Hi all
I am a first-time gm and I'll be running Crypt of the Everflame for my some players soon and they are very keen on using miniatures so I feel I need to use a dungeon map. I have the basic flip-map from Paizo but I'm curious how people deal with exploration of the map.
Do you draw the whole map beforehand and cover it up or draw it as they explore? If that, does it take a lot of time?
I'm thinking that if I draw the whole map, the players will just go to where looks like the end rather than exploring the whole dungeon.
Any thoughts or advice is appreciated.
Cheers
There are a lot of different methods for this.
1. Some folks draw the entire map and trust that their players are mature enough to ignore information that their characters don't have (i.e., compartmentalize).
2. Some folks draw minimal outlines of the entire map and fill in the details as the party explores. This sometimes helps with the compartmentalization problem, but usually the interesting rooms also have interesting shapes, so it doesn't always help.
3. Some folks draw everything, including walls and such, as the players encounter it. Get ready for a lot of standing up and sitting down, asking players to move aside so you can draw, etc.
4. Some folks draw the map in advance and cut paper into overlays to cover sections of the map in a "fog of war" style. The appropriate shape and size of said overlays is up for debate.
I tend to go with option 1 since my players are pretty good at compartmentalizing, though sometimes I'll run option 2 if it seems like it'd reveal too much for players to ignore. Even with option 1, the party doesn't usually know exactly what's in the room, especially when it comes to NPCs, monsters, and so on. Option 3 tends to break the flow in my experience, especially since I draw rather slowly and our gaming table is ginormous. Someday I'll try option 4, probably with roughly room-shaped paper pieces. (I've thought about trying smaller squares of something heavier than paper and sort of "wiping" them away as areas come into view, but I haven't decided on a material yet. Paper would be too light as someone exhaling might inadvertently blow "fog" into someone else's face...!)
Just buy the flip mat designed for it! The great thing about Crypt of the Everflame is that the classic Dungeon Flip Mat was designed for the module and it was added to the Classics line last year.
If you don't want to do that, then draw it out ahead of time. You can even go so far as to draw it on thick posterboard to use as the map. That way, you only draw it once and can bring it out each session. Just use Fog of War to cover the unexplored areas and reveal them one at a time!
I do this two ways. Usually, if I know that they'll be facing a specific dungeon in advance, I'll create a map of it beforehand and when they enter the dungeon, I place the map down and put 3x5 Notecards over the unexplored portions of the map.
If it's a dungeon/room/castle/whatever that I wasn't anticipating and don't have a map already created, I'll just take a blank map and draw it as they go through it.