I haven’t previously been a stickler for mapping, but we’re doing hardcore mapping in my current Xyntillan game, In part because we’re doing S&W, which invites that sort of play, but also because Castle Xyntillan is a beast of a dungeon and those ‘aha’ moments with secret areas happen more than usual. That sort of thing happened in the last session, where the players notices the west wall of the wing cut off well before it should have, and they suspect there’s a secret area behind it.
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Xyntillan looks amazing; I’m only a few pages in but I can’t wait to run it. Looking at the dungeon layout, I think it would insane to run without doing hard mapping. Or else you would have to illustrate the relative positions of the named areas as a sort of point-crawl; maybe just the thematic room name, as the player’s see it, connected via a line drawn to the connected locations?
I forsee my biggest problem will be describing the exits to and from the room. I can say “okay you’re in a huge courtyard with wrought iron fencing and gardens, blah blah blah” but players always want to know if there pathways/doors/exits in the area.
So then you’re stuck saying “Yes there are double doors to the southwest, a single door to the west of that, a fence exit to the east, two sets of stairs to the north, one of the west and one sort of in the center of the brick wall that stretches past an old shack …” and that gets really rough. Picture is worth a thousand words; in this case a map of the floorplan.
Yup. It’s be way easier in person with an eraseable grid, but as it is we’re using an online mapping tool. Could make another thread discussing Castle Xyntillan and prep to run it if you like.
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@Zack_Wolf how does this work exactly? I’m playing online currently and moving to a strict theater of the mind style of play might cut down on prep AND speed things up significantly. I’d like to know your process if you’re ok sharing it.
- Heavily depends on the system you are using. Some are easier to play with theatre of mind, some are made for visual play. (You can always adapt a system to ToM)
- Depends on how complicated you want your dungeons and locations to be. As discussed in the thread above: some locations have just too many details for a person to hold in their head. (If you cut a bunch of content, you can adapt it to ToM too)
So, for example with Tomb of the Serpent King, I would literally just describe it.
“You manage the force the giant stone door open. A large hallways stretches before you. Your torchlight can reach about 30’ ahead; it looks like there are two passageways, one that leads left and one that leads right. How do you proceed?”
…
“Alright, you round the corner; your torch now shines down the hallway; you can see the hallway opens into an area, you can’t quite tell how big yet, with a platform in the middle of the chamber, upon which is a shadowy figure; seems vaguely humanoid. How do you proceed?”
…
“No, you’re facing north now; so right, the other hallway is behind you, on the other side of the big hallway you came in through, but that one leads south. How do you proceed?”
Edit: I realize that “how do you proceed?” is my own personal version of “what do you do?”