Maps represent taking a place or a set and connecting it with something else. Layers like this can be found everywhere if you look carefully, RPGs especially.

Road Map

Some maps show how to travel and how not to. Even when planned carefully, roads seem to have a certain organic nature interfering with their geometry. Curving, dead-ends, and short-cuts make each road map a unique thing. The network of roads is also a graph, a collection of points (called vertexes) and connections (called edges). This makes a road map an ideal way to introduce a complex, interesting network into a game, even if you don't care about distance.

Several years ago, I used this idea in a holistic design for this column. From Seeds of Enlightenment to The Road Once Travelled, and finally Between the Steps the design was directly inspired by the potential of using road maps within a RPG. And certainly that vein has not been fully tapped.

One to One Map

In mathematics, a map is something that connects one set to another. And these are sets of, well, almost anything you want. A one to one map is a special type of map that connects every element of the first set to a unique element of the second (called an injection). If that uses everything in the second set (generally called a surjection), then this map ensures that both sets have the same number of elements (being both an injection and a surjection it is a bijection).

There are many ways to connect the same number of things together. This sort of map shows up all the time in RPGs. They can connect types of points, rolls and effects, and so on. There is a natural simplicity in exchanging one thing directly for another. Which makes it compelling. Of course, since they are connected by this bijection, when shouldn't you separate them at all? That's one of those questions you should ask yourself periodically as you design.

Online Map

Since you are reading this on a website, it should come as no surprise that many types and forms of maps appear online. Street maps, lunar maps, aerial photography, transit maps, and so on. Many of these can be referenced with a url, allowing people playing remotely, or between meetings to access the same maps. Which makes them an opportune way to send information and coordinate. And with the capability of getting directions on those maps, using sometimes unpredictable algorithms, there is even a natural randomizer.

Many to One Map

When mapping many objects into one object, it is easy to think of that one object as a category, containing what is mapped into it. These sorts of maps are ever present in RPGs, especially in the intuitive categories of the many and complex things that can happen during play. The purpose of these maps is to simplify, to reduce the many things happening into a few options. But this leads to two major dangers in design.

First, those final options will tend to wash away the distinctions between the original events - if someone describes a dashing maneuver, reducing it to an attack, disarm, or trip is anti-climatic. We must be careful to choose those categories well, and know when not to categorize at all.

Second, the intuitive process of categorization is something that will differ from person to person. That means that some decisions will fit well for some people and poorly for others. To remedy this, we should design with a consciousness of how we categorize during game. It is easy to just list the categories - attack, disarm, and trip and leave the decision up to whim. But it is can be better to describe the process of decision, so that everyone knows why it was made.

Relationship Map

An old idea, that has seen a revival in RPGs as of late is the relationship map. It is an ideal way to describe a group of people based on how they feel about or relate to each other. Simply placing each person on the map and then drawing lines between, labeled by the specific relationship, sometimes two-way, sometimes only in one direction. But these sorts of maps have much more potential. Relationships are a basic idea. They can be applied to game systems, organizations, historical events, and even the themes of your game.

Communal Map

Many maps are drawn or built by an individual, but there is much potential, especially in RPGs in building a map together. In a way this is much like a game where each person adds onto the story of the previous. In this case, each person adds a new part to the map and extends what is know, or perhaps suggests what is unknown. Adding a border, a road, a city, or a natural landmark can all change the map as others see it, and stir new creativity.

Iterative Map

Some maps can even connect something to itself. When this happens the map can be applied repeatedly. The path of each point or object at each iteration becomes a dynamic thing. If the map is well chosen, the behavior of each path will be very different. Some will fall into an attractor, others will go wildly out of control. And still others may avoid both fates. These sorts of dynamics are extremely useful for games that should evolve on their own, because or in spite of the decisions of its players.

Floor Map

Like road maps, floor maps combine regularity with strangeness. Floor maps also possess a stronger sense of purpose. Each room and hallway seems to have a reason, whether intentional or something added later. Certainly these sorts of maps have been in RPGs for a long time, usually in the guise of the dungeon map. But there remains more that floor maps can give us.

One example is a RPG design I have been working with, called Enclosure. In this game, the first step is to define the place where the characters are. For whatever reason they are trapped there. It may be a ship, a lab in lock down mode, or a house isolated by supernatural forces. This enclosure is reflected by the characters, as each place within is also an attribute of a character. This the science lab equates to the a science lab attribute - meaning both a skill in science and a comfort level of being in that lab. In this way, where you choose to can be as important as what you choose to do.

One to Many Map

Another way to map is to expand the possibilities. By taking one option and exploding it to many. Perhaps the best example of this sort of map is a die roll or other randomizer. By doing this we select one of many option, but allowing the selection to change as we do so. Improvisation, collaboration, and pulling from outside sources can also achieve this effect. But it is very important to expand things, otherwise we will categorize things away into irrelevance.

In many ways this is a natural dynamic in RPGs. Expanding and contracting the possibilities. That is how RPGs breathe.

There is also another way to look at expansion, as a form of exploration. But when exploring the frontier of RPG design, it helps to look at the available territory.

Next Month: Territories