Making maps for Role Playing Games

by

Part 2: The Role of Maps in Role Playing Games

Maps in various styles and shapes have always played an integral part of Role Playing Games.From being simple aids along side the text in adventures, to better grasp the layout of a smalldungeon, to huge maps in the form of paintings covering a full wall intended to spur the imagination of gamers to make journeys across a realm you can only visit through your imagination.

DefinitionMost of us would probably say that a map is an illustration, but can any illustration be called amap? Hardly, and are all maps illustrations, that is an interesting question I will come back to later in this article. When you drill down to the basic definition, a map is essentially merely a graphic description of "a place". I use the term "a place", as all role players know, maps can be of terrain that are far beyond any real existing geography. Like any description it can be anything from simple to detailed and range from accurate to vivid, all depending on what youwant it to say. Maps just like texts have a purpose and a message of some kind.

Maps used it the real worlds have many different purposes, apart from the most common onehelping us find the way. Maps where and are often made to claim ownership of a piece of land, used in politics or research to describe a phenomenon. Maps used in RPG's can have different purposes as well. Take for example the piece of burned parchment the characters find in a dead wanderer lying in a ditch. It shows a winding path through the nearby mines down to.. and the map is destroyed from there. Still smelling of death and tainted with an Evilaura. That is a map used in game as a handout to serve the story of the game. Other maps are intended to be used outside the game in order to keep track of how many days it takes toride from a certain town to the keep and a the terrain along the way, that might affect the number of random encounters and what kind.

Game maps cover everything from a single room to the multi-verse of planes and their naturevaries a lot so they need to be looked at separately. Lets start with the most classic of RPG maps – the dungeon map.

Rooms and CorridorsWe have all seen them used them and most of us have in a way fallen in love with them – in many ways they are part of what defines RPG's – the dungeon map scribbled on square paper with each square representing 5ft of the game world. It is every GM's best friend and often made by the game master himself to illustrate the stage where the adventure are to be played out.

This type of map have stayed remarkably consistent over the years, kept the same simple style with a few symbols and basic geometry rooms. The reason for this is that is has to be easily both read and drawn in the heat of the game. Variations of it is used in printed adventure modules, by Game Masters as a preparation for the game, as well as during the game as a map to use along side miniatures, and at times redrawn by players to remember the way back out from the dangers of the dungeon. The scale is determined by the rules of the game and the standard of graph paper, but the 5 foot square are the norm set by D&D since its early editions.

Map styles can evolve for the strangest of reasons, remember those blue maps inside the covers of old modules. They seem to still have a following since there are still publishers who make blue versions of their dungeon maps. Have you ever thought of why publishers bothered to print the maps in blue? It was to try and make it harder to copy them, since earlycopy machines had a difficulty with light blue. So what was a way to try and fight illegal copying became a style in itself that some gamers seems to prefer. So tradition and nostalgia can be an important factor to consider when making any type of map, and if you're trying to inspire which is often the case with game maps it is even more important.

One of the big decisions to make when you choose the style of most game maps are inspire or inform. It is is hard to make a map that live up to one of those two goals, and to try and make a map that are both informative and inspirational is a balancing act indeed. Most maps are only trying to strike a high note in one of those two aspects. For example the map in the navigation display in your car for example is designed to deliver navigational information. A map of a Zoo or an amusement park on the other hand is often designed to inspire you to want to stay as longer (and spend more) to see all of it.

Maps used by GM's in planning and to remember the layout of a dungeon or a village is informational, but a player handout trying to steer the players towards a treasure in the dark woods is inspirational. When it comes to what you draw on the battle map its a compromise where time and your ability to draw quickly under the stern gaze of your impatient players probably is more important than inspiration vs. information concerns. But if you design maps with an intention to publish them, you need to think about the style of your map and its purpose.

Modern day gaming comes with a whole range of new tools like tiles or mats with printed rooms or terrain, virtual battlefields with all sorts of cool graphics shown on a monitor or projected onto the game table. Perhaps you do most or all of your gaming online even if you play traditional tabletop RPG's. This will open up endless possibilities for map use during your games, do you think that these modern tools will change the way we play? In some ways I think they are, which I discussed in my first article, but one of the things relevant for this discussion are the fact that it has never been easier to use lots of different maps of all sorts in your gaming.

Back into the dungeon again. My games are usually home brew so I need to come up with not only plots, but also what locations look like. When I have ideas I scribble and draw them on whatever is available then use my smart phone camera to put it in my Evernote account for later use.

When an encounter is coming up during my games and I need to a map to coordinate the upcoming event, I have an idea if possible sketched out in a note when I prepared for the game. It is usually a very simple map and function as a way to remember my idea as it is a real map. Below are an example of how they look.

This map is only a guideline that gets modified on the spot at the game table. I can't stress this enough, don't be afraid of improvising. My preparation sketches take this into account,

for instance I don't have scale on them. This so I refer to them as little as possible when I draw them in front of my players. If a room is five or six squares across matter not, in fact you can make things slightly larger if the party is bigger than intended. If the party is low on resources consider making the critical door opening bigger if they are pursued by a group of Trolls that stalks them from a previous encounter. In order to remember how things actually turned out, again use your smart phone camera and save the pictures along with your notes about the session.

While you draw – explain what you draw, that will ease the wait for the players and get everyone on board with fewer questions later. It takes skills to talk and draw at the same time, but it is well worth the investment since you can adjust the map as the discussion unfolds. At times I have changed what I intended to draw to better suit the expectations my players expressed during the chitchat while I was drawing. By sticking to a consistent mapping style the players learn what things are and it also speed things up and makes for less out of character questions.

To take pictures of your game table at times during an encounter are great both for preserving what you draw and as a way to remember a setup between sessions. I often keep adding details during the whole encounter that started out using a simple map, it can be anything from furniture and items to environmental things like lights and even a foul smell can be given a visual expression. Talk about it and even write on the battle-map, if you put it in Evernote it will even recognize text on it, great for finding a note again several years later. Practical constraints like tools, skills and time available will be something I will cover in more detail in a later article.

The big pictureSo what other maps besides maps of dungeons an other encounter locations are important for Role Players. Most of you who read this know I'm going to state what I'm most known for,campaign maps showing a large areas land, in my case the lands of Greyhawk. In my style ofgaming the campaign map is often more used than encounter maps. It is my tool to keep track of travel and an inspiration both for myself and for my players. When you travel in a RPG campaign, a journey is only as long as the number of things you experience while getting there.

So in order to make a journey epic a lot of things has to happen during the travel. Some of them are encounters friendly and hostile, but also encounters with the landscape itself, like the camping by the river where a big catfish is lurking just beneath the surface. I sometimes draw a place in front of the players even if I don't expect anything to happen. It gives me a location to add to my campaign notes, it makes the players remember better and it keeps them on their toes anticipating trouble. If you can pull of the trick of talking and draw at the same time its often worth the effort, visual thinkers are stimulated by using visual communication as well as the spoken word. It helps me as a visual thinker a lot when I'm running games.

In order to navigate in the real world we use a Road Atlas to plan a long drive along roads weare not familiar with. What could a Road atlas for a fantasy world look like?

Here is the area around Greyhawk in a style popular for American Road Maps. For Characters who has the pleasure of having a Dragon to fly around on would a map looking like this be ofmore use?

This is a map style that would look familiar to pilots showing the air space, hazards and landing places. Both these types of maps have evolved over a long time to work well for its use. Helping us navigate the road network when we drive or assist pilots in their job. What kind of map would be best suited to help run a Fantasy Role Playing Campaign?

Drivers need to know what number or name a road have, pilots needs to know what kind of regulations apply in the air he is about to enter. Game Masters need to know things like:

• Who if any rules the area the characters are in• Can you bring the horses and a wagon along the trail• What kind of monsters might stir in the night• Where can you get across the mountains• Can you find a ship to a certain port in the nearest coastal town• Where is the nearest city big enough to trade in a Dragon hide• How far do the Dwarfs patrol the land around their stronghold• What does the Druid shape-changed into an Air elemental see from up high

• Where will the party be stopped to pay toll and have to answer questions• The attacking soldiers what do their shields look like

These are some of the questions that come up during my play, either from myself or the players. I try to keep them in mind when I design my campaign map, trying to answer as many of them as possible while I try not to loose sight of the primary purpose of inspire both me and my players. Here is what I have come up with for a map style to try and satisfy my needs as a Game Master.

I use a kind of photo realistic terrain to try and convey what the land look like. Borders are color coded and of varying thickness for country province and local borders. The lines are styled differently to tell the character of the border, if it is hostile or marked or just halfway through the forest. By using color and line style in combination you can pack a lot of information without cluttering the map. You get the basic at a glance or you can study it more carefully to get a lot more.

Use different fonts to add to the style of the map, but also to tell the Alignment, Good and reasonably Neutral areas use the normal font but Evil areas are presented using more horror

like creepy fonts. Try not to over use it and think about readability, but a few things can standout and fantasy maps can take a bit of mystery.

To have one map to cover every need of a world map for a gaming world might sounds like the holy grail, but in reality there are lots of information suited for a map that will often need a map of its own. What I'm thinking of is maps to tell things like trade routes, religions and the spread of a certain monster. Maps of this kind are common everywhere, look in a newspaper and you see them being used to show income differences, party preferences or crime rates. They combine data with geography, and can be of good use in a fantasy world aswell as the real world. The spread of a mystical plague, monster infestation or Druidic influence and many other things can be told at a glance using maps. Look in a history book and you often see maps helping to explain events and structures. You need a simple base version of your campaign map that you can easily overlay with layers of colored information. If you work in a vector format you can have the realms already made into objects and you can just fill them with colors or gradients, this way you can crank out an informational map ina few minutes. They can be small since they don't need that much detail, and they often need to be able to fit alongside descriptive text.

Scale and GridFor my campaign map I wanted a scale that could cover everything from continental to the location of a village, giving enough details to discern what the landscape in general looked like in every area. By trial and error I worked out that roughly 50 miles per inch worked for me. Using 300 pixels per inch that will make each pixel about 300 yards. That scale works well for me in my style of running games, but experiment to see what works for you. Few professional maps comes near this level of detail for a good reason, to cover an entire campaign world in that detail are an enormous undertaking that will take a long time.

Some games have established scales and styles used for maps for that game. It might be a good idea to use what is already common, just like the 5ft per square standard for encounter maps.

In the real world a grid system is used so it is possible to tell exactly where everything is located. I haven't decided what kind of grid system I'm going to use on my Greyhawk maps, not even sure if I really want one. You need a grid system when you refer to a location in a text and want to be able to pin it down on a map. Personally I’m not too fond of precision in role playing maps, a rough estimate of how the distance between two town is enough. Other factors like weather, encounters and bad roads will determine the time it takes to get there anyway. And time itself is a very insignificant thing when you can just tell the players that they have just crossed the world in three months by just uttering that sentence. A lot of gamers like precision and therefore like maps with grids, so all mapmakers need to consider scale and grids.

Some game maps use hexes or squares for that purpose, and especially hexes have remainedpopular among gamers. One of the most elaborate systems for mapping a campaign world I have come across so far are the Albatross Hexbook System* by Jed McClure. It uses 6 different scales from planetary using an Icosahedral layout, via Kingdom and region scales

using hexes to local encounter maps using squares. It is a very elaborate interesting take on scale and grids that is well worth a study.

I will try and use three different scales in my RPG maps: 1. Overview maps 50 miles/inch (300 yards/pixel)2. Location maps 50/yards per inch (15ft/pixel)3. Encounter maps 5ft/inch

I think it will be enough for my needs, with Overview map to get the layout of the land, Location maps to cover layouts of cities and villages and other special places, and Encounter maps for streets, building interiors, dungeons and all the other places you want the players to experience in detail.

The FantasticThere will always be a need for maps outside of the ordinary in a role playing game, especially games with things like pocket planes and various other weird things. Is it possible or even desirable to map these places? Those familiar with settings like the Planescape Setting for D&D have seen some intriguing examples of mapping the fantastic. The setting designers and artists did a fantastic job of describing places like the City of Sigil both in text and illustration. Some of these realms are by their very nature probably impossible to map, some being to chaotic others featureless expanses yet others being warped in ways no projection can cover.

Projections are a topic I often get questions about and just like precision I usually try to dodge them. I know you need a way to portray the surface of a sphere onto a flat canvas. But the only time you really need one for a campaign map are to do the opposite, when you want to wrap the campaign map around a globe to see what it would look like. Modern day software can make that for me, and I can tweak the result until it looks like I want it to. So I haven't felt the need to figure out what projection that equal.

This was a sample of my thoughts around maps in Role Playing Games. I hope inspired you to think about how you use maps in your games and what you want them to look like. The next article will take you on a fantasy survey, and a first look at the practical side to maps in Role Playing Games.

Thank you for reading!

Comments and feedback are very welcome!You can reach me via email anna@ghmaps.net on my website at http://ghmaps.net or on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Greyhawkmaps

* http://albatrosspress.com/news/2011/11/10/the-hexbook-system.html