draw a few lines for walls, some dotted lines for obstacles or cover, and scribble a dark area for hazards. If it’s a town map, a few boxes for important buildings and lines for important roads is enough. For a world map, straight lines for roads, squiggly lines for coast, dots for cities, zigzags for mountains, and dark areas for ‘wild’ areas like forest or desert. Distances don’t need to be exact, nor do all details need to be filled in. If you ever reach a point where you’re thinking “it doesn’t matter what goes here, I don’t care”, then stop filling in the map. If you need your canvas to expand, simply keep moving in the direction you need to move—the simplicity of this technique helps prevent the rigidity associated with traditional battlemaps. Sketch Essentials maps exist to fill the gap between theater of the mind and full battlemaps. It helps act as a memory aid-- so players aren’t required to memorize the relative positions of at least a dozen separate entities on a turn by turn basis (something some people literally cannot do). It does so without constraining the imagination, if you make sure to specify that the map does not include everything that exists in the in-game space (the map is not the territory). In fact, I recommend you add detail to the map as it becomes relevant. This brings me to the next map type…

Here Be Dragons

The ‘Here Be Dragons’ map is simply an incomplete map, based on Dungeon World’s encouragement to ‘Draw Maps, Leave Blanks’. Unlike a Sketch Essentials map, it isn’t predicated on being a sketch, though it certainly can be. Further, while the Sketch Essentials map are predicated on the idea that they intend to efficiently and easily convey critical information, the Here Be Dragons map is based on the idea of leaving room for future creativity. Completed maps can feel creatively limiting if they are based on the idea that all critical information is already contained within them, so for those who don’t want to be creatively restrained, I recommend that you simply not complete the map. Instead, simply write vague notions of what might be there (Doom lurks here!) and allow the greater context of events within your game inform exactly what ‘Doom’ is. This technique works especially well with diegetic maps (i.e. maps that your player’s characters have, not that the players have). Pre-modern maps were often highly incomplete and inaccurate, especially in the wild places in which adventure is typically found. This also allows you to tidily recton geography if you need to—the mapmapker simply got it wrong! If you don’t feel interested in going through the process of making an even half-complete map, try out the…

Player-Build World

The ‘Player-Build World’ map neatly subcontracts the work of making a map out to your players. There are plenty of games that allow for collaborative worldbuilding (Microscope is the classic example) and some that allow for collaborative map building. The Quiet Year produces maps like the example for this map type, which are the sort of thing that you’re aiming for with the Player-Build World. You can use either of these games without change (they’re both very cool games) or you can do something simpler, like giving a sector of the map to each player, perhaps with certain preconditions based on elements you want to include in your world. I recommend you do all this as part of session zero (before the game starts) to minimize perverse incentives on the part of your players. Perhaps you can ask directed questions of specific players using the document found here as a guide. Collating these questions into a cohesive whole is work, of course, but a different kind of work from the open-ended creativity necessary to turn an empty canvas into a complete map. Perhaps all this seems like too much work—if so, let me present the…

Point-to-Point

The simplest possible form (even simpler than the Sketch Essentials) of map is the Point-to-Point map. While this type of map needs some modification to work for battlemaps, it’s elegant in its simplicity for all other levels of detail. You simply mark every meaningful point of interest (i.e. the ones you care about) on the map as a dot or other icon. You then draw lines between any two points that have common routes of travel between them and mark each line with a travel time (not a distance, a time). If you’re feeling fancy, you can mark the routes with notes like “hazardous” and “bandits”. For battlemaps, it may help to create ‘zones’ that are boxes with labels like ‘parlor’ and ‘crater’, which should have a similar effect. This method is not only the simplest possible way to communicate essential information to players about travel time, it’s also the most plausible form of map. Pre-modern societies did not have detailed surveys. What information they had was in linear maps like the above, listing coastal towns or towns on a road in order. These maps could also represent the information received in the form of questions asked at taverns and waystations along the route, giving you free reign to update the map as the players explore the world. This system, while very simple to use and create, runs into issues if the players acquire non-standard methods of transportation. The solution is fairly easy to implement—create another web of travel times that the players discover as they try to travel from point to point. Why do travel times matter? So time constraints can exist, of course! Why should time constraints exist? Drama and challenge—the twin dragons of good D&D design can be fed a great feast through the implementation of a dramatic countdown! I generally think that information helps make drama and challenge, and that’s what these maps have tried to focus on. All the examples I’ve listed so far have been attempts at simplification while still retaining essential information. The maps I create, however, take a different approach with the…

Data Dump

One of the biggest misconceptions that repel people from mapmaking is the belief that their maps must look pretty. They do not. The ‘Data Dump’ method won’t be pretty, but in my personal experience, it offers the players an unparalleled ability to strategize and manipulate geography to their advantage in their quest. The important thing to remember when creating a Data Dump map is to only include information that is relevant to the players. If you’re a habitual worldbuilder, you can get bogged down in details that may be interesting to you but may prove to be distractions to the players. Here, a cohesive understanding of the central tensions of your campaign is essential. Marking out the wealth levels of various cities is a waste of time in a high fantasy battle to control the magical ley lines of the world, but it’s very valuable information in a campaign where the players are engaged in a cutthroat battle between merchant guilds. A Data Dump map is not appropriate to every campaign, but in games that are highly political, it can help introduce meaningful complexity and enable the players to engage in complex and dramatic problem solving in a way that enriches your campaign.

Hopefully this can help dispel some of the stress associated with using maps in your D&D game. Not every map needs to be a work of art! Your maps don’t need to be one-to-one representation of your simulated reality and they don’t even need to be complete or made by you! Remember, all you need is to find what works for your game. There’s no one method that’s perfect for everyone, but if you shut out a type of medium completely, you can end up missing out. Non-cartographers out there, give this method a try! If you have any techniques that may add to this plethora of mapping strategies, put them in the comments!

Originally posted here on September 25, 2019.