Mapping Your Campaign

Maps are often the visual heart of a fantasy role-playing campaign. They transform abstract descriptions of kingdoms, wildernesses, and dungeons into tangible spaces that players can explore, navigate, and interact with. A well-crafted map grounds the adventure, inspires curiosity, aids in strategic planning, and helps both the Game Master and the players visualize the world they inhabit. While not every campaign needs detailed maps for every locale, understanding how to create and use maps effectively is a powerful tool in the GM’s worldbuilding arsenal.

This section explores the various types of maps useful in an Alacrity campaign, discusses different styles and approaches to map-making, provides guidance on creating your own maps, and offers tips on using them effectively during gameplay. The goal is not to dictate a single method but to provide a framework for thinking about how maps can best serve your specific campaign’s tone, scope, and themes.

Why Use Maps? The Cartographer’s Value

Maps serve multiple crucial functions in a role-playing game:

• Visualization and Grounding: Maps provide a shared visual reference point. When the GM describes the “Jagged Peaks bordering the Whispering Woods,” pointing to it on a map makes the location concrete and helps players orient themselves within the larger world. It turns abstract names into places with relative positions and surrounding features.
• Tracking Movement and Progress: Especially for campaigns involving significant travel, maps are essential for tracking the party’s journey. Marking their progress on a regional map helps convey the passage of time and distance, making journeys feel more substantial than a simple hand-wave. Site maps (dungeons, buildings) are vital for tracking movement during exploration and tactical positioning during combat.
• Inspiring Exploration: A map with intriguing names, mysterious symbols, or large blank areas inherently invites exploration. “What’s in the Shadowfen?” “Why is that tower marked as ‘ruined’?” “What lies beyond the charted territories?” A good map sparks player curiosity and provides natural adventure hooks.
• Strategic Context: Maps provide vital information for planning. Knowing the layout of a fortress before an assault, understanding the terrain features between two warring kingdoms, or seeing the escape routes from a city district allows players (and NPCs) to make informed strategic decisions.
• Reinforcing Tone and Theme: The style of a map can reinforce the campaign’s tone. A clean, brightly colored map suggests a world of clear borders and perhaps high fantasy adventure. A faded, hand-drawn map with sea monsters in the margins evokes exploration and danger. A stark, functional military map suits a war campaign.
• In-Game Props and Clues: Maps can be part of the adventure. Treasure maps, ancient star charts, hastily scribbled escape routes, or coded spy diagrams can serve as crucial clues, objectives, or rewards within the narrative itself.

Maps are more than just navigational aids; they are tools for storytelling, immersion, and strategic play.

Types of Maps: Different Scales for Different Needs

Maps come in various scales, each serving a distinct purpose in your campaign. You likely won’t need every type, but understanding their function helps you decide which are most useful for your game.

1. World / Continental Maps

These maps depict vast areas – entire planets, continents, or large empires. They operate at a high level of abstraction.

• Content: Typically show major political boundaries (kingdoms, empires), large geographical features (oceans, major mountain ranges, vast deserts, enormous forests), the locations of capital cities or extremely significant landmarks, and perhaps major trade routes or climate zones. Detail is minimal.
• Purpose: Primarily used to establish the grand scale of the world, show the relationships between major powers or regions, and plan epic, long-distance journeys. They help players understand where their current adventures fit into the larger global context.
• Use in Play: Consulted infrequently, usually when discussing geopolitics, planning intercontinental travel, or referencing world-shaping historical events.

2. Regional Maps

This is often the most frequently used map type for campaigns that involve travel beyond a single city. It focuses on a specific kingdom, province, collection of baronies, large island, or significant wilderness area.

• Content: Shows much more detail than a world map. Includes borders of smaller political entities (counties, baronies), locations of towns, villages, major roads, secondary roads or trails, significant rivers and lakes, specific forests, hills, mountain passes, known ruins, and other points of interest relevant to the campaign region. May include symbols for different terrain types.
• Purpose: Provides the primary sandbox for exploration and overland travel within the campaign’s main area of focus. Allows players to plan routes between locations, understand the local geography, and identify potential areas for adventure. Essential for tracking travel time and managing resources during journeys (using Alacrity’s Overland Travel rules).
• Use in Play: Consulted regularly whenever the party travels between settlements or explores the wilderness. Used by the GM to determine travel times, terrain challenges (Navigation, Survival checks), potential encounter locations, and the relative positions of key sites. Players often receive a version of this map.

3. Local Area Maps

These maps zoom in further, focusing on a single settlement (city, town, village) or a small, self-contained geographical area (a valley, a swamp, a small forest).

• Content: For settlements, shows major streets, districts, key buildings (temples, inns, castles, guildhalls), walls, gates, docks, and nearby landmarks. For wilderness areas, shows specific paths, streams, clearings, caves, notable trees, or monster lairs. Detail is high enough to navigate the specific area.
• Purpose: Used for urban adventures, exploring the immediate surroundings of a home base, or navigating a specific small wilderness region. Allows for detailed investigation, tracking movement within a settlement, planning infiltration or escape routes, and locating specific points of interest.
• Use in Play: Consulted frequently when the party is operating within the mapped area. Used for navigating streets, finding specific locations mentioned by NPCs, understanding the layout for stealth or chase sequences, and identifying potential ambush points or safe havens.

4. Site Maps (Dungeons, Buildings, Battlefields)

These are the most detailed maps, providing a floor plan or layout of a specific location where tactical movement and exploration are critical.

• Content: Shows individual rooms, corridors, doors, windows, stairs, furniture, traps, secret doors, terrain features (pillars, rubble, water pools), and other details relevant to exploration or combat within that specific site. Often uses a grid (squares or hexes) to regulate movement and measure distances precisely, though gridless maps can also work for a more narrative feel.
• Purpose: Essential for dungeon crawls, building infiltrations, tactical combat encounters, and detailed exploration of ruins or complexes. Allows players to make precise movement choices, understand lines of sight, utilize cover, and discover hidden elements within the environment.
• Use in Play: Used directly at the table during exploration and combat sequences. Players might track their position using miniatures or tokens, or the GM might describe their location relative to the map features. Crucial for resolving actions involving specific locations within the site (e.g., checking a specific chest for traps using Thievery, climbing a specific pillar using Athletics, taking cover behind a specific wall during combat).

You will likely use a combination of these map types in your campaign, zooming in and out as the focus of the adventure shifts.

Map Styles and Aesthetics: More Than Just Lines

The visual style of your maps contributes significantly to the campaign’s atmosphere and can impact how players perceive the world.

• Realistic vs. Stylized:
  • Realistic maps attempt to depict geography and political boundaries with a degree of verisimilitude, using conventional symbols and proportions. They enhance immersion in grounded settings and provide clear navigational information.
  • Stylized maps prioritize artistic expression or thematic resonance over strict accuracy. Examples include maps drawn like ancient scrolls, whimsical fairy-tale maps, stark military charts, or maps reflecting a specific cultural perspective (perhaps distorted by propaganda or limited knowledge). Stylized maps can powerfully evoke a specific tone but might be less useful for precise navigation unless supplemented by GM descriptions.
• Hand-Drawn vs. Digital Tools:
  • Hand-drawn maps offer a unique, personal touch and can be highly evocative. They don’t require technical skill beyond basic drawing ability (or using simple techniques like tracing or stencils). They can be easily modified during play.
  • Digital map-making tools (ranging from simple drawing software to dedicated fantasy map generators like Wonderdraft or Inkarnate) offer powerful features, vast asset libraries, layering capabilities, and often produce highly detailed and professional-looking results. They can be easier to share digitally but might require more learning investment.

    Neither approach is inherently better; choose the method that suits your skills, time, and desired aesthetic.

• Player Maps vs. GM Maps: It’s often effective to differentiate between the map information available to the players and the complete map known only to the GM.
  • Player maps might be incomplete, inaccurate (based on outdated information or rumors), stylized, lack detail in unexplored areas, or be deliberately misleading (if acquired from unreliable sources). Giving players a map that has “Here be dragons” or large blank sections encourages exploration.
  • GM maps contain all the details: hidden locations, secret passages, encounter placements, political realities, accurate geography. The GM uses their map as the definitive reference, revealing information to the players as they discover it.

Consider the in-world source of any map the players acquire. A map bought from a reputable cartographer’s guild will likely be more accurate (though perhaps expensive) than one sketched on hide by a semi-literate goblin prisoner.

Creating Your Maps: From Blank Page to World Stage

Creating maps can seem daunting, but breaking it down into steps makes it manageable.

Start with the Scope

Decide which type of map you need first based on your campaign’s initial focus. If starting in a single town, create a local area map of the town and its immediate surroundings. If starting with a regional quest, focus on a regional map. Don’t feel obligated to create a detailed world map unless the campaign demands it early on. Start small and expand outwards.

Geography First or Politics First?

There are two common approaches:

• Geography First: Start by drawing major landmasses, oceans, mountain ranges, and rivers. Let these natural features dictate where settlements might arise (near water, in defensible valleys, along trade routes) and where political borders might naturally form (along rivers or mountain crests). This often leads to a more organic-feeling world.
• Politics First: Decide on the major kingdoms, empires, or factions first. Place their capitals and major cities, then draw borders based on their spheres of influence. Fill in the geographical features afterwards, ensuring they make sense with the established political landscape (e.g., a kingdom probably needs access to farmland and water). This approach prioritizes the political structure.

  Many GMs use a hybrid approach, sketching major geography and then placing political entities within that framework.

Key Features to Include

What goes on the map depends on the scale:

• World/Continental: Landmasses, oceans, major climate zones (deserts, jungles, tundra), massive mountain ranges, locations of continents/major islands, perhaps the very largest rivers or lakes.
• Regional: Political borders, capital cities, major towns, villages, roads (major and minor), rivers, lakes, significant forests, hills, mountains, swamps, coastlines, known ruins, major dungeons, other points of interest (passes, bridges, shrines).
• Local Area: Streets/paths, key buildings (inn, temple, keep, market, guildhalls), districts, walls/gates, docks, rivers/streams, bridges, nearby fields, forests, caves, ruins.
• Site Map: Walls, rooms, corridors, doors (including secret ones), windows, stairs, furniture, light sources, traps, environmental hazards (pits, water), cover objects (pillars, statues), important interactive elements (levers, chests, altars).

Scale and Distance

Establish a consistent scale for your regional and local maps (e.g., 1 inch = 10 miles, 1 hex = 6 miles, 1 square = 5 feet). This is crucial for:

• Travel Time: Use the scale in conjunction with Alacrity’s Overland Travel rules (p. XX) to determine how long journeys take based on pace and terrain.
• Range: On site maps, the scale determines movement distances, weapon ranges, and area of effect sizes for spells and abilities.

  Even if your map is more schematic, having a rough idea of scale helps maintain consistency.

Naming Conventions

Give your locations evocative names that fit the world’s tone and cultures. Consider:

• Descriptive Names: Reflecting geography (e.g., Riverwood, Stony Pass, Misty Mountains).
• Historical Names: Referencing past events or figures (e.g., King’s Landing, Dragon’s Peak, Field of Ghosts).
• Cultural Names: Using naming conventions appropriate to the different species or human cultures inhabiting the area (e.g., Elven names might sound flowing, Dwarven names guttural).
• Consistency: Try to maintain some consistency within a region or culture.

Leaving Blanks: The Power of the Unknown

Resist the urge to detail every square inch of your map, especially at larger scales. Leaving unexplored regions, uncharted waters, or areas marked only with vague descriptions (“The Haunted Hills,” “Ancient Forest”) serves several purposes:

• Reduces GM Prep: You don’t need to invent details for places the players may never visit.
• Encourages Exploration: Blank spaces are invitations for adventure.
• Allows Flexibility: You can fill in those blanks later based on player actions, interests, or new ideas that arise during the campaign.
• Sense of Wonder: A world with mysteries and unknown frontiers feels larger and more exciting.

Using Maps in Play: Bringing Geography to Life

How you present and use maps during game sessions is key to their effectiveness.

• Revealing the Map:
  • Initial Information: Decide how much map knowledge the player characters start with. Are they locals with a good understanding of the immediate area? Travelers with a rough regional map? Possessors of a rare, detailed map?
  • Gradual Revelation: Often, it’s best to reveal map details gradually as the party explores. They might start with a map of their home village, then acquire or create a regional map as they travel.
  • Fog of War: Whether using digital tools or simply describing areas, only reveal parts of a site map (like a dungeon) as the characters explore them. Keep hidden rooms and secret passages concealed until discovered.
• Tracking Movement:
  • Overland: Use the regional map to mark the party’s route and track days traveled, helping manage rations and check for encounters.
  • Site Exploration: Use miniatures, tokens, or simple markers on a battle map or dungeon map to show the party’s current location, facing, and tactical positioning relative to enemies and features. This is crucial for resolving combat actions, line of sight, and exploration choices.
• Maps as Clues and Props:
  • Hand players physical props representing maps found in-game (even simple hand-drawn ones).
  • Design treasure maps with riddles or landmarks they need to identify on a larger regional map.
  • Use incomplete or damaged maps that require skill checks (Investigation, Navigation, Lore) or further exploration to decipher.
• Player Mapping:
  • Especially for dungeon crawls or exploring uncharted territory, encourage one player to act as the party’s cartographer, drawing a map based on the GM’s descriptions. This actively engages players in the exploration process and creates a unique artifact of their journey. Be prepared for inaccuracies – that’s part of the fun!

Alacrity Considerations for Maps

Integrate your maps with Alacrity’s mechanics:

• Travel: Use map scale and terrain features to determine travel times based on the Overland Travel rules and required Navigation checks. Difficult terrain shown on the map directly impacts movement speed and fatigue.
• Skills: Map features provide context for skill use. Crossing a river requires Athletics, navigating dense fog uses Navigation with penalties, spotting an ambush from a lookout point involves Perception/Vigilance, finding food relies on Survival in the depicted terrain, and understanding markings on an ancient map might need Lore or Investigation.
• Combat: Site maps inform tactical decisions. Walls provide cover (affecting attack rolls), difficult terrain hinders movement, obstacles block line of sight, and distances determine weapon ranges and movement needed to engage.

Conclusion: Maps as Storytelling Tools

Maps are far more than just geographical representations; they are powerful tools for enhancing immersion, guiding gameplay, and telling stories in your Alacrity campaign. From the grand sweep of a continental map establishing the world’s scale to the detailed layout of a dungeon room dictating tactical choices, maps help bring your world to life. By thoughtfully choosing the types and styles of maps appropriate for your campaign, carefully considering what details to include (and what to leave blank), and actively using them during play to track progress, inspire exploration, and provide context for character actions, you can elevate your game and create a richer, more believable stage for adventure. Remember to be flexible, focus on what serves the story and player engagement best, and let your maps become an integral part of the shared narrative you create.