…short version: DO IT!
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Confessions Of A Dungeon Master
Maps, Or, Not Quite On A Road To Nowhere
Of all the jobs connected to DMing/GMing, creating maps has always been one of my favorites. Back in the early days, it was me, my colored pencils, graph paper and my very VERY limited artistic talent. Now, it’s me and any one of a half dozen mapping programs, thus sparing my players having to figure out if something is a tree or a green owlbear.
In the early days, my maps were quite detailed. I had distances down pat, natural features locked in place, cities and towns in specific places on specific routes, etc. Dungeons, abandoned towers, haunted houses, monster lairs…all of them were placed on the map and that was that. A nice big map with everything in it’s place. The PC’s were in charge of drawing their own version of the map as they traveled from hither to yon. That’s how it was back in the RPG Stone Age.
But then problems would crop up. They would mishear me or I’d misspeak, causing there map to be off. The poor mapper might get distracted and not hear something important. Dungeons were the worst, because of the “my left, your right” thing. Often, finding that their map was wrong would bring the game to a stop while I read off stuff and they made changes.
And that is why I eventually stopped worrying about map details and just drew a simplified GM’s map for myself. I also started basing my maps on real maps, particularly my beloved Northern California. The terrain is not 100% accurate (the Sutter Buttes are about 3 times as long and twice as tall), but my big city of Ekarris is in Oakland’s place, Geyserville is the Elvenwood, heart of High Elf territory, and if I tell the players that going from Ekarris to Dwarvenhold is the same as going from Oakland to Emigrant Gap, they have a pretty good idea of the distance.
Sure, there’s a big fucking thousand foot deep, mile wide canyon slicing across the land from the Mountains of the Sun (Sierra Nevada Range) to the Trollfang Mountains (Coast Range), but that’s okay because I didn’t need Oroville or Willows anyway.
And yeah the Central Valley just south of the Gap is covered by the Blackwood, while north of the Gap it’s the foul and twisted Goblinwood. Starting about San Jose and running almost to the Sierras, you’ve got the Greenwood, home of the Wood Elves. The point is, I can tell players where things are in relation to a real map and they can know pretty well the distance.
Of course, there are smaller details, many of which got added over decades of play, but they are all subject to changes. If this series has the Halfling Vale near Modesto, next series, it may be closer to Stockton or even up near Sacramento. Monster lairs, dungeons, wizard towers, Old Dave the Knowledgeable Hermit…that’s all stuff I drop in wherever it needs to be.
The same real world/drop in philosophy goes for other lands/countries/cities/whatever. I’ve dropped the Valley of the Mist (Gateway to Ravenloft!) into all sorts of places. I have about 3 different dragon lair maps that I use over and over with minor variations. Same goes for small towns and villages, which is why Toobleberg is just Troll’s Doom turned sideways and with different shop names.
So what I’m getting at here, is that I learned to approach mapping with the same “make it easy on myself” mindset that I use for pretty much everything I do in running RPGs.
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