Against Maps
Post is part of the blog bandwagon about maps.
You sit down ready to play some sicko dungeon ass dragons, all hyped up for the first session. The referee asks everyone to turn around while he preps the table. When you turn back, you see a map. At least, you think it's a map. A single hex is revealed, with a marker supposedly representing the party. Everything else is covered in black construction paper. With a wry smile, the referee asks, "Where do you want to go?"
After a brief pause, someone says, "Uhh... north, I guess?"
I love maps as much as the next cat, but I think a map has to serve a purpose in play. A map isn't automatically useful because it's beautiful or impressive. Those things can help, of course. But the maps I want at my table are the ones that help us understand the situation and make meaningful decisions.
A map can serve different purposes. It can support the backend, frontend, or runtime of your game. It can store the truth of locations for the referee, give visual clues about the world, or help the session run more smoothly in the moment.
So I keep wondering what use we have for a map. Can we point at it, plan with it, argue over it, mark it up, or ask better questions because of it? If not, maybe it's just decoration.
Regional Maps Need Choices
A regional map during play should give us a usable picture of the place we're moving through. No, it shouldn't reveal every location and secret. No, it doesn't have to be accurate. But it does need enough roads, landmarks, terrain, settlements, and rumors to make planning possible. It needs to make you look at the map and say, "We want to go there".
Blank space is good when it invites discovery. It's bad when it hides the choice. The old road, the forest, the lake, and the ruined tower gives us something to plan around. A hex, point, or path surrounded by featureless unknowns mostly asks you to guess.
The secrets can stay secret. That's why I like player-facing maps: they show what would be common knowledge, visible, rumored, or easily learned without handing over the complete backend map.
Procedure is the other half. A hexcrawl isn't just a hex map. The map shows options, and the travel procedure gives those options cost, risk, and consequence. Roads are faster but may be patrolled. Swamps are slower but may let you avoid taxation. Climbing a hill might reveal a landmark. Taking a detour might cost time and supplies.
The format should follow the decision. Whether the map uses hexes, points, routes, or blank space depends on what the game needs us to notice or interact with. Mythic Bastionland's hex maps work because they're part of the game's core loop, not just a pretty overview.
When in doubt, use more than one map. A beautiful in-world map can make the place feel real, while a table map helps track routes, distance, and position. The first gives texture. The second supports procedure.
Hidden Information Needs Clues
A map should show more than what we already know. It should suggest what might be worth investigating. Secret locations are interesting not because they're absent, but because they leave hints or traces for us to discover.
That doesn't mean the map needs to show every road, ruin, lair, or danger. But we need something to lean on. A rumor. A landmark. Smoke on the horizon. A place the locals avoid. "The road north goes into pine woods where hunters avoid the old stones" gives us a choice. "North is blank" mostly asks us to guess.
This is where fog of war often fails me. It tries to feel like mystery, but if nothing is visible except the places already visited, the map stops pointing forward. It becomes a record of where you have been. Useful as a travel log, maybe, but not as a way to choose where to go next.
A better approach is to reveal the obvious, hint at the hidden, and reserve the secret. Show the mountain, not the dragon under it. Show the road, not every ambush along it. Show the ruined tower, not the tunnel beneath its cellar. The map keeps its mysteries by giving them edges.
World Maps Are Context
A world map is usually not an exploration map. It's a context map.
A world map matters when faraway places start pushing on where we are now. The empire over the mountains matters when its war closes the north road, its coins change prices in the market, or its refugees bring rumors of what is coming next.
Otherwise the world map is mostly backdrop, or a menu of labels where we point at one and say, "Let's go there". That can be fun, but it's a different mode of play, one more interested in jumping from setpiece to setpiece than slowly learning a place through travel, danger, and consequence.
Sometimes a world map can help the referee stay coherent when the players suddenly decide to head for the horizon. On the other hand, there is real value in not even creating a world map when the campaign is focused on local regions. That preserves flexibility for later.
When the game starts operating at grander scales, the world map becomes more relevant. Presiding over a domain makes you care about your neighbors. Planning a long expedition makes distance, access, and conflict matter directly. The world map is now the board your campaign moves across.
Dungeon Maps Are Connections
When spatial navigation becomes the point, as it does when you zoom in on a dungeon or location, some kind of map is often necessary. Without a way to track space, locations have to be very small or very simple to follow.
But a common misconception is that the map has to be detailed, pretty, or gridded. Often a rough sketch, flowchart, or node map can do the job more effectively. What's important is how the spaces connect. I want to know where the exits are, what route loops back, what's above or below the room, where I have already been, and what I haven't explored.
Rise Up Comus suggests handing out partial dungeon maps, or even a simple copy of the map itself with secrets removed and rooms clearly numbered. A floorplan doesn't solve the dungeon but it removes boring ambiguity. We still have to discover what's in the rooms, find the secrets the map doesn't show, and learn about the inhabitants and factions. But now we can ask better questions. Which route? Which door? Which shortcut? Which risk?
Mapping Is Play
Of course, player mapping is another way to engage with maps. A map given to you is information. A map you make yourself is play.
This was the missing piece that made dungeons click for me. When we map, we build a better understanding of the place itself. We engage with the fictional space, and that makes it easier to notice loops, shortcuts, dead ends, and suspicious gaps. It helps us ask questions, not just of the referee, but of each other. The dungeon starts to become a place instead of a sequence of scenes.
But mapping only works when navigational knowledge has value. If the layout never creates choices, reveals patterns, or rewards memory, mapping just becomes homework. The goal isn't to make mapping difficult. It's to communicate a shared understanding of a space.
A good player map, whether drawn from scratch or annotated on a partial map, becomes a memory aid and a log. It tells us how to get out, where to return to, and which routes are safe enough to move through quickly.
Battlemaps Answer Too Much
Tactical maps are where maps often fail me. A detailed battlemap can be marvelous, but it can also do too much imagining for us. The room is already dressed. The furniture is fixed. The terrain is settled. Before anyone asks a question, the image has answered.
In my experience, this often means we either ignore most of the visual clutter because it's just background dressing, or we treat the image as complete truth. I prefer a rough map that gives us enough shared space to orient ourselves, but leaves enough blank space for questions. Can the statue be climbed? If we're in a kitchen, is there grease handy to throw at our pursuers?
These questions matter. They aren't a disruption of play. They're play.
In very tactical games, the battlemap may be less illustration than rules interface. It can make distance, cover, and positioning feel fair. But there's a difference between a technical and a conceptual map, and not every situation needs the same kind.
City Maps Need Pressure
I love looking at city maps, but I've to admit they're often the least useful maps for me. More often than not, they become address books, with numbered shops, inns, and landmarks. Most of these places wouldn't change much if they swapped locations.
Adding more detail doesn't fix this. Every building, alley, and shop you define becomes debt. It's one more thing for us to remember and reference. A more abstract map of neighborhoods, routes, pressures, and boundaries can be much more gameable than a complete street plan.
Why is that? Because crawling through cities isn't always the answer. Moving room to room, or street to street, becomes tedious fast. When the city becomes an adventure site, it's usually more interesting to think in neighborhoods, transit points, factions, and people. Social and spatial structures begin to merge.
The best town maps give some form of actionable insight. They show us what we can do here, who we might offend, and what boundaries are drawn into the streets. Buildings start to matter when their location changes consequence. If the poorer districts are outside the walls, the map says who is protected. If the watch houses sit beside the bridge, it tells us who controls passage.
A city map is weak when it only tells us where things are. It gets useful when it shows where we can go, who controls what, and what we risk by crossing a boundary.
Conclusion
So no, the problem isn't maps. The problem is when we treat maps as automatically useful.
Different maps have different jobs. A regional map should make movement legible. A dungeon map should make space navigable. A battlemap should clarify action. A city map should show access, pressure, and consequence. What matters isn't having a map for the sake of having a map, but knowing what need the map is answering.
A good map earns its place at the table. It gives us something to point at, mark up, doubt, plan around, or argue over.
A bad map may still be beautiful. It may still be worth having. But if it doesn't help play, it probably needs to be supplemented with one that does.
The best maps don't end the conversation. They start it.