MAPS

How Much Detail Is Too Much?

As game masters, we wish to liven up our games by providing maps to our players so they may see the world before them. Whether given as vague details, or as exercises in exacting scale, these maps do several important things.

For one thing, they help bring your world to life. Every sense you can use, like sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, and every way you can share an aspect of your world with your players makes it that much more real for them, not to mention memorable. Maps help them see things visually and help them form a more lasting mental image of your creation. But maps are particularly nice since they not only make a good impression, but your players may use these mental images to help define their characters.

Knowing where your character is from, for example, can help you decide where your PC is going, what was important to them while they grew up and why, what might be important to them in the future, and in general, what gives your character a sense of home. Who are 'their' people? Who are 'their' neighbors? How do they get along, now, in the past, or in the future? Just seeing your hometown on a map lends a sense of perspective to who and what you are, and few who get their hands on a map would fail to look at their hometown if it's depicted on that map at all. They might even feel disappointed if the area is of their home, but their hometown isn't even shown.

A second good thing about maps is they help write the stories. Mountain passes, lakes and rivers, deltas, intervening oceans, major roads and highways, avenues of trade, resources, population centers - human or otherwise - both tell us what it is and where it is, hint at what's important and why, and of particular importance, how far away it is and how much it is likely to impact on our character's lives.

Maps add a framework to our stories. If we know we can march 24 miles in 10 hours, then anything within 24 miles of you becomes potentially important for that day's plans. We make decisions based on this information. Should we go, is it worth the trip, how fast can we get there, how soon before word can get there and back, if the army left now, would reinforcements arrive in time, if we attack here, how long before the larger forces find out and give chase? Lots of things in our stories will hinge on exactly that sort of detail. If you don't have that sort of detail, not only can't you make realistic plans or estimates, but also you can't help but fail to appreciate your character's surroundings. You'll feel lost. When that happens, your game becomes less realistic and less memorable. You don't want that to happen, trust me.

So when the GM adds detail to his or her maps, they add a driving force that will help define the characters in their game and help write the stories that will be fully supported by a solid and consistent framework. That's a foundation upon which you can build and be confident.

As GMs, we may love the freedom of pure imagination and appreciate being able to create anything we wish, but our players cannot create any old thing that they wish anytime they feel like it. They have to work within the limits defined by the GM. If the GM does this, though it may seem contrary to common sense, these constraints upon the world and its characters allow the players MORE freedom to create. They can create their sense of history and place in it, their sense of society and where they are from, their sense of culture and how it mixes with its neighbors, and countless other things they cannot even begin to imagine without the proper foundation. Constraints give players freedom. Whether these constraints come from a map and a scale of distances placed on it, a time line for your world and an accurate calendar, or even the rules of the game that drive your world, this is the framework upon which we build and the parameters within which we will operate and develop and define our characters. They are like landmarks by which we may navigate. Without these things, we are lost.

Now one might think, "Hey, ok, let's create the detail for the entire world, right down to the coordinates of every single blade of grass." Naturally, that's an obviously foolish idea, but it demonstrates my point. Though such detail can be made, should it? Obviously not. So how much detail is too much?

Again, as GMs we wish to have loads of detail, but we can't always find the time to create it. Nor should we. Your player's characters will never see the vast majority of your world. Even the vast majority of what they do see will not require such exacting detail. What's important is what is required for the story. True, the more detail you put in, the easier it is to help write the stories and interact within these confines, but there are only so many hours in a day, and our stories only try to achieve a particular level of detail. Go beyond that, in my honest opinion, and you have gone too far. Furthermore, just because the GM creates a fantastic level of detail - above and beyond what the story may require - they shouldn't feel compelled to shove it down their player's throats so they can appreciate it too. If they explore and look for it, fine, but if not, don't foist it on them unnecessarily.

GMs have to add gross detail to their worlds just to get a sense of where even the big things are, like nations or kingdoms, oceans and major lakes, continents and mountain ranges, expansive forests, vast deserts, and untamed wildernesses, etc. Or in other genres, such maps may even be on a galactic scale.

NOTE: A caution to those just starting out. When you make your world, if you include at least a brief glimpse of the entire world on a global scale (even if you don't yet plan to share it with your players) be sure to try for something realistic in scale. Too large and you'll never fill it. Also, if it's too large your world may have many times the gravity of earth and thus realistically be very different and non-Earth like. Too small and you run out of places to explore, or you run into real problems like having an atmosphere on a moon size world which is gravitationally incapable of holding such an atmosphere. You may ignore such things, sure, or not realize how wrong they are, but it's less realistic if you do. So shoot for something comparable to the earth, about 8,000 miles ( 12,875 KM) in diameter and 25,000 miles (40,234 KM) in circumference, give or take 20%, and you will do well and not have to worry too much about things like gravity and atmosphere since your world will be sufficiently earth like it can't help but be realistic.

But aside from the larger things on your map, smaller things are nice to have as well. It just depends on the scale of the map.

Maps may be drawn on many scales. On a global scale, you can see oceans and continents, but may not see nations, deserts, forests, and rivers (even major ones). On a continental scale, you'll see mountain rages, major rivers and tributaries, larger lakes, nations, kingdoms, oceans and seas, gulfs and deltas, perhaps even major highways. But most maps we use in our games are even below this level of scale.

Game maps might show hundreds of miles of the immediate surrounding area, and this will help set the tone for your game. Large enough so it takes weeks or months to walk across, but smaller than the entire globe, it's just the right size to see what's around them and their home and what is likely to be important to them and their community. This may include a whole continent, though usually it will be less than that. It may include an entire large island or archipelago, or everything west of the mountain range or east of the great river, for example. This adds mystery to what lies beyond (always a good thing) and provides enough detail to help define your player's characters and give them elbow room for months or years of play until that fateful day they are perhaps ready to go beyond even that map.

It also gives the GM breathing room and time to work on such maps beyond the local ones while they still are playing the game. Otherwise, players may have to wait for years before you are ready to even start your campaign. Don't do that. Get going and start running your world. The better worlds develop as you play and are not fully made before you even begin, in my honest opinion. And they can develop with your players and your experience. You can see what works and what doesn't, and add more of what does work and less of what doesn't. The important thing is to start, however.

Now, you may feel maps of old were pretty bad and certainly not on par with today's map. After a fashion, you'd be right. They would not be drawn to scale, or at least not drawn well. They may have it wrong when it comes to the size of the globe. And areas beyond a month's walk could easily be filled in with imagination as much as anything else. Particularly if those areas beyond are blocked by natural barriers like mountains, oceans, deserts, or more commonly, a different race not all that willing to share its own maps or happy about intruders or possible invaders encroaching into their territories. So vague detail may be all there is, if even that much. "Beyond this point, dragons dwell."

But in those areas that are commonly traveled by your PC's race, within those areas frequented by your people, there will be great detail. Even if it's wrong or not drawn to scale very well, even if it contains numerous mistakes and one mapping error compounded with another, this detail will be there. The excuse maps were pretty bad 'back then' really can't be given to excuse the fact even local detail is missing, though it sure can be used to explain why one is so clueless about what lies beyond the sea, across the great desert, or over the mountains, or in areas not frequented by your race.

An example of what I mean may illuminate things. Looking at a local map in front of me - a visitor's guide to my home area in real life - I can see it might be 36 miles east/west by 20 miles north/south. Even here, on such a small map (not much more than a day or two of walking) I count nearly 100 lakes. True, I live in Minnesota, the land of ten thousand lakes, and those pesky glaciers have a lot to answer for, but my point is, I NEVER put that kind of detail on my game maps, even at that scale. 100 lakes all within a single day's march! Please.

GMs mostly don't have the time or inclination to add such detail that isn't likely to be immediately important to their game and its current story. I might add a dozen lakes, but not every little one. Yet it is not true that natural barriers block these areas or that are they populated with nasty creatures to prevent mapping, and humans are likely to venture anywhere within this small space, so they probably know about most things in that area. Yet my maps, even on a scale that could and should show this level of detail, won't show it. Why? It's too hard to add that level of detail. So if it would become important, then I would, but just because it is likely to be there doesn't mean I should add it now or not share local maps until all details are ready. They will never be ready then since you never know what you'll need until you need it.

How do we view the game maps then? Is this detail gone, missing, never put in, or what? Don't even the local cartographers know what's within a day's march of them? Not likely. There's a good chance they do know, have mapped it already, have included it on their maps, and use this information freely. Let's face it. Local NPCs (should) know their area better than even the GM knows it.

True, the GM may yet add this detail, and the more they add they more it may enhance their game, help drive the story, and help define the game's characters. It's just more probable the time they spend adding detail which will likely never be used is time better spent working on scenario stories, NPC backgrounds and motives, political intrigue, history, magic items and spells, and a host of other things that will have a greater impact on their game and its current story thread.

So GMs are likely to give your PCs maps (if the characters seek them out and pay for them, naturally, or at least find them). But the maps will only show gross details (that's all the GM bothered to put in so far). My recommendation, however, is that players frequently ask the GM, "Does the map indicate anything of interests in 'this' area?" Even when the game map clearly doesn't, it may be the case the actual map the PCs have will, as it should. GM laziness or lack of time should not be used as an excuse for a lack of detail on a map actually owned by a character in the game, even if it's a great excuse for a map on the OOC game level. GMs know this, so they may be willing to add more, but only as it becomes important.

By asking the GM, they may yet include more detail that realistically SHOULD have ALREADY been there (if they would have just taken the time to add it). Now that the PCs are in that area, this gives the GM an avenue to introduce new clues and information.

But why wasn't that detail there before? Well, quite frankly, it was. It will just have to be assumed the PCs never saw it before or paid attention to it, or didn't care about it since it wasn't important to them before this time. And this is realistic. After all, do you think I know the names of all 100 lakes on that visitor's map right in front of me, even if they are listed and named (and most of them are). No, I don't. But if I happened to be close by a particular lake, reexamination of the map and paying closer attention to that lake and its surrounding area may, for the first time, give me something worth thinking about. Particularly as it may now offer constraints to the current story line and help write it. And now my character is paying closer attention to that SPECIFIC area than ever before, so it's pretty realistic he or she may see something they didn't bother to look at too closely before, even if it was always right under their nose.

If you've ever worked with maps that have any meaningful level of detail, you'll appreciate how they are more like dictionaries and encyclopedias than novels. They are reference materials. You don't read them and study them for fun and memorize or pay attention to them on the whole (most of us don't, anyway). You only reference them to answer specific questions as they arise. Questions, in fact, you almost certainly didn't have before they became important to you or before your character was close by. So this is realistic.

The GM only need resist the temptation to throw in MAJOR differences or things one could hardly have failed to take note of before, like a huge city with a population in the millions, a great mountain range, an expansive desert, etc., all magically appearing right next door. But if it's a village or a small hamlet that pops up, or some note was made of a light house, or you finally take note of the actual name of a particular creek or river or hill or mountain or plateau, all of this is fair game and a fantastic way for the GM to include clues and hints and history into their game world long after the map was already given out.

Before, such detail in that area would never have mattered since it wasn't important at that time. Before it becomes important, you can't really expect your GM to include it, even sometimes if you ask, since the GM knows it isn't important enough to bother with and he or she doesn't have time to flesh out exacting detail in every nook of their world.

In fact, that's often a good thing. If the GM hasn't already included the detail to an area that you feel would be important to your character, you might have the opportunity to do it yourself. Go ahead and work up such a map and present it to the GM. If it doesn't violate something they already have made, they could easily accept it. Just as you may draw up the floor plans of your own house, tower, castle, or stronghold, just as you may design your own ship, just as you decide things for your own character, you may be allowed to write part of the GM's world for them. One caution, however. Smaller, less prominent things are easier to accept than larger obvious things. So if what you add is minor, though important to your PC, it should not interfere with the GM's world. And if it doesn't, they will probably accept it.

But Maps are not just world maps or maps on the scale of miles and miles. Other maps permeate the game as well. City maps, for example, can be very important and very detailed. But how much detail does a city map need?

This is not an easy question to answer in general. It is too dependent on many factors. Usually it will depend on how large the city is. If the population approaches a million, for example, knowing every road and path, every creek or river, every building, whether it be bar, tavern, shop, or hut, is clearly too much. You can add that detail, but I feel your time will be better spent elsewhere.

This is why I rarely add large city maps to my game. I may map out a 10 block area of where the PCs live, but rarely more. Any other detail is rough, like where the harbor is or the shipyards, the main public facilities, or the particular shops and artisans of interests. Perhaps even where the very high level or more noteworthy people live, like the arch mage Maurice, Lord Tremblebrook, and the mayor, or large structures like the temple of Athena, the capital building, or handy things, like the closest blacksmith, bar, pub, or tavern, and a smattering of other game worthy points of interest.

But mostly I like to gently persuade my PC groups to live in smaller villages, perhaps close by a large city so when they wish to visit it they can, but quite apart from the major cities. A town of two thousand or so is about right. You can actually map that. And since the PCs live there, that map is important and worth making, at least in some level of detail. But other towns, even smaller ones, will hardly ever be mapped. They just ask, "Where is the local blacksmith?" And if one exists, a local gives them directions and it is assumed they go there.

And then there's the scenario map or 'dungeon map.' This map is more session specific, and if you plan to use it once, it is not that important. Roughly fill in some details. Drawing it to scale, however, is too much of a hassle. If it is to be used repeatedly, then more detail may be required or useful.

Many an early session for me involved the 'dungeon crawl' and mapping what the GM described. But I quickly gave up that practice when I noticed how slow and tedious it was. If my GM's map were drawn to scale (like on grid paper) I might find myself counting squares and then telling them exactly how long this hall was or how wide and deep a room was. Hell, unless the PCs break out a measuring tape or at least pace it off, they shouldn't know that detail anyway. So I learned to write in distances rather than drawing things to scale. This avoided the time it took to recount the squares and the time it took for the players to duplicate my count and draw the dungeon to scale on their graph paper.

Don't get me wrong. That can be fun at first, but it gets old pretty darn quick. So though I feel characters should map things, after a fashion, I do not expect them to draw things to scale or rely on them to discover anomalies in their maps that might reveal hidden or secret doors via a careful analysis of accurately drawn maps.

I later just adopted the practice of a large, dry-erasable white board and erasable colored markers. Lying on the table, the players could position their lead figures around the hastily drawn areas of interest. This was fast and it allowed us to concentrate on more important issues.

But in the final analysis, maps will always be important to the game. The level of detail is up to you and how much time you have, and maybe how much talent you have as a cartographer. Just be mindful that past a certain point, your time is probably better spent elsewhere.

And mostly, since I feel I must reiterate this point, most maps will probably have more detail on them than will actually be shown by your GM's game maps. So be sure to ask. If he says there is no more in that area, fine. There isn't. But someday, elsewhere, there may be, and you would do well to ask for it, and the GM would do well to give it, if it's likely it would have been included but only wasn't due to real world time constraints and sheer laziness, etc.

GMs can't include everything that exists in their world, so expecting their maps to have that detail before they share them with you is foolish. Don't be foolish. That's as silly as expecting them to have the names of all NPCs in the whole world written down before they begin to play. So frequently ask if the character's map includes more detail than is already shown on the player's map, and it shall be decided by the GM on a case-by-case basis.

Good Luck, and Happy Gaming ;-)