Nirrum lives on a continent that you can cross on foot in under a year
I, On the other hand, live in a country that takes two years to cross and we don't even have dragons
This is my map, presently. It's missing a couple of settlements that have been added since, and while it does what I need it to do, It's not quite big enough for what I imagine.
Varomar on Snarl and my vision
That's it, the sole terrestrial continent on Snarl. Varomar as seen here is presented as about three miles per pixel. Just over two pixels for maximum view distance. As some astute fellows of culture may have noticed, this is actually just a re-textured Dwarf Fortress Map. The original map could be crossed in, eh, about a week. As a Lore Bard, I couldn't stand to feel so confined so I made it larger. Much, Much larger. My friend and I added extra features, a volcano where there wasn't one, entire empires and histories. Now, I've run into a problem. There's only one desert and it's largely quartz and salt. There's no real canyons. There's only two jungles and they're disconnected, there's only one major mountain range and some very minor ones, there's no Other continent, there's not enough room here to do the things I want to do. This map is a good size for a starter run in dungeons and dragons or any similar tabletop. Hell, this is a good style for most sandbox games on the table or no. What it isn't, is big enough for my plots. Why isn't it big enough? It's not big enough because my players can't take over the Mediterranean analogue without then going more or less uncontested because there's a total of...three... ish, other countries that matter. That's not enough. I want these people to get to their high level powers and still have challenges such as other empires in the shapes of Rome, Mongolia, Modern america, an overly aggressive version of transpacific pre-modern Polynesia, and still have places to conquer. I want a Portugal analogue, the deep left-fielder of the trading world until they rounded the horn of Africa. I want political shifts coming out of the woodwork because the only thing that stops a level 20 wizard from being relevant is too many requests to be relevant. People who read this blog might understand that I DM for keeps. In a general design sense, this might be unfeasible. Games like Civilization, where tides of alliances constantly shift somewhat work, but combining this with an RPG, an adventure game, or any title might be cumbersome. In the case of tabletop, the abundance of such general prep work means I'll never have to prep again when I'm done.
Positive, Negative feedback loops and the Mu-loop in RPGs
The context for your worldview as a run-of-the-mill daywalking peasant or adventurer is simple: Survive, flourish if possible, enjoy yourself when you can. Importantly excluded from this context are the things you can't really reasonably control. Don't get raided by dragons, don't fund extremist cults in other countries, don't enter into a ill-foreseen resource deal with a neighbour with one of the most well written contracts in legal history and a 65-year unbreakable term span. Even if you do have a say in these things, it's unlikely that you'll be able to predict their outcomes anyway. Turns out, we can't predict the future at all. Patrick Rothsfuss, author of the Kingkiller chronicle, (a delightful quadrilogy of three at present), describes the concepts of Intrinsic and extrinsic power in his second book. Most normal people only have two options, the strength of their arm or the strength that people are willing to use for them. Politicians of all kinds, the smart ones at least, realize that their power is of the latter kind. Most Kings are unaware of the problems that so frequently plague civil engineering, they just have someone willing to know for them. Adventurers, protagonists, agonists, bands, gangs, and most denizens of the non-material planes might fall in the former category, and this is dangerous.
Adventuring often comes with a positive feedback loop. The more powerful you are, the easier it is to overcome challenges. This tends to blindside local politicians who aren't used to single individuals that can threaten entire armies. In terms of power politics, this is bad. We do this to grant power to ourselves in our daily lives, frequently to avoid the fact that we have about as much intrinsic (personal) power as we can gain and without some massive networking, financing and in many cases corruption, this is about as far as we can get with Extrinsic (borrowed) power. As game designers, we fight this problem with increasingly large problems. We create a negative feedback loop, where getting more powerful means more difficult challenges. Blue shells in Mario Kart, unconquerable bureaucracy in less corrupt government, Dragons. If either of these get too far out of control it becomes an automatic loss with no hope of recovery, on one hand for the players, on the other hand for the designer, and in both cases, the game.
Is that even realistic though? So many adventures are designed well to simply mask the linear or slightly curved progression, such that it's hard to tell if you've gotten better. Some adventures go out of their way to signpost their progression by throwing the same low-level challenge at you repeatedly just to make it clear that you're not insignificant anymore. In my games, my players have died to cold, shallow rivers, while taking on sandstone gods as an optional laugh. The dissonance and whiplash are staggering. They have walked into places with things that were beyond their powerscale, and in many cases, lived. Their Intrinsic power frequently matches the world and even punches well above its weight when it comes to dealing with problems. For this, I have developed my games to include mu-loop challenges. Named for Douglas Hofstadter's meta-defining philosophy heh, this Mu feedback-loop revolves around the idea that all of the challenges you face around one level are (while not confined to that level) challenges that are dependent on what you can do in that context. Most designers in tabletop will end up moving to this system anyway. When a player gets too powerful, they then have to start dealing with problems that were already there, always there, but out of their tier, out of their purview. "The Enemy" switches from goblins and orcs to the machinations of their handler, the plots of their country, then the machinations of their mastermind. These problems were always there (or at least we imply), and if the audience knows this, then we have a Mu-feedback loop. Every time they stop to step back to look and recontextualize the problem, the new problem is equally obvious, but a distinctly different problem. Mu-Feedback Loop Design in this context is simply stacking problems on top of each-other in such a way that in all contexts, the problem being addressed is simultaneously a step in the right direction but also not enough.
The big thing is, that in order to do this, I'm going to need huge amounts of context, and for that, I need a bigger map.
Adventuring often comes with a positive feedback loop. The more powerful you are, the easier it is to overcome challenges. This tends to blindside local politicians who aren't used to single individuals that can threaten entire armies. In terms of power politics, this is bad. We do this to grant power to ourselves in our daily lives, frequently to avoid the fact that we have about as much intrinsic (personal) power as we can gain and without some massive networking, financing and in many cases corruption, this is about as far as we can get with Extrinsic (borrowed) power. As game designers, we fight this problem with increasingly large problems. We create a negative feedback loop, where getting more powerful means more difficult challenges. Blue shells in Mario Kart, unconquerable bureaucracy in less corrupt government, Dragons. If either of these get too far out of control it becomes an automatic loss with no hope of recovery, on one hand for the players, on the other hand for the designer, and in both cases, the game.
Is that even realistic though? So many adventures are designed well to simply mask the linear or slightly curved progression, such that it's hard to tell if you've gotten better. Some adventures go out of their way to signpost their progression by throwing the same low-level challenge at you repeatedly just to make it clear that you're not insignificant anymore. In my games, my players have died to cold, shallow rivers, while taking on sandstone gods as an optional laugh. The dissonance and whiplash are staggering. They have walked into places with things that were beyond their powerscale, and in many cases, lived. Their Intrinsic power frequently matches the world and even punches well above its weight when it comes to dealing with problems. For this, I have developed my games to include mu-loop challenges. Named for Douglas Hofstadter's meta-defining philosophy heh, this Mu feedback-loop revolves around the idea that all of the challenges you face around one level are (while not confined to that level) challenges that are dependent on what you can do in that context. Most designers in tabletop will end up moving to this system anyway. When a player gets too powerful, they then have to start dealing with problems that were already there, always there, but out of their tier, out of their purview. "The Enemy" switches from goblins and orcs to the machinations of their handler, the plots of their country, then the machinations of their mastermind. These problems were always there (or at least we imply), and if the audience knows this, then we have a Mu-feedback loop. Every time they stop to step back to look and recontextualize the problem, the new problem is equally obvious, but a distinctly different problem. Mu-Feedback Loop Design in this context is simply stacking problems on top of each-other in such a way that in all contexts, the problem being addressed is simultaneously a step in the right direction but also not enough.
The big thing is, that in order to do this, I'm going to need huge amounts of context, and for that, I need a bigger map.
What size is big enough?
An important thing to remember is that, frequently, as a DM, you're not getting paid, you prepare what you can and what you need to to have a good time. Don't be some asshole madman who expects to require a fully rationalized map, economy, society, and political structure to have a good time. One of the best DMs I have ever had started a 12 hour session with a single piece of paper describing everything he needed for Skalmirthon, a document which is somewhere around six times the size, restaurants excluded. Compared to another great DM, who has accurate positions on the entire populations of his exquisitely mapped and prepared towns. It might be a bit easier for him, as it is set largely in England, but the efficiency of preparation is a sign of a great Designer.
For video games, your players are going to explore every aspect of the map, so minimizing the amount of thought and effort it takes into building each area is important. Some of the greatest games ever have been developed with Design by Subtraction as a core philosophy. To design is art, and art is expression by abstraction. To design, thus, is to communicate. To Express. As all communication must find a balance between context and abstraction, it must therefore be done as succinctly as possible.
Your map should be no bigger than you want your story to be, and express nothing that you do not need. Can you tell that I have lofty ambitions?
Your map should be no bigger than you want your story to be, and express nothing that you do not need. Can you tell that I have lofty ambitions?
The Purpose of a Map
I believe that the purpose of a map is to be the stage upon which your players play. I've been in plays before, as sound design, as an actor. The stage is so small. So confining, and the edges so visible. A stage too small might force constraints against the tone of a play, and force the designer to get extremely creative with their space. A stage too large, and it will be hard to see either side of it. So why do I want a multi-continent, Multi-civilization, planet-spanning empire? Dal 20va Manapiral Ra'a, Jaraha. Mostly unwarranted hype aside, I know a few of my weaknesses, and I find myself struggling to challenge players at certain points in their adventures. I'm good at building civilizations and making them do things, so I hide behind my lack of creativity by making the world more real and more full. Ultimately, there will always be something to do in my world. That is the reason behind mu-feedback loop design, the reason
There are better ways to tell a story than how I do it.
That said, I can always only focus on a small area, and when doing my session prep, that's what I'll do.
Another way to think of a map is a way to set tone. A mountain presents an obstacle, their tops barren and inhospitable; their slopes problematic to traverse and occupied by dangerous creatures; their bases awash in cold water, presenting an obvious path, to the detriment of those who take it unwary of the danger that waits there. Similarly, a desert is nearly synonymous with thirst and want, a forest with mystery, a swamp with difficulty, and plains with exposure. A small map like my current one can set this tone once. A larger map will allow you to set the tone again and again, each time with the players getting better at it, until it becomes a non-issue, a memory or a brief backdrop against which they set their actions, perhaps, a home.
That said, I can always only focus on a small area, and when doing my session prep, that's what I'll do.
Another way to think of a map is a way to set tone. A mountain presents an obstacle, their tops barren and inhospitable; their slopes problematic to traverse and occupied by dangerous creatures; their bases awash in cold water, presenting an obvious path, to the detriment of those who take it unwary of the danger that waits there. Similarly, a desert is nearly synonymous with thirst and want, a forest with mystery, a swamp with difficulty, and plains with exposure. A small map like my current one can set this tone once. A larger map will allow you to set the tone again and again, each time with the players getting better at it, until it becomes a non-issue, a memory or a brief backdrop against which they set their actions, perhaps, a home.
In Conclusion
The way I look at a map and how I look at adventuring are more or less one and the same. Your map should be as big as your adventure, and while it is the mark of a skillful writer to do a lot with a little, you can probably tell from the length of my blog posts that I could use a bit more skill in that regard. To make up for that, I make sure I have a lot to use, so that no one can tell. And after all, In fiction, if no one can tell that you're cheating while writing, is there any difference from having done it right?
As a sidenote, I have found often that cluttered, detailed things are far more appealing than clean and simple things. In every Ghibli/Miyazaki scene, for example, you can expect to find at least three, usually four focal points. In the most beautiful art, I have found pleasure in exploring the space and being rewarded for looking closely, maybe that's why I want a big map, to fill it with so many tiny things
Mishlia, Pewdiepie Alo'u
-Dal Ganhihizhuh, Kaolok, Manazhuh, Nirrum
As a sidenote, I have found often that cluttered, detailed things are far more appealing than clean and simple things. In every Ghibli/Miyazaki scene, for example, you can expect to find at least three, usually four focal points. In the most beautiful art, I have found pleasure in exploring the space and being rewarded for looking closely, maybe that's why I want a big map, to fill it with so many tiny things
Mishlia, Pewdiepie Alo'u
-Dal Ganhihizhuh, Kaolok, Manazhuh, Nirrum
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