Maps in the Tragic Age of Popamole, or how to make maps matter

[Maxie]

You know what's missing from cRPGs? Maps.

Any and all good exploration starts and ends with a map you have at hand. Most games treat maps as a no-brainer, a non-mechanic. Maps simply are, dangling awkwardly somewhere in the corner of your screen, sometimes obscured with yet another poorly executed fog of war. To me, this is simply unacceptable. I don't like taking mechanics for granted, especially not mechanics as inherent to the nature of RPG as maps.

First of all, why should your character own a map in the first place? Did they draw it by themselves on a spare piece of paper? Cartography is a skill, it takes a lot of time and practice to draw any map worth a damn. Some games recognised this as an issue in the past and had you train your cartography skill, giving at least a modicum of intelligent design to automapping. More questions arise instantly; is your character any good at mapping? Should the party lose the map should this character leave, or perhaps lose the ability to map the world altogether should this character die a horrible death? What if you have several party members specialising in cartography, shouldn't you have several maps this way? Shouldn't they vary in content according to the character's skill?

Second of all, why shouldn't your character be able to buy maps? After all, most of the time you're pretty much a stranger in a strange land, in case of areas widely known to people it can be safely assumed that a map is not exactly a thing out of your reach. The next part is important; bought maps should vary. Buying a shit map from an illiterate peasant for a nickel should be a death wish. Such maps cannot by their very nature be accurate. Also, a peasant wouldn't know about stuff worth seeing anyway. Buying different maps from different vendors should give you access to different information:

-buying trader maps with marked trade routes, marketplaces, cheap inns;
-buying army maps with marked fortifications, dangers, enemy movements;
-buying cartographer maps with marked mountains, rivers, natural formations;
-buying treasure maps with marked treasures.

The last bit is not unheard of. You do occasionally buy such maps in all sorts of games, but rarely do such maps lie or appear to be grossly inacurate, which should be a possibility like any other. To my understanding, maps are such a vital piece of equipment to adventurers that this gamble of buying an inaccurate map cannot be simply ignored or simplified for the sake of players' laziness. Losing or destroying a map is a major setback to any self-respecting RPG adventure and I cannot fathom why should cRPGs be any different in this respect.

If you know of games which treat maps with the respect and care they deserve, please don't hesitate to inform me, I'd be more than happy to check them out.

tl;dr – make maps matter by never granting them to players by default, make many varieties of maps varying in accurateness and content available to acquire by any means imaginable, add the element of danger to using shit maps

 

[Orma]

It was handled well in Gothic 2

 

[Excidium II]

It was handled well in Gothic 2

and Ultima Underworld

 

[Cudgel]

Give this man enough beer to get drunk.

 

[Daemongar]

Eh, let me see, bad use of maps:
* 500' from here is 300 gold in a chest. Here's a treasure map on how to find it, which will be 50 gold. After you find the treasure, I'll buy the map back from you for 10 gold.
* Here is a map of this city/area. Nope, you can't combine it with your big map. You'll have to carry 40 maps, which are all conveniently labeled Map
* Here is a big map of everything, we marked off a bit of stuff, but don't try making any notations on it. We didn't program that.
* Here is a map with everything, but you'll never use it because you'll never get lost. We have fast travel and waypoints and everything marked.

Good use of maps
* Here is your square. Its marking off the squares you hit. However, you'll need to give something up to have kickass maps, but it won't hobble you completely
* Here is a map you can buy, because this is a common area. It has about as much stuff marked as makes sense. Everyone has been to the magic emporium and the whorehouse, so this map is practically free. Encourages tourism. It's only 50 silver, or free with your first quest
* You want a map of that dangerous place? Well, we only have one. You can have it, but it's not going to be cheap...
* You'll want to make notes on your map, as that rock ain't easy to find. It's about a furlong north of the highest tombstone. Go west from there, get the key, and then return to that rock.

 

[Viata]

is your character any good at mapping?

How would you decide how good he is? Cartography level seems the obvious way, but one could change things here by deciding that some class/race have a better way of doing maps(more detailed, better annotations, specific annotations for such class/race, ...).

Should the party lose the map should this character leave

It depends. Is the map also an item that the character has on its inventory? If so, unless the item is moved to someone else's inventory, yes, you should lose the map. If it's moved, unless the new character has cartography skills, the map shouldn't change anymore and keep the same state it was before character leaving. If the map is not an item, then the party shouldn't lose party, and would only be updated if there was another char with cartography skills.

perhaps lose the ability to map the world altogether should this character die a horrible death?

This part has some more questions, though. If the guy is dead and can't draw on map anymore, how is he moving with the party? Someone is carrying him? Shouldn't that affect the character's moves then? If this is not important(like most crpg), then it's up to dev to decide if the map should be upgraded even if character is dead(I'd still think it shouldn't).

What if you have several party members specialising in cartography, shouldn't you have several maps this way?

Either that or the map is more detailed based on how many chars has that skill.

Shouldn't they vary in content according to the character's skill?

That would tie with what I said on how to decide how good at mapping a character is.

why shouldn't your character be able to buy maps?

Yeah, although not every map should be available, makes no sense to buy a map from a dangerous place that no one came back alive from there, for example.

 

[torpid]

Can't fuck up the map if you go the Underrail route of not having any map

 

[Jaesun]

When some Developer *finally* takes a good long hard look at mapping, and places it within the context and setting, this will be some much needed INCLINE and finally some innovation.

Eschalon: Book I, was probably the first game to finally START to take a look at that entire design (and did it mostly well).

 

[Cudgel]

Ideas for mapping:
Cartography skill for map making and also a map reading skill.
Have skills matter for the map i.e high alchemy means plants are pointed out.
Scouts can find game trails/ know when enemies are close or what kind might be in the area from reading spoor.
Tactical skill that allows you to enter combat with bonuses or better positions, identifying ambush spots.
Falconry, can send out your bird to lead you to certain things/enemies. Makes noises as you get closer or something.

 

[fantadomat]

The OP must love PB games and Book of Eschalon.

 

[Magitex]

Ultima Online made a pretty good effort in this department, and I'm disappointed none of it made it to other games in favor of automatically mapped everythings.
I'm hard pressed to think of another game where cartography was:
1. a thing
2. not just an annoying way to try keep the player in the dark

I always liked the idea of trading maps with your known points of interest (like outposts/enemy fortifications/dungeons marked etc), but most games are so static it's a pointless one-shot endeavor.
They really lack the content depth to hide things away from the player for fear of them just blatantly walking through content and calling their game unfinished, so now we have magic automaps with bright icons so no one can miss anything.

I'd really like to see a modern pirate/caribbean game with some cartography depth, but it seems we might be waiting some time for it; I recently dropped minimap support in my own under-development game because I thought the unknown was a lot more interesting to explore when you don't have 100% accurate and instant data, as well as being able to trade map data. Hopefully I will have enough time to build a solid star-charting and prospecting system that isn't boring, but we'll see.

 

[Wysardry]

The early Might and Magic games had a cartography skill, which basically enabled auto-mapping for the party.

Personally, I don't have a problem with mini-maps in first person games, as I see them as a way of compensating for the limited field of view compared with real life and how cumbersome it usually is to look around. It certainly beats buying another two monitors.

I like the way Daggerfall handled maps. When you first start the game you only know the locations of some of the places of interest. You need to find additional maps and/or explore the regions to find the ones you don't know about.