Old Maps

[u/TheDungeonArchitect]

There is something to be said about the old graph paper maps we used to make with their smudges, pizza grease stains, and inaccuracies. The maps that we shoved into binders or notebooks week after week until they were tattered and faded. Yes, they had crooked lines. The notes we wrote in the margins were not always legible. Sometimes the erasure marks wore right through the paper. But they were the dungeons we explored. Proof that we survived (or most of us anyway) the perils of a sinister Dungeon Master. They were like our characters themselves, imperfect yet special, with their own foibles and personalities. How many maps do you still have from your old adventures, and do you ever look over them and remember the dungeons you explored?

[u/svarogteuse]

I have several bankers boxes with all of my old DND stuff from the mid 80s. It's faded, the paper is often brittle and yellowed but it's still there.

[u/slogive1 → u/svarogteuse]

I played in the 80s as well. Miss it.

[u/DocShocker]

If I were to do some digging, I could probably find a map or two from the early-mid 90's, along with some adventures I'd written.

[u/DeltaDemon1313]

I kept every map from my campaign (except for one which was borrowed and never returned). Maps from other campaigns I tried to keep when it was appropriate/possible so maybe a couple of dozen (not many when you consider the number of maps total). I do, once in a while, look over my old maps and even some from other campaigns. Do I remember them? Sometimes but, most I don't remember much details. Just high level stuff. This applies even to my maps. For many of them, it's been more than 20 years (with some of them approaching 40 years).

[u/Fluid_Anywhere_7015]

I'm an OG GM, and I still force my players to make their own maps. It always starts out with a bunch of sighs like in any meeting ("Okay, who's taking notes? Darrell? You're the note-taker...Oh, maaaan!, not again!")

Then people started to rely on the map maker. And then get surprised when I award them with a skill level in that task. Enough advancement, and I computer-generate maps for the player based on their success. They get rewarded with increases in being able to bug-out of dangerous situations in mazes or underground.

[u/Silent_Climate_1152 → u/Fluid_Anywhere_7015]

If I tried that, it'd not be sighs, it'd be a full on revolt! My players keep notes, I periodically take their notes and convert them into digital to post on our campaign website, but they literally HATE mapmaking. Forcing my players (not something I would want to do) to do that would be a campaign killer. :(

[u/SuStel73]

Do people not still draw maps in pencil on graph paper?

[u/milesunderground → u/SuStel73]

I would say it's largely a forgotten art in the modern era. Dungeons are designed more like workflow charts, and getting lost really isn't an issue. I'm not spilling any tea to say that modern D&D focuses on mechanical challenges and doesn't spend much time on exploration. I think the love of exploration is one of the things that draws us back to the older editions.

[u/Silent_Climate_1152 → u/milesunderground]

While I do agree with 5e becoming more workflow. I have to disagree with you on the rest. Still running 1e, campaign has been running 16 years now and multiple sets of characters...we haven't touched a paper map since 2013 and never will again. Game plays the same with a paper map or a digital one...some people are just too caught up on nostalgia and 'the way we did it back in the day'. At least at my table, we are drawn to older editions for how they play and the difficulty compared to modern games, not for the nostalgia fest of paper maps, theater of the mind, and all those things we did because there was no better way...or any other way back then.

[u/Silent_Climate_1152 → u/SuStel73]

I haven't since 2013. :) Got d20 Pro VTT right after it came out of kickstarter. I used it to run a wall-mounted TV, single icon for the party, with dynamic lighting and fog of war. For battles, I'd draw the area out of a dry erase mat for use with figures.

Later, I mounted a flat screen in a table, hooked up a small Dell industrial PC to it and swapped to to Foundry VTT. Same full color, dynamic lighting, fog of war maps, just eliminated the last vestige of low tech...we zoom out on the map till it is 1" squares, and place the figures on the map.

All the time spent drawing on paper and mats, is now used for actual play time. Dungeons, towns, wilderness, all mapping is digital, the biggest speed increase comes when outdoors exploring, doing a hex-crawl.

[u/Licentious_Cad → u/SuStel73]

It's just digital now. Takes a fraction of the time and it's a lot more consistent and readable. Plus being able to copy/paste, undo, add color, effects, and so on.

Handmade is a nice touch. But, I don't have to worry about my folder getting wet, or my pets getting into it, or something being spilled on it, etc.

[u/Silent_Climate_1152 → u/Licentious_Cad]

Agreed. Paper is for nostalgia, or handouts. I've been purely digital at my in-person games for over a decade. :) I've handed out hand drawn maps AFTER the session, but they were more like illuminated manuscripts and a keepsake. My players love them. We're big on gifts and things (dice, 3D printed stuff) as we've all been friends since high school and the youngest is 59.

[u/SuStel73 → u/Licentious_Cad]

That's odd. I've always found digital dungeon-makers to be slower and not to have all the tools I want. I don't make maps to be pretty — they're just for me to control the game, not to show off my maps. Jotting notes on it quickly is important.

What tools do people use nowadays that are faster than drawing by hand?

[u/Licentious_Cad → u/SuStel73]

For hex maps I use Worldographer. Just set a map size by number of vertical and horizontal hexes. Then you just paint the tiles with the biomes and add as many details as you want. It also lets you zoom in/out. So one big country map with 12mi/hex can be zoomed into 3-4mi/hex and it automatically fills in all the hexes based on the higher view. Then you can just paint over things to add more detail.

For grid maps and battle maps I use DungeonDraft. Just turn on snap to grid and draw your lines if you want a very basic map. It has more tools if you want to go beyond a simple line+grid map too.

---

But it is personal, the tools have an entire learning curve to them. If you don't use a computer a lot then it will probably be slower than paper and pencil. Kinda like knowing how to type vs. knowing how to write. If you don't know how to type then writing with a pen is faster. But if you know how to type it's faster than writing.

These programs go on sale occasionally too. So keep an eye out if they interest you.

[u/SuStel73 → u/Licentious_Cad]

I used Hexographer a bit before it became Worldographer. It wasn't hard to learn, but it definitely wasn't faster than drawing some lines on paper — I don't usually draw individual terrain symbols in each hex — and getting it into a playable format was a pain.

[u/Licentious_Cad → u/SuStel73]

To each their own. Worldographer just lets you export the image as whatever format you want. If you make a big map you might have to tape several pieces of paper together or go to a proper printing shop to get it on one sheet.

I play online so hand drawn maps are at best an okay scan that doesn't line up right on the VTT and at worst they're washed out and useless.

[u/Silent_Climate_1152 → u/Licentious_Cad]

Same. Hand drawn has NEVER worked for me with the VTT's, since they expect X pixels per square/hex and either the scale will be off or the scan will mess it up.

All my notes are kept in Obsidian Portal, not on the map, so it is not an issue for me.

[u/Licentious_Cad → u/Silent_Climate_1152]

I use linked tokens on my maps. Anyone can just click on one of the tokens in the VTT and it will open the relevant journal page for that location.

Each of these pages has their own Player, and GM, notes. So I help put general info in the player area, but track events and plots in the GM section. Adding a new location is just putting a new token on the map.

[u/SuStel73 → u/Licentious_Cad]

Exporting was never the problem. Annotating the map by hand during play, and then reincorporating the info later, or annotating the map digitally during play, become slow.

[u/Silent_Climate_1152 → u/SuStel73]

Oh lords, There are tons out there. These are the ones I have collected over the years. I use a mix of them, depending on what I am trying to accomplish. Mostly the Worldographer for outdoor maps and Dungeondraft and DungeonPainter for indoor stuff. Cityographer is for making maps from villages to national capitols.

Campaign Cartographer - Not cheap, CAD-like UI, it can do professional illustration grade maps.
The 'ographer series (Cityographer, Dungeonographer, Worldographer)
Dungeon Painter
Wonderdraft & Dungeondraft
Hex kit v2
Fractal Mapper (makes great world / continent / island maps)
AstroSynth (mapmaker for space games like Traveller)
DriveThruRPG maps - Not a program, but I can often find good, pre-made maps for a couple bucks on there.

Faster? Probably not, people can scribble quite fast. BUT I am not into speed for game prep (or the new fad of low/no prep GMing), I prefer it to look good AND to be legible on gameday and most paper maps I have seen (mine and others) have notes that just as well been in hieroglyphics

[u/TheDungeonArchitect → u/SuStel73]

I love drawing maps on graph paper, but our group expanded to include some remote players. To make things easier, we started using online tools. But, for me, the hand drawn maps will always be the best! And, whenever we play without remote players, its back to the pencil and paper.

[u/milesunderground → u/TheDungeonArchitect]

Even if we aren't mapping in the traditional fashion, I will often do a hand-drawn map as an in-character prop.

[u/Silent_Climate_1152 → u/milesunderground]

They do make nice props. Or gifts. After my group finished Temple of Elemental Evil, I did up hand-drawn maps, notes on them in runes, copied them and gave each player a set. But that was pure art-project on my part rather than used ingame.

[u/beeseytwwinutes]

Old maps are half the fun of AD&D for me. I love seeing the pencil marks, weird little corrections, and notes that show how the place actually evolved at the table. I'd definitely keep the originals as-is and scan them before doing any cleanup. There's something special about preserving all that old campaign archaeology.

[u/Aromatic-Surprise925]

I'm mostly a dm. I have almost every piece of paper written for or during my campaign, which has been running since the early to mid 90s.

So for me, I have tons.

As a player, I have a few, but they're relatively recent, since I have been the DM for my group for decades and only in the last few years have gotten to play outside of a couple of one-shots.

[u/Medullan]

What do you mean used to? I've been doing that since 94 I still have all my maps most character sheets and even the scrap papers we kept our notes on Chances are if someone has played with me in the last 30 years and they remember their characters name I could pick up right where we left off our at least bring them back into the campaign where it is now.

If I was more organized and had better notes I could turn it all into a 12 book epic.

[u/Silent_Climate_1152]

Nah, too much nostalgia for my taste. 'Imperfect' 'foibles' 'personalities'...JFC, they were just a piece of graph paper! I look forward, not backward.

I've been playing since Basic D&D, and I went digital (VTT on small industrial PC, running a screen mounted in a table) back in 2013, with d20 Pro VTT (now on Foundry). My maps are all color, with dynamic lighting, and fog of war. We move a single icon for the party on the map, and in combat situations, expand the map to 1" grid and put the figures (I've played with figures since early Ral Partha in the 80's, hated TotM play) directly on the map.

I find we get more AD&D PLAYED in the same amount of time when the players aren't making maps (badly, 9 out of 10 I'd have to stop and correct them) and I'm not drawing on a dry-erase battlemat every battle. Me, I am at the table to play / DM as much as I can squeeze into a session, not to perpetuate time-consuming 'tranditions' out of a sense of nostalgia. ONLY traditions we keep going are long sessions (6-8 hours) and the meal break midway through where we talk and catch up.

Don't have many old maps, but I am a forever DM, the players kept the maps they made, and I got rid of a lot of my old paperwork about 3 moves ago after much of it got damaged.

[u/ChadIcon]

Wait, you guys aren't hand-drawing maps any more? Oh man, am I outa touch!