If I said I just don't enjoy making dungeon mapping a fixture of the games I run?
My experience is that it tends to slow down play a bit more than I like because the player in charge of mapping wants to put everything on hold while she draws everything just to specifications?
There has to be a faster way short of just giving the players a copy of the dungeon map directly.
I realize nobody reads this blog, but if you are actually reading it I'd appreciate suggestions.
5 comments:
i hate making maps and mapping. i make a basic map, get the rough dimensions down. my main bonus is that i have two experienced friends as players. we've played together for fifteen years, both also DM. i give one the map and let him do the mapping for the party. share the load.
How much emphasis are you putting on finding secret doors & passages? If it's minimal, then your players may benefit from having simple node-based mapping ("exits are n, s, w, this room contains $foo and $bar.") No details about exact dimensions are necessary then.
An alternate option is to have dungeons which miraculously all line up on a grid and have remarkably regular rooms :)
(Also, hi - it's awesome to see other young folks in the OSR halls!)
Allandaros, that's an excellent suggestion. Designing dungeons like a flowchart actually seems like a really good solution if you're not using a battle grid-- and I'm not. I'll have to remember that in the future!
(It really is, isn't it? Sometimes I feel like outside of my group I must the only B/X fan in her twenties.)
Or you, as DM, can draw *their* map as you speak.
You could make copious use of treasure maps. Or just give them, or let them buy a map, but making sure that it doesn't have everything on it. That way you can still have some mysteries and they can still map a bit as they discover the hidden areas and missing sections in the map you gave them.
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