There's been a recent one of those fistfight-in-a-fishbowl things online. A go-round of grousing lately online, dozens of responses.
Conservative gamers complaining but its hard to know what about "This sucks!!!" why? Who knows?
The only concrete complaint to emerge about anyone is they don't like my maps.
Allegedly, from the point of view of utility.
So, real question for anyone who can answer it--why is this:
...with all the information literally on the map.
Harder to use than this:
...where you have to flip through dozens or hundreds of pages to answer a question like "I succeeded on my Listen roll--what's around the corner?"?
Does anyone anywhere know?
39 comments:
How do you know the critic's political leanings? Is this happening in a right-wing gaming community or something?
@virgil clemens
I know because they say them.
The current fracas is on Twitter, in the replies to high-follower-account conservative gamer accounts, including people who are like "I don't agree with Zak's politics" etc.
Could just be "I don't like tgis person's politics" --> "I don't like this person" --> "I don't like this thing this person likes/made"
@Jason McCulley
So your answer is, then, "Yes, they are just stupid"
@zak sabbath
Yes. Sorry, I should have added that.
That dungeon geomorph has literally 2 dozen rooms for conservative gamers to stake the doors shut around them. They can't hide their desire to creep from room to room guarding their fear with maximum hit points and spells to dominate the environment. The Dim Fortress does not allow such conceited behavior. Want to rest? Sleep with snakes. Or in a room around a very thin crevasse. Or other rooms with shafts, putrid ichor, permanent darkness and corpses, a pool of water full of warrior limbs. I love the long, long hallway to open up the dungeon. That never fails to put a party on edge. We can't see the end of this hall and retreat is becoming more distant. Where are the inhabitants? Will we be trapped?? Just how big is this place??? Ha, I am borrowing your map for my game next month. I already have a series of encounters where Gith formerly guarded a displaced Illithid outpost, but needed a fresh map to tie the encounters together. Thanks!
@matrox
Well, sure but I have no problem with the other dungeon's design--its the map that I'm confused about. Why do people want less-informative maps? Why do they want to spend _more time_ flipping in the book?
Functionally speaking, when there's a small number of rooms, I think an illustrated and/or isometric map can work well. I suspect such maps are particularly effective with games run more loosely and when it's unnecessary to look elsewhere for stat blocks or other relevant information.
More complex encounters and rooms require more space to describe in a way that's organized to be easy to run at the table, which makes their inclusion on illustrated/isometric maps more difficult, especially if we get into more moderately sized dungeons.
Furthermore, when it comes to mapping, tracking distances to calculate the time required to traverse long hallways, etc., illustrated/isometric maps may not be as easy to use as a top-down grid map.
My preference when running games is having copies of traditional maps printed off outside of the book, and then having descriptions within the book that are well organized and include all relevant stat blocks. When it comes to those descriptions, an example of what I consider to be good design is Castle Xyntillan. And I'm not sure how Castle Xyntillan could be effectively presented with illustrated or isometric maps.
For what it's worth, I really enjoy your art and creative writing, and those are the big reasons why I've purchased your products.
@maasenstodt
Thanks
It goes without saying that its harder to fit the same amount of information on bigger maps.
What I've seen of CX is pretty bad Scooby Doo shit with overlong room descriptions to no purpose and Melan is part of the harassment mob so fuck that noise.
Ha, I was thinking about that after I left the comment. I think some players might feel safer with slower-acting DMs.
Ha, I haven't thought about Gabor Lux for a long time. He and I both have fond memories of classic Judges Guild and Gabor often tried to replicate Judges Guild's broad sandboxy-style with some good results. But even Judges Guild couldn't maintain that style over time with consistent coherency. It saddens me to learn Gabor is part of the hate mob.
There are a number of ways to make a random dungeon with a deck of cards and a few tables for instant on the spot gratification.
@mordenkainenedogpissbeer
Is that comment supposed to have anything to do with this blog entry it appears beneath?
@John
The fact that the dungeon is linear isn't relevant: that's not about the map style, so it's weird you wrote that at all. So that's not a good answer.
As for "re-usable" if you're going to write a whole new key for a blue map, theres no particular reason not to write new words on a white map. So that's not a good answer.
As for scale: its on the map, just like on the blue one. Just like the blue map: you have to look at the listed scale to see the scale. So that's not a good answer.
"
"maps should be clean graphic design, not artwork", i.e. they would like them to be less cluttered.
"
None of what you said explains why.
@john
"So if you're reusing the map, the illustrations no longer match the room contents - they are only useful the first time."
Yeah and no illustrations are useful zero times.
So: its not an _impediment_ to re-use, its just a thing that enhances the first and intended use. On second use, theres no picture, just exactly like the blue map.
"The scale on the white map is marked on the top and side, in 2D for an isometric map. This may seem a meaningless difference to you but for a traditional square-counter it assumes more significance because it doesn't put the information they want to be immediately available at all times at front and centre."
Even the "traditional dungeon crawler" wants:
-The contents of the room
-What the monster is
-What the monster looks like
-An idea of what the next area is like at a glance
So I don't buy that. The information I put on the map is all stuff EVEN THEY would want.
@John
"On the players rentering the dungeon, the illustrations become "clutter", "
Wait wait wait:
Are you talking about
A) Re-using the map for a completely different dungeon, or
B) The PCs leave the dungeon and re-enter
?
If A) Again: you're gonna have to cross out the words in your blue map and write new ones, i don't see how its hard to cross out the illustrations
if B) The illustrations remind you what room it is, even if the actual creature is dead, so it has a lot of utility.
-
"The side scales with isometric view are also not so easily parsed at a glance, especially if you're, say, calculating the amount of corridor a fireball will fill."
Yes. but to repeat myself, it is full of other information at a glance that they do want:
"
Even the "traditional dungeon crawler" wants:
-The contents of the room
-What the monster is
-What the monster looks like
-An idea of what the next area is like at a glance
So I don't buy that. The information I put on the map is all stuff EVEN THEY would want
"
So please, answer that point instead of dodging it in your next comment.
@John
""
Even the "traditional dungeon crawler" wants:
-The contents of the room
-What the monster is
-What the monster looks like
-An idea of what the next area is like at a glance
"
Type why you believe they don't (or claim they don't) want this information.
@John
On this blog, we discuss things all the way, not run away or dodge.
So, everyone has to answer questions or be banned (including me).
So, John if you don't thing they don't want
"
-The contents of the room
-What the monster is
-What the monster looks like
-An idea of what the next area is like at a glance
"
Then why do they not "prioritize" it--or whatever it is that makes them not want it on the map?
@John
If you don't answer questions you don't get to speak, bye bye.
I think it’s a poorly expressed complaint that they’re just “different” and that difference is “low enough” fruit to pluck at.
Your maps, and others like many of the one page dungeons, are well thought out and highly functional. The maps they’re used to are not.
I think it’s like people who are fluent in English (a terribly complex and often confusing language, even for the fluent) complaining that Lojban “sucks” even though it was explicitly designed to be a far more functionally effective and efficient language; it takes effort to learn and that effort makes them uncomfortable. That’s if we’re being generous and assuming that their complaints are genuine and not just another angle to join in on the popularity of dogpiling on you.
Maybe if your players want to make a really detailed map from your descriptions, or you really care about exactly how long a corridor is, the isometric view conveys less information about precise layouts. I've had a few players try to do that, although I never really understood why. It's not like they need an architectural blueprint because they're going to tunnel between rooms or something.
In exchange the isometric view already had me thinking about how I'd describe the various rooms as soon as I glanced at it, so I'd say that's a fair trade-off!
@Adam Foster
But the map I posted literally has all of that detail and more. There's a scale, the map matches it.
The blue map has _less information_ .
@anon
Sorry, no anonymous comments allowed.
So it does! That's really cool. Apologies for not noticing it before.
In that case, I've got nothing. The isometric map is just better. I'm not great at visualising space from maps so I love how I can immediately see how it all fits together in three dimensions.
I can give you an answer:
The most likely case is just that they're less familiar with one type of map and hence can't read it well.
But if you want a technical reason: the grid map is easier to rotate so that the map reader's vantage point matches direction of travel. Having less information on the map helps this functionality, since text and pictures do not retain legibility from all angles - the map reader would need to rotate the map back to make sense of them. That's why you'd want the extensive textual portions and pictures separately from the top down map.
The above reason is also why real navigation maps are typically top down rather than isometric, and sparse in symbols which can only be read from one direction. In general, a map's purpose is not to have all the information, it's to have the right information for the job.
But does this answer your title question? Hardly. If I cracked open my textbook on technical drawing, I would quickly find out why someone would rather use an isometric map. Your maps make perfect sense as architechtural drawings for someone who wants to know what's in the whole dungeon/level, rather than someone moving through one. So the stupidity would be in using an architechtural map as navigation map and then not being able to explain why the map given does not match the desired use case.
@Hraithre
But if that were true, then when someone was running a module they'd be constantly turning the entire module book around to match the direction of travel but I've literally never seen that happen ever.
When people run games they usually just have it rest as-printed where north is up and that's that.
If you've never seen that, then you're the odd one out from my perspective. For more realistic games using map types that are even closer to modern navigation maps, not only is it common to rotate a book, it's common for the maps to be detachable so that they can be rotated, spread around etc. while the rest of the book is at the hands of the referee. Or, when the maps are not detachable, people take photocopies or redraw relevant bits by hand and then rotate those.
So what would explain the difference in our experiences? My bet would be on culture. My background is from scouting and orienteering, where rotating the map is a basic thing taught to everyone. I was personally taught this when I was six or seven years old, years before I started playing tabletop roleplaying games, and I just carried the habit forward.
So now we can ask: when you think of the people you've observed running modules, do they have that kind of background? If you handed them a real street map and told them to go somewhere in a city, would they think to turn it around so the directions on the map match directions in reality? Hell, if you asked them to use Google Maps or whatever, would they use the function that automatically rotates the map to match direction of travel? Or would they insist on using the function that guarantees map North is up towards the edge of the screen?
I can't know the answers, since the body of people you refer to is opaque to me. But it is within the realm of possibility that the people you're thinking of just don't share the background and thus were never taught to rotate a map. They either do the rotations in their head when necessary, or play in a way that doesn't require or benefit from rotations at all.
@hraithre
I have no idea what background people running games have, but I know if they were turning the maps sideways it would make whatever numbers or letters were on the map harder to read so that would be counterintuitive.
As for a street map: completely different use-case. That is walking or driving, not telling a group of people at a table what they see.
As noted, I completely agree turning the map makes letters (etc.) harder to read! Which is why it's worth noting that of the two sample maps, one has minimal text on it. Majority of information it actually conveys is the sort that would be preserved when rotated - because it's made to be rotated.
And this is really at the heart of this. You had a firm idea of how your map would be used at a table: as part of a book, looked at from a fixed vantage point. You made the best possible map for that use case and for that use case, there may be no advantage to the second type of map.
It's not given that is how the second type of map is used.
When I tell players what they see, I describe it as if they are moving through (walking etc.) that space. I use subjective directions such as left, right, forward, backward (etc.) as opposed to absolute directions such as North, South (etc.). For that purpose, it helps to use a map exactly as if I was moving through that space myself. F.ex. if I want to tell if a corridor is to the left of the players, it helps if my vantage point for the map is the same as it's meant to be for the players. So, I actually want a map that can be used like a real orienteering or street map.
Quite often, my players are also drawing their own map - and it is from their vantage point, not mine. They might not know, or think to check, where absolute North is. As a result, their map sketch often ends up rotated compared to mine. So, I want a map that can be rotated to match, for ease of comparison. For this, extensive text on my map does nothing. The room key and room descriptions are irrelevant, since I don't expect those bits to be transcribed. I might even prefer they not be there, in case I want to show my map to the players so they can find their bearings.
@hraithre
Well I have genuinely never seen the game played that way and I bet that a lot of the people whining do not do that since you're the first I've ever heard describe it in all the time I've heard about this game.
And for me, it's a genuine surprise that you haven't seen this. It's a culture shock as great as finding out someone didn't swim as a kid and has no friends who did either.
As for how this relates to the Twitter mob? I wouldn't know. As before, the technical answer about how to use which kind of map for what can hardly answer your title question about people. I know a lot about maps, I know nothing about the people.
@TheRyujinLP
Sorry, misinformation is not allowed in the comments. Comment erased.
Also you violated a couple other rules:
-No personal attacks ("libtard")
-Failing to answer questions
Nobody said not liking my maps makes someone stupid, I asked if they _were_ stupid and then asked a question--which your comment does not address.
If you can apologize for all the bad things you did, you will be allowed to comment.
As an old person with knackered eyes, my only "complaint" would be that the blue and white top down map is easier for me to read, even though I then have to go dig through multiple reference points in a 40 page book. It is also a comfort or familiarity thing, I'm fairly certain. So maybe not stupid, just less adaptable and with poorer eyesight? I mean not in all cases. In some cases, I'm sure they're stupid AF. That's just a game of percentages.
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