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I've been pondering the effect of pre-drawn dungeon maps on the player's "suspension of disbelief."
On the one hand, drawing maps on dry-erase (or any other medium really) as the players explore an area room-by-room takes up a bunch of game time, and the results are less-than-satisfactory since I'm doing it fast. Now I don't want to become a slave to the 1" grid, but even combat grids aside, it's nice to have a full-scale map of a place to reinforce the description of a place.
On the other hand, pre-drawing an entire dungeon and placing it on the table gives up a bunch of information about the dungeon that the PCs wouldn't have going into it. It removes the element of exploration from the picture since you already know what's coming, even if you don't know what monsters are in the next room, you have an idea how big the place is and whether you should continue pressing on, or flee and come back another day. I feel like this hurts the suspension of disbelief that you are actually exploring the unknown.
Anyone have a clever solution to this? Do you cover up the maps and uncover it as you go? Do you just deal with it and just call it an artifact of table-top gaming?
So far I've been drawing the maps as we go along, but only for the most important rooms/encounters and leaving most of the adventure locales unmapped and existing only in our minds, but I'm wondering if this is really be best way. I know this is a totally subjective question, I just wanted to get some opinions from you master DMs out there. :)
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I've had DMs cover the map with paper and remove sheets as the party moves through the area. This isn't perfect of course since the sheets rarely uncover properly with uneven rooms.
My solution is to have the maps predrawn and lay them out piece by piece. Gaming Paper Singles work best for this. I can draw a room in the center of a sheet, and draw connecting rooms on the edges of other sheets, laying the new sheet over the first so that the edge lines up with the door drawn on the first sheet. This is also good for saving the maps as the sheets fit in standard document protectors.
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I've done it with projector overlays which you place onto the map.
If I have time I include features, monsters and light conditions.
As it is wet erase, I can keep reusing them.
Works well for dungeon crawls where they are going were you expect. Also allows the map to move on the table without causing too much issues.
Got tons of free time and a workshop? Do what I do: modular dungeon tiles. I use hirst arts molds, mix up some plaster (dental plaster) and start pouring.
Over time I've slowly (like glacial pace; I work a lot of hours with a wife and kids as well) amassed dozens of mix and match generic pieces. Some are painted, some not, but all are homemade and mine.
Not only do I have a sense of pride of ownership but there's also the fact that I can just lay them down, as needed. Sometimes I don't even bother with a pre-map and just invent the dungeon on the spot.
One of these days i'd love to just put down ALL my pieces and make a giant arena dungeon covered in paper. As the players go through I unveil the new section as far as we judge the party can see. Good times...
I use a few things. My favorite is 3D terrain, I also use Hirt Arts stuff. Second is a projector. It takes a lot of cash and even more effort, but it is awesome. Finally, I use full scale printed maps with no details. I fill in the details when they get there.
If you go into a building you usually get a feel for what is on the other side of a wall real quick. This is especially true if you had the chance to see the building from the outside. Who cares if the players get some little clue as to the environment they are in? They are left out of so much of the story and setting all the time. Battlemaps, in my opinion, are the only real window they get to ensure they are on the same page as the DM.
Currently I am running the Jade Regent AP with full scale printed maps. The players LOVE them!
I have used A5 sized post-it notes to good effect. It's relatively easy to make them overlap in such a way as you can reveal any given room/corridor without too much effort. They hardly cost anything (and can be reused several times anyhow). Worked well for Crypt of the Everflame and I think the impact of the eventually revealed artwork was definitely worth the look of a huge poster of yellow post-its which originally hit the table.
I have many ways to deal with this, depending on my preparation time, the importance of the area being explored and the sort of venue we are playing.
When possible I use a digital gaming table where I use "Maptools" or some other graphic program to display only the areas of the map that the players' have explored. That works very well.
However, I sometimes don't have the time or energy to create entire complex maps for dungeons or campaign areas that are really only transitory areas that have suddenly become important because the party went in that direction. In those cases I use dungeon tiles and/or draw maps on the fly, or both.
For the most important parts of the campaign I use a combination of the digital maps, dungeon tiles, Hirst Arts terrain elements and home-grown terrain elements. The third dimension provides a very nice experience for the players.
The mixing of such widely disparate map elements has never been any sort of issue at all. Even though the players clearly greatly prefer the high-tech, high-effort approach, they realize it's simply not possible to generate the entire scope of my world-spanning campaign stories, and so they appreciate the low-tech, low-effort sessions as well.
Yes, that means they generally know if they are in an important part of the campaign because I will pull out all the fancy stuff, but I have not found it a problem, and in fact I have found that it frequently adds to the players' appreciation of the upcoming battle when I start laying down the hardware. It's a sort of "Oboy! Here comes the good stuff!" moment, and they know it's about to get serious.
Buy the Gamemastery Map Packs and Flipmats in PDF format. Extract the image from the Flipmats, hack it up into "this is what you see" size in a program like Photoshop or GIMP. Print as many as I need as lay-down-as-you go dungeon tiles.Print them on card stock and laminate for alonger lasting option, or (as I do) print on standard paper and put the tiles under a clear desk mat that you can then draw on with wet-erase markers.
I found the "draw as they go along" the best option.
If you find your fast drawing skills lacking, then maybe you could train them a bit? This could be fun and is actually less tiem consuming and cheaper than the alternative, however success isn't guaranteed.
My groups use a box of useful Lego bits. A 1x6 bump part works nicely as a 2" long wall segment. It's really cool how you can build a dungeon/room/forest/cave with just a few dozen parts. We've got parts that we use for doors, for stairs, even lines to show where spells have been cast.
The Lego is quick to throw down on the mat, is 3D (but low, so doesn't get in the way), and easily added to and taken back down.
We tend not to do room-by-room building unless it's called for, but for indoor environments it's entirely do-able if you've got a big mat.