Yes, they redraw them, but not much.
My maps for "Throne of Iuz" look very similar to the ones that finally got published. To me it looks like the cartographer scanned my maps in and then traced, colored and toned them with Adobe Illustrator.
The end product looked much cleaner and more readable than the black-and-white pencil drawings I submitted.
Ditto what John said. I created mine as mid-resolution Photoshop files and then submitted them as flattened jpegs for file-size reasons. They are pretty much as sent in, but much nicer with a few touches here and there.
GGG
Creative Director
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We've printed map turnovers directly from the authors only very rarely. Some of Tito Leati's maps may have gone directly into the magazine before, and I know that the original regional map of Cauldron was printed in issue #98. Several of Chris Perkins' maps were printed in issue #97.
But for the most part, maps submitted by authors do not get printed in the magazine. They're done by Rob or Chris or another professional cartographer. We send them the author's map turnover in the form of a scanned JPG, and then they build the final map over it.
In some cases, an author's map turnover is close to useless. In this case, one of two things happens. Either:
A: We reject the adventure. or
B: I (or one of the other editors) gets to redraw the map from scratch. This can take a LOT of time, so if we're taking this step, the adventure itself has to be worth it.
So while we rarely, if ever, print author's maps, the value of a crisp, clear, easy to understand map turnover is Immense. I've rejected adventures before (some of them by professional game designers) simply because the maps were useless or impossible to read.