The book describes player maps as just a list of locations. They don’t actually draw the map, but anything they have successfully listed on their map they can get to without a pathfinder or dungeoneering test.
Yeah, the “map” the players have is just a list of places they’ve been that they might want to be again. “That place with the fountain”, “The big pit”, “The hall with the green glow”, “That damned maze”.
We found that it would have been very helpful mentally if the DM had shown the players a map of what had been successfully Cartographor’ed, or at least we suspect it would have been very helpful getting mentally into the world. I’m envisioning this being of the art quality roughly the same as if the map was sketched by a murderer-hobo sitting in candle light in dank cave.
We’re playing with a map from Dyson’s Delve, and had the section we’ve mapped so far revealed to us from a successful Cartography check. Worked really well, I think.
Good to hear our post-op suspicions confirmed, thanks. I’m [highly] likely to be the one running it next time I’m involved so I’ll make allowances and plans to be able to do that.
From this thread:
I see your point, though an area with seemingly endless maze-like hallways might just get frustrating or annoying for players, particularly if they aren’t keeping a visual map (the fun of that kind of maze exploration was always drawing it out and fixing the mistakes when you realize it’s wrong, though that was also often a cause of arguments which TB quite cleverly tries to avoid in most cases, so that’s probably why you keep mapping in game). I might go with a Pathfinder test if they were lost in some abandoned warren of the underdark just to avoid an hour or more of meaningless frustrating play. But then, maybe TB isn’t meant to be played in an abandoned warren of the underdark? It does seem like TB is about discrete locations packed full of “fun” rather than sprawling labyrinths. But the Pathfinder skill isn’t a bad compromise if you feel like a sprawling labyrinth is appropriate to the setting and idioms in play at the moment… at least to me.
Or you could just use Cartographer to map the areas you’ve been in.
I suppose I was thinking of the following type of scenario.
The evil guildmaster has a mansion full of treasures, traps, and other interesting stuff, and the players have obtained guild permission to raid it. However, the guildmaster has a fascination for topiary and has constructed an enormous sprawling hedge-maze in his front yard. It’s not magical and there isn’t a whole lot to find in there, but the party need to navigate it to even get in the castle. No point in playing out every corner and intersection, because this is just intended as a single obstacle. They could hack their way through with a Health test or they could try to navigate the maze with pathfinder.
Doesn’t that make sense? Or are you saying that you would simply prefer to have a smaller hedge-maze that actually has interesting features and obstacles at every intersection?
If I were going to do a hedge-maze scenario like that, I would treat it more like a puzzle room mini-game rather than part of the standard exploration/turn structure, with the capability to bypass it with a test triggered by the right description. So essentially it’s the same thing mechanically as a room with some decoder ring lock on the exit door, and you hand the players a prop to see if they can solve it (or trigger character knowledge tests to bypass solving it.) If you wanted a longer scenario, you could have the maze solved in stages, with each stage of the maze effectively a single “location” with it’s own thematic obstacles.
I did this with a riddle statue the other day. The characters could just answer the riddle directly, and either guess right or wrong, or they could have triggered some sort of character knowledge test to bypass it with the right description of action.
Edit: In other words, actually “solving the maze” as a fun mapping minigame, figuring out the combination to the decoder ring, or guessing the right answer to the riddle, would just be ruled as A Good Idea.
A topiary garden is out of doors. You could use Pathfinder to stay in a general direction. At the very least you could hack your way through to the other side. Being underground/in a dungeon is very different.
You need to ask yourself what the purpose of the maze is. If there are no choices and no obstacles, there’s really not much point to a test at all: “You stumble around in it for a few hours and finally find your way out the other end.”
If you want to find your way through the maze to the exit? You better make a map.
I guess it’s a matter of scope. A maze of the sort I’m suggesting serves the same approximate function as a door. It isn’t an area so much as a single obstacle, and in that sense serves the same purpose to the campaign as a door would. You can search a door for traps, and you can travel through the maze slowly looking for traps. You can try to pick the lock of the door and you can try to navigate the maze. You can try to bash through a door and you can try to dig, chop, or climb your way through or over a maze. You need to get through that door/maze, how are you going to do it? If you try something and fail you get a condition or twist. Granted, it takes “longer” to get through a maze than a door, but in terms of function they could be quite similar, if you engage with them in a similar fashion.
Of course, every dungeon shouldn’t have this kind of a maze, and maybe most shouldn’t. And certainly, rooms full of interesting stuff are a lot more interesting. But despite the fact that a single interesting and complex area is spatially smaller in-game than a simple but sprawling maze, such complex rooms are actually functionally much larger and therefore of a different scope than such a maze, treated as a single obstacle rather than a set of areas. This doesn’t seem necessarily antithetical to TB.
Also, lizlarsen, I do really like the idea of stepping out of TB with an external puzzle that gives them an opportunity to bypass an obstacle. I should try to incorporate that more often, it’s always fun and spices things up. It just takes a lot of work and I’m just not that resourceful all the time 
I like the cut of Liz’s jib. If you’re having trouble conceiving of a maze as a navigable obstacle, perhaps it’s something else like a puzzle to be solved with a good idea or a test.
However, I strongly urge you all to at least attempt to play dungeon-telephone. Exploration via dialogue is incredibly fun, but our rules acknowledge that it’s fun once! The intent and design is to navigate via your wits and then log your progress via a map so you don’t have to do it again.
-L
Hmm, dungeon-telephone can be quite fun… but I suppose my primary concern is getting incredulous stares from players if I tell them they aren’t allowed to test pathfinder and they aren’t allowed to draw a visual aid to help them. They can make cartography checks, but if it’s a true labyrinth what would that look like? If it’s just the various areas connected to the labyrinth then they still have a potentially frustrating experience trying to engage in discovery without being allowed to rely on a visual aid. If they map every intersection that would get out of hand very quickly, as there could be dozens to hundreds of little left-right-straight choices in a real labyrinth intended to confuse and mislead. Unless I forsake the rules against drawing visual maps, but that, to me, felt more integral than not making pathfinder checks underground. I suppose there are also good ideas, like unrolling a ball of twine or marking intersections with chalk… but if they don’t think of those things then they could just end up stuck, and the great thing about TB is that players are never stuck. Even if they fail at something the story is advanced either with a twist or a conditional success. So do I let them draw a visual map if they need to within a labyrinth specifically?
Again, this is a niche situation, since most dungeons needn’t and shouldn’t have a labyrinth in them. But it is an interesting edge case to explore, and I know there were at least a few people that didn’t really understand to handle that sort of thing, including myself once I considered it. I certainly don’t mean to be contrary…
Also, I suppose if we’re talking something like navigating between locations within the expanse of the underdark, then that would be similar enough to overland travel to call for a Pathfinder test?
Would it be possible to use the conflict mechanics for this? Something like Dungeoneering for attacks and feints, and Cartographer for defenses and manuevers. The maze itself could be stated as a monster, with its might, nature, disposition, weapons, etc. Any specific locations that you would like to show could be stated as the weapons.
All of this is theory, I have not run a maze in Torchbearer yet.
What do you do when your players ask to roll for initiative? What do you do when they say, “I stab him in the face. He’s dead! Dead! I killed him before he could react!” Or when they demand to shoot lasers from their eyes?
You gently guide them to the right procedure for this game. And if their expectations are far out of line, you guide them back to earth. Or you duck behind your screen and hope it can deflect the eye-lasers.
In this case, a labyrinth is supposed to be confusing. Let them enjoy being confused! Don’t guard against your players’ frustration. A little frustration is good for them. The rules here are ultra simple to both give the quintessential experience of dungeon crawling and make it easy on the players and characters.
And if the players want to take notes or make a sketch, I hope you don’t persecute them. You shouldn’t slow down the game for them either, but don’t punish them for being diligent.
Hmmm, good points.
So to summarize the conclusions of this thread:
Pathfinder is generally only intended for long distance overland travel.
It’s fun to get lost in a maze and “describe to live” your way out of it.
Players shouldn’t be punished or discouraged from creating play aids like visual maps, it just shouldn’t take over the game or replace use of the cartography skill for quickly navigating briefly described locations.
Use external puzzles sometimes as a replacement for in-game puzzles, as appropriate.
One more question occurred to me… what if they have a really lousy map? Maybe it’s obsolete or the adventurer they bought it from was an idiot. How would you handle that? Know in advance what parts of the map are wrong and have them encounter an unexpected obstacle when they try to navigate that part of the map? Don’t use imperfect purchased or found maps as “narrative teleportaiton” but instead just use them as clues to the players (“A trap is marked on the map in this room” or “the maps says there may be treasure down the hallway to the left”)?
Right. If my players want to sketch a map as they go, they can. I don’t stop them. But I keep going with the description, I don’t give them feet and accurate dimensions. And I’ll alternate between using cardinal directions and things like ‘left,’ ‘right,’ ‘ahead of you,’ etc. On Sunday, I tried something I liked a lot: since the characters hadn’t actually mapped the dungeon, I didn’t give the players back the map that they had been making as they went. They either had to go ahead and make a map or rely on memory.
That’s how I would handle it.
Incidentally, my reasoning for Pathfinder is as follows: It’s about using known landmarks/geography, the position of the sun, the moon and the stars, etc. to guide you from one point to another. If you know the place you are trying to reach is roughly south-southwest of your position, you’re able to hold a course and head in that direction (or you simply know the roads and countryside). None of these markers are available underground. Without a map, even an accurate magnetic compass (or dwarf) won’t do you a hell of a lot of good–there’s no trailblazing crosscountry in a dungeon.
That makes sense to me.
If you were in an underdark heavy campaign would you then use Pathfinding for long distance travel? Would you require a compass to make such a check? Would you make the players rely exclusively on a guide or map? Granted, raw TB doesn’t describe the underdark, but with how easy it is to use d&d modules, someone’s going to run into that.
I don’t have an “official” answer for you on that one. I haven’t really considered it. I’m interested in your thoughts on the matter! My instinct is that you’d want a guide or a map. I’m not sure magnetic compasses are used as navigation aids in my Torchbearer world. If they are, they’re rare! But I could see a dwarf, with dwarven delving Nature, doing something like this.