Player Mapping Preferences for West Marches Style Games

[kerrigaj]

Hypothesis
West Marches style games actively encourage and need player input and creativity to thrive and would benefit from campaign-wide player-generated maps that could be expanded or changed dynamically as various players and groups explore.

Situation in West Marches Style Games
1. Player-led content is actively encouraged in West Marches style games
2. Players would like to contribute to campaign knowledge through more than text or dialogue
3. Player maps should be rough and ready, drawn on-the-fly in game to reflect the type of pressures player characters are under, not exact copies of the GM map or drawn afterwards (look at old maps of your country compared with new maps that have evolved over centuries – map makers with time and contemporary equipment made mistakes, and they never had rampaging Owlbears to disrupt their work!)
4. The easiest and most realistic way to do this is via pen/pencil and paper
5. Player generated maps generated by pencil and paper are easy to share via digital scan/photo but hard to change or expand for anyone other than the player with that paper map
6. Fantasy Grounds does not facilitate sophisticated image uploads (it does allow links to image files)

Solutions?
1. Raster Additions & Changes via New Map Sections
a. Pros: Quick and Easy using a clean sheet each time; no degradation
b. Cons: Hard to fix errors clearly; rapid increase in number of maps for a single location
2. Raster re scans of original map
a. Pros: Quick and easy; errors may be fixed and new areas added by hand on a printout of the original map
b. Cons: Quality degrades per scan
3. Vector Maps
a. Pros: No degradation; easy to expand a map or make changes
b. Cons: Steeper learning curve to produce map; ‘single source’ map reduces realism vs multiple maps from various groups; there are free programs that convert scanned drawings to vectors (eg InkScape), however they in my experience they do not produce vector drawings easily

If you play a West Marches style game, what are your views?
I’d love to hear your views on this. What does your online group do?

My initial thoughts on player produced maps
1. I like the idea of a combination of Solution 1&2 for games in a non-modern setting (eg fantasy) because this will probably best reflect the technology of the time
a. This could be implemented via a digital ‘pigeon hole at the Inn in Town’ could be stuffed with many different maps from previous groups, some of which may show the ‘pit trap in the fifth cave’, some of which may not
2. I think hand produced vector maps or even more detailed maps developed in dedicated mapping tools may better suit modern or future games, however, these may require more learning to master the tools
Finally, this Reddit thread has some great ideas.

[Trenloe]

Moved to the Commons forum, which is more appropriate for this type of gaming discussion. You'll probably get more readers here too!

[kerrigaj]

Moved to the Commons forum, which is more appropriate for this type of gaming discussion. You'll probably get more readers here too!

Thank you!

[LordEntrails]

The closest thing I've done is with my Undermountain campaign. I've taken the player hand-drawn maps (drawn with pencil on graph paper) and then reproduced in CC3+ using a simple black line (freehand sketch with a mouse) on a parchment background. Then I've taken those maps and put them back into the campaign for other groups to find as part of a treasure.

[kerrigaj]

The closest thing I've done is with my Undermountain campaign. I've taken the player hand-drawn maps (drawn with pencil on graph paper) and then reproduced in CC3+ using a simple black line (freehand sketch with a mouse) on a parchment background. Then I've taken those maps and put them back into the campaign for other groups to find as part of a treasure.

Thanks for sharing your approach idea LordEntrails. You sound a very dedicated GM!

[kerrigaj]

It has been a week and no more comments. Looks like this isn't the burning hot topic I first thought...