Maps, Locales, And Sites

In my last post, I talked about enhancing your RPG campaign by using maps for props. Here are some more ideas:

If your campaign is set in a recent era and in an actual city, find a map of that city and add a few captions, like "BBEG Building." With a bit of web searching, you can scare up historical maps, too; they are particularly handy for a Call of Cthulhu game. If it's fantasy, draw out a rough version of your GM's map of the kingdom. Weathering and aging it a bit (I used to put maps in the bottom of my backpack; after a week, they were perfect!) will add to the authenticity. For a futuristic game, if you want to go all the way for a future milieu, build a simple website (there's actually a service called Neocities that is striving to be the modern equivalent of the old Geocities).

A stylized planetary map so players know Wons is up in the Arctic and Dnas is 1,000 kilometers away in the desert could be done in an hour; a whole "Welcome to Dlrow Downport" site with details like a list of port charges for berthing, fuel, etc., and maybe even ads for local products and events (clues!) would take only a few hours, and could be used as a template to make others for various places.

Make maps. The time you spend will be more than made up in the time and hassle you don't have to spend saying "No, that's to the north of where you are."

Stay tuned for my next post in this continuing saga!

-- Jean Mcguire