Quote from: Omega;812626Jan had maps of the tunnels under both colleges she attended.

I am pretty sure people have made maps for Treasure Trapped and other LARPs since.

I have maps from various games I've played. I've made maps of the tunnels while exploring Minecraft even and was one of the reasons I recreated Keep on the Borderlands there to get a feel of wandering the place.

As noted in another thread here. I do most of my maps on graph. But a player at a convention introduced me to an alternative method of charting the junctions and turns and not worrying about exact distance. So hed jot down a line and branches whenever they came to a division. The sort of thing an adventurer could easily do while the group decides which way to go.

Yes you can have a topological plan of a place nodes and branches etc but it wouldn't help with the situations described above where distances and direction are being called out in 5 feet increments and you are using a pen on paper not ink and parchment.
Like I say you can map stuff of course you can but mapping stuff is an activity that is quite easy when you are playing minecraft or Diablo at your computer or walking round some steam tunnels wearing a miner's lamp with a pad and a biro.

If you want to test yourself. Go to a place you have never been and map it in the dark as you sneak about. Then compare it to an actual map.

Also as an aside actual temples and so on are usually very simple. I have visited a vast number of temple complexes from Luxor to Bagan, Minos to Palenque and you can grab the sense of the layout very quickly. Unless the place is designed to be a labyrinth they generally make sense. Even with mazes you can't beat the shear exhileration of running through one and top speed without a care as to where you end up. My daughter and I used to do it whenever we found one.

Now the most confusing places I have ever been are definitely cities. The medina in Fez, bits of Venice, the one way system round the outsite of Florence, the multi level bits in HK, a lot of Toyko... we rarely map these or describe then in the same way we describe the classice dungeon. Why is that ?

I can agree with mapping being busywork and, if we're going to be pedantic, not a very realistic aspect of adventuring. And structures seldom get so big that you need anything but a crudely drawn layout to manoeuvre around in it.  

I still thoroughly enjoy drawing maps as a player. Oh, somebody put me out of my misery;)

Quote from: Von;811717Curiously enough, I've never had problems finding people who can bang two brain cells together, explore an environment, nibble at the edges of the prepared material, use everything on the character sheet including the lucky toad and jar of dead wasps, and generally force me to do some actual thinking.

Maybe it's something to do with actively recruiting players who aren't... lifestyle-choice gamers, for want of a better word. I'm not saying I don't want Gamer Scum at my table (I'd have to get up and leave for one thing), but I find groups wholly comprised of people who do more gaming than other stuff to be less interesting.

Yeah, this. I game with...well, normal people.

Quote from: robiswrong;812529I think it requires you to be as accurate with your descriptions as the people in the situation would be with their observations.

I would base the detail and amount of description on player inquiry, bar perhaps a bare minimum. If they didn't ask, they don't know - at the same time, if they don't ask, no need to bore them with details.

Quote from: jibbajibba;812647Now the most confusing places I have ever been are definitely cities. The medina in Fez, bits of Venice, the one way system round the outsite of Florence, the multi level bits in HK, a lot of Toyko... we rarely map these or describe then in the same way we describe the classice dungeon. Why is that ?

If I've understood the thread correctly, it's because the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, not Cities and Chimeras.

I'm afraid that, like our man Kiero, I am not inherently interested in dungeons, at least from the DM's perspective. I cut my teeth on urban-based WFRP adventuring and Vampire: the Masquerade, and while I'm not incapable of running a dungeon, I get bored unless it's at least as complex as a fantasy city and primarily navigated through social interaction and investigation without mechanics.

As a player I am far more dungeon-tolerant, since I'm grateful for the slackening of responsibility. The extent to which other people's fun is dependent on me boils down to "help a brother out" and "don't go being a twat now", rather than lining up all the bells, whistles, bread and circuses - which I enjoy as an activity, but which is a little tiring after fifteen years as Designated DM in my immediate circle.

ETA: And thank you, TristramEvans. You are clearly a person of taste and discretion.

Quote from: jibbajibba;812604I don't like mapping because its entirely unbelievable.

If you have ever Larped and have ever been in a cave with a candle and thought about getting out a sheet of partchment an ink well and a quill you will know what I mean.

In addition the act of remembering you saying north 35 feet, west 30 feet se 45 feet etc is absolutely nothing like actually walking that.

Yep, my own objection exactly.  I defy people to walk through an area and know precisely that they've gone 35 feet, that precisely the corridor's turned 30 degrees ... and as anyone who knows anything about mapping understands, so much as a 10% error rate will screw the result up unbelievably before too long.

The other objection is this.  So someone in the party is mapping.  That means the person has a parchment, quill and an inkwell, and a portable desk to keep it all steady (because, you know, those errors).  Someone else has to be holding a light source up for the person.

Someone explain to me how that doesn't turn into a complete ratfuck when sudden combat breaks out.  The mapper isn't, and can't, get ready for combat.  Any sudden movements and the map gets splattered.  Put it all down, slowly and carefully?  Great, that takes time -- and here's hoping no one backs over the desk or jostles it enough to spill that ink.  (And me, if I'm a bunch of bad guys, I like my crossbowman to aim at the fellow who's bending over and has his back to us, rather than at the front line fighter with the shield who's positioned to block anything aimed at him.)

Quote from: Ravenswing;812684Someone explain to me how that doesn't turn into a complete ratfuck when sudden combat breaks out.  The mapper isn't, and can't, get ready for combat.  Any sudden movements and the map gets splattered.  Put it all down, slowly and carefully?  Great, that takes time -- and here's hoping no one backs over the desk or jostles it enough to spill that ink.  (And me, if I'm a bunch of bad guys, I like my crossbowman to aim at the fellow who's bending over and has his back to us, rather than at the front line fighter with the shield who's positioned to block anything aimed at him.)

Use a book, in case of emergency, close book. Worst case you smudge it a bit and make an imprint on the next page. Still roughly usable. Ink, carry extra bottles to cover for the ones you break dropping them.

I alway thought the obsession over liquid ink funny.

Charcoal stick, chalk, crayon, pencil, pastel, metal-point, grease marker, etching, etc.

Vellum/skin, papyrus, clay, polished metal/stone, pressure sensitive dried leaves, wax tablet, etc.

Come now, this isn't hard. We haven't even tapped into fantasy yet.

Now I'm envisioning magical GPS and automapping demons...

Quote from: baragei;812665I can agree with mapping being busywork and, if we're going to be pedantic, not a very realistic aspect of adventuring. And structures seldom get so big that you need anything but a crudely drawn layout to manoeuvre around in it.

I played fantasy boffer LARPs for 15 years. Large dungeons are not common because they are labor intensive to setup. But I have played through a handful. In general memorization and keeping track of the wall under your right hand is sufficent. And there is usually some guy in the party that had a sixth sense about spatial relationships and was able to ferret out hidden rooms by instinct alone.

However with tabletop, you are deprived of the full sensory experience. So a lot of the cues are not present sitting around  table with pen and paper. Hence the need to compensate with mapping out on paper.

For my games I use miniatures, props and dwarven forge. I don't have enough dwarven forge to map out an entire dungeon level but I do have enough to map out a lot of it. I consider this a fair approximation of what I experienced while LARPing.

The closest thing I found how it work work as if you were really there is Roll20's dynamic lighting. They have a feature where you can block out a dungeon and assign individual light sources to characters and object. With it turned on, I have players get lost and separated without a dice roll in the dungeon something I never had happen before in a tabletop session.

Quote from: Will;812707Now I'm envisioning magical GPS and automapping demons...

Probably already done by Terry Pratchett.

Mapping dungeons is important, because when the party gets lost in the bowels of a dungeon because they didn't map and start freaking out that they're going to die down there is awesome...

I usually have my PCs take chalk along... for various reasons but primarily to mark trees and walls so we can find our way back.

Quote from: Simlasa;812734I usually have my PCs take chalk along... for various reasons but primarily to mark trees and walls so we can find our way back.

see that actually works

But only a certain sort of PC will do that.

I can't see a reckless swashbuckler or a fearless barbarian type carefully marking their way through a dungeon for example. Likewise a really arrogant mage might well beleive that they have no need for just mundane activities.

Quote from: Will;812707Now I'm envisioning magical GPS and automapping demons...

It would be very unsurprising. Somebody (Old Geezer may be able to tell us who) enjoyed giving out too much copper for the players to carry out, and some mage (presumably Tenser) dealt with it by researching Tenser's Floating Disk.

Quote from: Planet Algol;812733Mapping dungeons is important, because when the party gets lost in the bowels of a dungeon because they didn't map and start freaking out that they're going to die down there is awesome...

As I have noted before. I was surprised at how easy it was to get turned around and lost in something as relatively simple as the Caves of Chaos. I built ti scale the Keep on the Borderlands in Minecraft so I could actually walk around the place.

And in MC itself. Easy to get lost in the abandoned mines and forts too. Or even the basic caves as some can really branch and twist.