How much map do we need?

[Yora]

A few days ago I decided to give my setting a slightly different tone and (for reasons I can no longer recall) started to think of a different way of how to arrange the various countries and people on a map. This morning I decided to make a proper image based on my sketches and after just 20 minutes of work I got this.

http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/map0228-768x576.jpg

And I am feeling that this is really all the detail I am ever going to need.
Which obviously is a completely different story from something like this (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_SniTwfm5BwE/SwGdTsvt47I/AAAAAAAABzM/k7La6NHPP-o/s1600/Faerun+Map+3rd+Edition.jpg).

When I started worldbuilding 10 years ago for an RPG campaign, it seemed the obvious approach to make a world map like that of the Forgotten Realms with a level of detail that is similar to satellite imaging. Later on I got interested in sandbox campaigns, which are usually tied very strongly to very high resolution hex maps where you can pinpoint the precise location of anything within an area 6 miles across. It allows you to have adventures in which the players are trying to find a hidden location in the wilderness, get lost, and backtrack, while always keeping track of their remaining food supplies. Which then looks like this (http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/northhex.png).
Even with three different settings, I never got anywhere close to actually completing one.

I also got interested in rules-light games with a strong focus on stories and NPC interaction, and many of these don't really have much of a map at all. And for the last year and a half my interest has been mostly on writing episodic Sword & Sorcery stories and those don't really have maps at all. Sometimes you get something like this (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GOhBgtyO7qA/UPD1flxc3nI/AAAAAAAADLA/SHo2xbnkQW8/s1600/Howard-Hyborian+Age+Map+in+Color.jpg). And think of non-open world videogames: Even in RPGs where you travel to many different countries, the maps tend to be very bare bones. The travel between locations is simply skipped and the story or game picks up at the point where the characters are already at their destination.

All this got me thinking that maybe detailed maps are very much overrated. There are cases where you really need them, like a high resolution terrain map of a single island or valley for a hexcrawl exploration, or a map that shows all the rivers, roads, cities, and castles in a game about invading armies. But when you have something that is much more "scene based" and it doesn't really matter how many miles or days a journey precisely takes, I feel there isn't really much need for any detail on the map. If you have a map at all.

How much detail are you putting on your maps and what is your intended use for them?

[OttoVonBigby]

13 years ago I started with a map pretty much like the one you embedded. Now it looks more like that 3rd edition Faerun map. Same AutoREALM file, though. :smallbiggrin:

What's funny is that each campaign I've run in my setting is map-dependent to widely varying degrees. I guess, as a DM, it's nice to *have* an idea of the geographical/mercantile/cultural realities of distant lands even if they only exist as foundations for my own understanding of the setting. I find it helps me come up with ideas.

Now, as a player, the degree to which I'd care about the map would have a lot to do with how well I understood (or could reliably make suppositions about) the type of setting it is. "Bog-standard fantasy" implies not so much "wartime geopolitical considerations" and more "dungeons conveniently located near villages," so I'd adjust my expectations as a player accordingly.

But in any case, I feel like everybody has to have a sense of how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B, and that figure can't really change much, since you never know what the future of a campaign might hold. I've tried it the Excel spreadsheet way -- literally not having any campaign map at all, just recorded distances -- and I hated it. I guess maybe my DMing style, and that of my DMs, hasn't really been "scene-based."

[gtwucla]

I think if you're ever questioning how much map you "need?" Then I think the answer is whatever gets your story/campaign by. For someone like me though a map is something that you use for inspiration and its something you just enjoy looking at. Basically what I'm saying is I look at a map and imagine what's happening there, so the more details the better. If its a map without any details then there's less to imagine.

As a side note though, there's a difference between a map that sparks the imagination and one that is a jumble of different settings seemingly glued together all haphazardly like. I've always thought Faerun was one of the latter. I get a lot more out of this:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=73338&d=1431573728

and there's a lot less going on as far as names and cordoned off areas.

[Yora]

Now that's a really fascinating map. The decorations on it look very great, but when you break it down to what actual information is on it, it's really pretty bare bones. If you would trace the coastlines and smooth them out a bit, mark the mountainous regions and then add all the writing, I think it probably would look pretty similar to mine.

In actual information content and practical usefulness, it's not very different, but of course it looks much, much better and evocative.

The map that I posted I would never include in any kind of publication. It just looks awful. It would first require a great beautification treatment, for the reasons you mentioned.

[Almagesto]

In actual information content and practical usefulness, it's not very different, but of course it looks much, much better and evocative.

I guess you also have to take the users of the map into account. I usually have 3 maps in my campaign:



DM Map - Very detailed (read heavy) electronic file with annotations and adventure seeds.
Players Map - Printed (Yes, I spoil my players) 6 ft by 3ft map that has all geographical features, no political boundaries, and lots of lore. I usually like to throw some Dragonlance into it by making my characters walk into a ravine or a mountain that shouldn't be there. Whenever they start asking questions I point to the fact that the date on the bottom of the map is not current - thus many things could have happened in between; and in a high magic setting the possibilities are endless.
Adventure Map - It's really a very detailed regional map.


My guess is your map will work for the first couple of adventures, but if your campaign progresses beyond the boundaries of this map (whether intentionally or not) you may have to just add more to it.

Note regarding the unintentionally expansion of a map. My players sometimes come up with great ideas and demand lore from me on the fly. One quick way I've managed that has been by making up a name (location, place, item) and just randomly assigning it to an unexplored part of the map. They have heaps of fun and this has the potential to take the campaign in directions you hadn't even thought of. However, if you're one of those over-controling DMs (as we all were at one point or another) you might not want to give them that much freedom.

Just my grain of salt - hope it helps.

[Blake Hannon]

Depends on the nature and scope of the campaign.

[Yora]

Yes, that's kind of the implied question. What kind of campaign are you planning and how do you make your map to fit it?

[jqavins]

Ah, I failed to notice where that was implied and read the OP as a request for advice. As advice, "It depends" is perfectly accurate, if a little imprecise.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I am now and have for some years been working on a setting, mostly in my head and a little on paper or silicon. One of the things I'm hung up on is the map; I want lots of detail but lack the time/energy/talent to generate it. At the same time, I know that my players, if indeed I ever have any players, will probably never use most of it, and never even see half of it. So I go back and forth between trying to talk myself into going with much less detail and trying to psych myself up to take it on.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yeah. It'll be an open ended setting, as opposed to a setting for a particular campaign story. Either way (lots of detail or not so much) can work for this. I want to be able to add new adventures, towns, etc. to new places on the map, and I feel that I need sufficient detail that I'm able to place these things in areas that make geographic and political sense. The players might not need to know that when the item is placed, but it could come up later. That means at least a moderate amount of detail, but having lots and lots of detail is mostly for me. (And what's wrong with that? I've never been a GM who includes my own PC, so the world is my character.)

Here's another thing to consider: How settled is your world? In the world I'm planning, most if not all of the continental region that the PCs start in is part of some nation state or city state with defined borders. (Not always clearly defined or agreed on by all parties, but borders that exist.) So, I need to draw the borders. And borders usually follow natural boundaries of some sort, so I have to know where the rivers, mountains, dense forests, and so on are. In a less settled area, there are probably no borders like this, which both directly reduces the map's complexity and obviates the need to define these other features.

[sktarq]

Map as useful tool for in game planing, clarification, etc-only the basics are needed

Map as a tool of world content generation, inspiration, and clues for organization, testing, and adventure brainstorming. Go very detailed.

So both have their benefits.

[Aedilred]

I find that maps tend to look better the more is on them. Big empty areas of space make the map look unfinished and also pose the silent question of why the relevant places aren't just moved closer together to make better use of the page. They're also the sort of thing that seems to give cartographers nightmares: give a mapmaker a large area with nothing interesting in it and he'll fill it with monsters or explanatory text or even just make up some geographical features (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountains_of_Kong) to put in it.

That is an aesthetic decision rather than a practical one, though. It is possible to have relatively sparse maps that still look great, especially if you're a good artist (as in that map linked by gtwucla). You might find you want to leave parts of the map free to develop organically as you have ideas and need somewhere to put them, rather than fill it all in to start with and then have to work from that. You might not want your players poking into every nook and cranny forcing you to come up with stuff on the fly and find it's easier just to give them the key locations and fill in the rest as it's needed.

I don't think there's a right or a wrong answer here, really.

[nrg89]

Forgotten Realms, in my opinion, should not be the benchmark for RPG settings though. Hear me out.

First of all, it didn't start out as a setting for RPG's, Ed Greenwood started creating world to set his stories in it back in the 60s. He revealed it piece by piece in a series of Dragon articles and in order to support a lot of different stories the parts of it were very diverse and almost seemed discrete. Just like James Bond, Elminster needed exotic, strange lands to romance ladies and save the day in and the novelty of every location wears off fast so he needed to churn out a lot of them.

Second of all, it never stopped being a story telling setting. Drizztkept the setting getting more developed and complicated, and so did games like Baldur's Gate as TSR, in parallel, kept churning out more setting books. This has resulted in a glut of stuff being produced about the setting, more so than any other RPG setting I can think of, and when a setting is supposed to have a lot of material to support stories and games it's very hard for it not to be more developed than necessary for either task. Conditions like that will result in a lot of map.

Compare this to J.K Rowling's Wizarding World. We only see one financial institution, one main street lined up with shops, one sport, one school (and the other schools are hinted at with the right touch of mystery and exoticism), one government and the history of the school (which is the main backdrop) is interwoven with the history of the villain, the hero and the hero's mentor at the same time. It's perfect for telling a grand story chronicling the formative years of our hero, but I've actually tried to run games in it (way, way back when in middle school) and it's hard to think of stuff to do outside going to school, playing quidditch, stocking up for gear and the odd wizarding duel (as an adult though, one could use it for whodunnits). It's also very hard for it to serve as the backdrop for Drizzt (thank god...) since he burns through corners of the Earth at an alarming rate.

I'm very keen on exploration, treasure hunts, political intrigue and war in my games so this meant that I needed some well defined areas controlled by factions but a lot of areas needed to be mystical and unexplored. I solved it by focusing on city states, so the map will cover a relatively small known area when it's done since I want travel to be done in a reasonable amount of time.

[Dusk Raven]

Generally my maps tend to not have much beyond color-coding for various broad terrain categories, rivers, and nation borders. However, the map I'm using for my Wanderverse (a setting largely for stories, I might add) is rather interesting. The map is huge so I won't link it unless prompted. It was made by someone else for an AU of a pre-existing setting, so it's not designed with my story in mind, although I think coming up with the terrain first and then the political boundaries is neat since that's how it works in real life - really gives you a sense that the terrain isn't build to fit the people.

Anyway, the map is huge. In some places there's a relative abundance of useful detail, so that's nice. However, the map is unfinished, so there are quite a lot of places where there's just the borders of a nation drawn out and no indication of where the cities are or what terrain is there. And some places don't even have nations in them - they're pure terra incognita.

The setting came about from me looking at that map, being awed at the detail there was, and imagining what could be in the unfinished parts. It gave me an image of a wonderfully interesting world that isn't even fully explored and has quite a bit more to be revealed. That desire to explore the unknown and return to the known is what prompted me to create an entire setting which is now my go-to for stories.

[quinron]

As an expansion of the "whatever suits your needs" opinion, I'd say scale is definitely important. Settings like the Forgotten Realms and Golarion are far, far too big for any single adventuring group to see much more than one country in-depth; either you're nation-hopping and most of the cultures have to be caricatures in order to distinguish between them (which isn't necessarily bad, if that's the game you're playing), or you're mostly spending your time in only one or two neighboring nations and 90% of the map and supplemental material is useless to you.

My setting, for example, contains several nations and several different biomes, but is located on a continent roughly the size of Australia:

http://s14.postimg.org/6uh4tcey9/nation_map.png

It still takes time to cover long distances without magic, but there's a variety of nations, cultures, and terrains within an accessible distance of each other.

[Winter_Wolf]

I put as many details into my maps as I possibly can before it becomes a mess. Then again I love maps for eye candy. Map porn? I'm someone who bought both Campaign Cartographer 2 Pro and CC3, and who is actually considering CC3+ even though I really truly do not need it; I love hand drawing maps and doing all the delicate shading and adding forest details.

But really, you don't need much for a perfectly serviceable map; nautical nav maps don't have much detail outside of elevation and latitude/longitude, because that's really not a time when you want photorealistic details. The first image presented is pretty much the essence of maps: relative positions of key places to each other and geographical features. Personally I'd like some major rivers and lakes, but there just might not be any.