DMing With No Map!

[vladtolenkov]

Okay. . .I love maps. I love drawing dungeons, but I had this thought this afternoon, and I thought I'd share it.

So you don't have a map--instead you've got a stack of index cards. Each card has an encounter on it complete with room description, notes concerning traps, and stats for any monsters present. Make the rooms as interesting as possible by providing lots of things in the environment for the PCs to interact with.

You could also have a few prepared hallway encounters or even just roll as usual on the wandering monster table of your choice. OD&D works well without minis so just pick out the room you want to use next and go. My thought is to just pick whichever room you think would work best with the general idea that the rooms should be varied in type but also should gradually become more difficult.

I don't think it would be too difficult to draw a rough map as you go (even if its just lines for corridors and shapes for rooms. Or you could let the players map the dungeon as usual and that way they draw it for you! The name of the game here is momentary inspiration and verbal interaction rather than consulting the map.

You needn't even let the players know you don't have a map (that would likely be best).

Am I missing something or do you think this could work? Also: Has anybody just run OD&D without a map? I'm sure some folks here have so let's hear about your winging it without the dungeon.

[vladtolenkov]

Also: no reason you couldn't do much the same for wilderness encounters (it might even work better).

[coffee]

I haven't run OD&D without a map, but I did one time get caught out and found myself running AD&D2 without a map. I just started winging the dungeon (I had monsters prepared) and the players didn't know anything.

They sort of suspected something when a door led to a place they'd been before. They even showed me their map. I just smiled vaguely and said nothing.

They closed the door and then opened it again and it was the first room again! I just made it a two way door.

I don't think they every realized that I hadn't planned that...



But as far as not having an actual dungeon map, just cards, no. I haven't done that.

I'd love to hear how it works out, though!

[dwayanu]

Ken St. Andre has a dungeon for T&T like that. It's a cubical matrix of spaces, and when you enter one he draws a card to see what's in it. There's always something usually both tricky and deadly, and probably some treasure (not such an issue, advancement-wise) for victorious survivors; the "empty" room of OD&D tradition is not in the mix.

[kesher]

I've been only lazily contemplating how to run an "on-the-fly" dungeon without lots of rolling on charts, so I think it's a stellar idea, since you just did the work for me!

You could also have another stack of cards with "map fragments", e.g., one might say "90', then stairway leading down"; another might say "20' then a t-intersection." You could decide directions on the fly or choose them from a stack of four or eight cards (depending on how many directions you want) and lay some aside as you go so you don't pull "North" for one draw and "South" for the next.

Hmmm... I like this more and more...

[sham]

You know, there's a lot to like with this notion.

Let me first address the OP's idea: Begin with detailed room descriptions (on index cards) aside: A+ for using index cards!. Rather than using a map, the referee uses these rooms in an abstract manner. Anything that boils the dungeon crawl experience down to a gameism is cool in my book. I'm almost to the point that I consider OD&D a board game by the way!

OK, this is almost the exact opposite of my one-page dungeon idea, which emphasizes the map, or dungeon lay-out, and minimizes the room descriptions. My idea being that the individual referee can insert the superfluous material (aka flavor).

Essentially, you are starting with a collection of ideas, or encounters, and running the game with these "vital instances" in mind. The rest is just dungeon crawl/exploration chaff.

As I said earlier, there's a lot to like about this idea.

What I would want to avoid, from a D&D standpoint, is the feel of a storybook mode, or railroading.

At some point I'd want to inject the empty room principle, just to keep it from being a string of encounters. On the other hand, D&D dungeon crawling boils down to just this.

Some blend of this concept, and random dungeon generation (whether through the 1e DMG style or other method) might make for the perfect adventure.

Thanks for posting this. You've made me stop and consider some aspects of the game.

I can envision a board game type dungeon crawl mechanic using the dice as destiny method to determine excatly what happens during the crawl, utilizing index cards and a player determined map.

shirt, it's like a game of DUNGEON! with game to game experience, an episodic campaign.

Something I've been trying to sort out for months, by the way.

Well, that's my take on it.

[snorri]

I'm far much too lazy to draw maps. I use few dungeons and generally very small one.

I like to draw 'on the fly' the first rooms of a dungeon in a very small corner of a very big sheet. My players are affraid this could ba a 800 rooms megadungeon. But generally, they find etheir way quickly to the usefull place.

As an example, my last scenario involved a dunegon for pirates treasure hide. It was a ancient drow ruin, and I decided 'on the fly' to have it the shape of an 8 pointed star (like the chaos symbol of Stormbringer...). Then, I rolled 1d8 to know where would be the 'good' tunnel and rolled a 3. ASked my players where they wanted to go: a s result, expected for sure, a long argument on which one, to end by chhosing tunnel one.

I put all traps on the fly too, allmost one per minute of game, to suggest the idea of a mad trapped dungeon. They loose a huge lot of Hps like this. When they found a door tunnel 3, I just add two living statues and a few more traps and everyone enjoyed (this ais a pirate story: they fought statues with canon and guns!)

Then, the biggest treasur they ever saw. The only problem is all the money is allready engaged to buy a small fleet of war galleys for the final battle of the campaign!

[vladtolenkov]

After my original post I realized that you could also have a dungeon map and use the cards as a random key. Just another way of randomly stocking the dungeon.

Kesher: your idea about the dungeon generation cards sounds cool. It reminds me a little bit of Warhammer Quest.

If you want to avoid any hint of "railroading" just shuffle the cards and pull them right off the top. If you still want a "boss" encounter then just leave that one out of the deck and have the players reach it whenever you feel like it--or when you notice the session is winding down.

[Finarvyn]

Ive done mapless role-playing quite often with Amber Diceless and other story-driven games.

I've also created a map on-the-fly for my OD&D games quite often. I simply have a piece of paper hidden behind my DM screen and either make decisions off the top of my head or pick some options and quickly make a roll for it. I let the map grow as they explore the dungeon.

Jan 26, 2009 18:29:15 GMT -6 dwayanu said:

Ken St. Andre has a dungeon for T&T like that. It's a cubical matrix of spaces, and when you enter one he draws a card to see what's in it. There's always something usually both tricky and deadly, and probably some treasure (not such an issue, advancement-wise) for victorious survivors; the "empty" room of OD&D tradition is not in the mix.

Was that his personal dungeon or a published module?

[bigjackbrass]

Jan 31, 2009 8:56:56 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

Jan 26, 2009 18:29:15 GMT -6 dwayanu said:

Ken St. Andre has a dungeon for T&T like that.

Was that his personal dungeon or a published module?

That would be Gristlegrim, his personal dungeon (and what a kill-fest of legendarily epic proportions it is!), a floating cube a mile across. One of my characters had to serve some time in it as a Wandering Monster, after pleading rather pathetically for his life with the eponymous god who built the place.

Outlaw press have released a version of it: Scroll down a bit...

[Deleted]

Jan 31, 2009 9:29:46 GMT -6 bigjackbrass said:

That would be Gristlegrim, his personal dungeon (and what a kill-fest of legendarily epic proportions it is!), a floating cube a mile across. One of my characters had to serve some time in it as a Wandering Monster, after pleading rather pathetically for his life with the eponymous god who built the place.

Sounds cool. I've heard about Gristlegrim (maybe on the TandT boards?) and it would be a fun place to adventure. If that's KSA's personal megadungeon, I wonder if he's been building onto it since the 1970's. That could be an amazing thing to witness!

Oh, and it reminds me of the Borg cube in Star Trek TNG.

[parmstrong]

I agree with Sham in that gameism is A-okay! I have been looking at using the Barbarian Prince game from Dwarfstar for a campaign using a bunch of index cards inspired by the events in that game, some of the Warp Spawn card games as well as Atlas Games' Dungeoneer games.
Decks of index cards for wilderness events/encounters, dungeon rooms, monsters, rumors, etc. for the DM to draw from and use.

I am always amazed at how, if the DM randomly determines a few things for the players to interact with and then just sits back and listens, the players nearly always start drawing connections. Most of the DM's work can be done for him.

[blackmoor]

DMing with no map. Ohh. Simply memorize the dungeon. The rules you use. Keep notes of any changes.

"Been there, done that. No big deal."

Dave Arneson
"The first dungeonmaster"

[Max]

GristleGrim is online!

It's interesting to see how heavily T&T underscores the game aspect, and how fundamentally unconcerned with naturalism it is (judging from this example, anyhow).

[noburo]

Aw shucks, now you got me going...

Inspired by this thread (and Gristlegrim), I started toying with the idea of a dungeon generated randomly and on the fly. I bought a pack of index cards (a first!) and began jotting down notes for rooms and corridors. On each card, I drew a small map sketch (a single room or a short length of corridor) and wrote six brief descriptions of room contents – ranging from trivial flavour details to monster lairs and such. I now have about twenty cards finished, and since every card has six possible descriptions, that's a 120-room dungeon right there... Draw a card, roll d6, shuffle and repeat.

Once I have about fifty cards ready, I think I'll transfer them to a deck of blank playing cards and draw a few card-sized random charts for monsters, treasure and traps. Hey, it's a "Dungeon in my Pocket"!

[coffee]

"Is that a Dungeon in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

(Sorry, had to be done.)


This tracks with something I keep intending to do and haven't done yet. Dungeon in a box. Everything, dungeons, monsters, NPCs, etc. All on 3x5 cards in a file box.

Dungeon in a Box. I wish I'd patented it, or trademarked it, or something. But hey, now it's out there. Let's see what people do with it!

[noburo]

Apr 7, 2009 11:21:02 GMT -6 coffee said:

"Is that a Dungeon in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

I saw that coming...

I'm sorry I nicked your brainchild, but it's such a neat idea! You can expand it one card at a time (or better yet, sell booster packs!), it's easy to scale, and if you keep the cards generic enough, you can use it with any rules system or genre just by switching the monsters. Infinite replayability!

[sham]

Apr 7, 2009 11:21:02 GMT -6 coffee said:

"Is that a Dungeon in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

(Sorry, had to be done.)


This tracks with something I keep intending to do and haven't done yet. Dungeon in a box. Everything, dungeons, monsters, NPCs, etc. All on 3x5 cards in a file box.

Dungeon in a Box. I wish I'd patented it, or trademarked it, or something. But hey, now it's out there. Let's see what people do with it!

I almost do this now with Ulin-Uthor, except there IS a map. The map is not populated with monsters or filled with treasure, though. The permanent features of the dungeon are detailed, but the temporary ones are all written on 3x5 cards.

Prior to play I fill certain important areas, then simply use my version of the OD&D stocking method for monsters and treasure. All of that goes on a card and into the box. Each individual magic item has its own card, so the player can hold it (even potions).

For Wandering Monsters I have a large stack of index cards from which to blindly pull when one is called for.

Index cards are a wonderful thing. I like Coffee's idea a lot, and I really like the direction of the dungeon without a map idea. As I mentioned before I've had an old project which is meant to be an episodic random table based game, and this thread has helped me formulate more plans for that idea.

[blissinfinite]

Do any of you remember the SPI game called Deathmaze? You take your party through a random dungeon/maze by pulling chits out of a cup. Each chit was one of a number of corridors or various rooms and you placed them out 'mapping' the place as you go. All encounters, treasures, etc were randomly determined as you went along. It had lots of charts and you end up doing a lot of rolling and for the most part it was a one player game but did have some of the concepts mentioned in this post. You can probably translate a lot of it to index cards too.

www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3625

[parmstrong]

I use all sorts of things to generate maps at the table. Deathmaze, Citadel of Blood, Dungeoneer cards, random tables, etc.

[Mordorandor]

Jan 26, 2009 17:51:41 GMT -6 vladtolenkov said:

Okay. . .I love maps. I love drawing dungeons, but I had this thought this afternoon, and I thought I'd share it.

So you don't have a map--instead you've got a stack of index cards. Each card has an encounter on it complete with room description, notes concerning traps, and stats for any monsters present. Make the rooms as interesting as possible by providing lots of things in the environment for the PCs to interact with.

You could also have a few prepared hallway encounters or even just roll as usual on the wandering monster table of your choice. OD&D works well without minis so just pick out the room you want to use next and go. My thought is to just pick whichever room you think would work best with the general idea that the rooms should be varied in type but also should gradually become more difficult.

I don't think it would be too difficult to draw a rough map as you go (even if its just lines for corridors and shapes for rooms. Or you could let the players map the dungeon as usual and that way they draw it for you! The name of the game here is momentary inspiration and verbal interaction rather than consulting the map.

You needn't even let the players know you don't have a map (that would likely be best).

Am I missing something or do you think this could work? Also: Has anybody just run OD&D without a map? I'm sure some folks here have so let's hear about your winging it without the dungeon.

Sort of like Donjon, by Clinton R Nixon, (c)2002.

i.4pcdn.org/tg/1367778460122.pdf

Starting at p. 47, Running Donjon, with details around p. 50.