I don't particularly mind the map being incomplete, I just find it odd that they've included the first floor rather than the ground floor or cellars which are more integral to the plot.

To be honest though, the first floor provides an outline and the descriptions give you more than enough info to knock up your own map in minutes. Perhaps is a subtle piece of GM tuition in that it encourages you to develop your own maps rather than rely on the work of others?

Bertolac said:

Uh, if that's the case put me down for a big "No I hate that". I'm a game master not a cartographer. A GOOD adventure always should have the mindset of helping a GM not causing them grief.

Good and detailed maps are essential for WHFRP. Or for that sake any rpgs worth their name.

PERIOD.

I agree the map was very lacking. I dont need detail on everything but I need a genral map of where everything at. This make me kind of worry about future products. Adventure Module without maps, campain box sets half draw info, etc etc. Look I buy support products to save me time, so if i am going to have to make my own adventure maps and ect then why buy FFG product? This being a sample adventure for GM to get a feel for the game system was very poorly done. I can just see it now.... <fill in adventuer name> ACT 1 info ,ACT 2 Info, ACT 3 info, make you own maps, and pay $25 ha ha ha.

Ekek said:

AH yes one of my favorites Maps along with the City of WaterDeep..Love that it cover my whole living room floor. Made for great city adventure play.

This system absolutely needs maps. Move money around in the art budget and replace some drawings with maps, if that's the issue. Or take a stand and don't include any maps. One map with no key is just haphazard.

The one thing this system absolutely does not need is detailed, encounter keyed maps. Save the money that you would spend on a cartographer and give is more examples of social encounters and uses of the progress tracker.

mac40k said:

I don't need hugely detailed maps. But a full map of the lodge would have been nice.

Yes, I'm not looking for highly detailed maps with what's in every square (or square at all). Just basic maps. And if you're going to describe 27 rooms, it only makes common sense to key them.

My thoughts exactly. If anyone from FFG is watching this for customer feedback I'd toss my money in the direction of what's said below, too...

Sinister said:

When I was preparing to run it for the first time, I kept thumbing through the adventure. Wheres the map??? WTF.

Then I realized, this is WFRP. We don't need no stinking maps. We got us some abstracts. At that point, I was bummed I did not have a better picture of the hunting lodge.

Honestly, the map in the advenutre became not so big a deal. You could have inserted whatever map or lodge you wanted and it would have probably worked.

Exactly. I didn't find it a huge issue. It took me maybe 5 minutes to look at the list of lower floor rooms and come up with a layout of the 1st floor.

And for what ever it's worth, I found the "area map of the lodge useful. Some sense of scale would have been nice though.

However, the choice made to include just a map of the upper floor-(one of the least important areas of the adventure) is just weird.

I am not saying I would object to better location maps at all. I just don' t think sprawling think maps of "dungeons" with detailed descriptions are needed.

But over all I pretty much agree with Mac40k., I think giving examples of how certain rules work is just as important. The ToA just gives very broad and vague examples.

Out of interest, did anyone publish a map of the lodge's floors?

I've knocked my own up which should work. I'd be happy to share them, in all their Paint.net glory, however they're pretty much the lodge map from the Tome of Adventure pdf with black boxes and labels drawn over them.

simpatikool said:

True that, this is a game of extract measurement, no grids here.

Though I can understand the frustration, why only release half a map?

Well, with my players what I do is have "map merchants" in various towns. Now depending on how much they want to spend at the map merchant they can get different maps/ descriptions of towns.

you don't often go to a map merchant to get the "blueprints" of a lodge. but to my players it makes sense to inqure about a network of tunnels, map of a region, map of a city etc.. and if they pay a little, they get a "verbal description" pay enough and they can get a rough copy of whatever is available at the merchants. Sometimes its a full detailed map, sometimes it's something they just wrote on a piece of parchment right there.

Add me to the list of people puzzled over the lack of map. I don't need or want a specific, grid-by-grid map of every square meter... but I do expect to find a map of the general layout. This is an investigation piece, and for stuff like that you very much need a map. You need to see which rooms the PCs might accidentaly see into, which rooms they need to pass through in order to get to the kitchen (so figure out which NPCs they might meet)... stuff like that.

Thinking that "abstract measurements" means "no need of maps" is absurd. You still need to know which room is connected to which, ffs.

...and to top if off, they include the internal layout of the one place in the whole lodge that is probably the least important. Huh?

Otherwise it's a nice adventure, if a bit complex for an "intro" one.

The map in the book does feel like an afterthought, and I'm not buying the "you don't need maps excuse" since one floor is shown. I'm going to whip up a rough map myself as I know the players will be asking detailed questions about where rooms are inn relation to each other. The question is, looking at the compound map, there's the long rooms/corridors around a central courtyard, with the bulk of the manor to the east. Are these rooms do you think, or just covered walkways? In other words, does the front door open into the great hall (running east-west), or into a covered walkway that then leads to the manor to the east? And is that some form of tower to the west?

Fair enough having to come up with a rough layout in your head, but the map makes things quite confusing. Any ideas?

We don't need a grid to play on, but a map is also a good way to describe some specific place for GMs.

I put my mouse where my mouth was and made maps (check out that alliteration!). See the separate thread.

Ive bought a copy off Death on the Reik which Id like to run to follow Shadows Over Bogenhafen. However I believe there should be a map of the empire and a plan of castle wittgenstein with the book which seems to be missing. Has anyone got an electronic copy of these maps they could email me? Id be very grateful.

Is there any map in Eye for an Eye? Even an uncompleted one? Not even notice...

Love narrative roleplaying, i don't have to get worried about drawing maps or explaining how many doors / windows / light points / rugs are in the room... just as many as needed for playing porpouses

I don't need a map so I know how every inch of the place looks. I need a map to keep my GMing consistent, so they don't go downstairs to the library one session and upstairs to the library the next session. It's just very quick and easy to look at a map if players ask specifi questions as to where some room or something is located in relation to their current position. But the strangest thing is that the scenario has a map of ONE floor in the lodge... that's silly. Perhaps they cut the other floor to make the scenario fit nicely on the pages.

I made a map if you need one - check out the fresh thread.

I am also frustrated by the lack of a map in this adventure. I want to be able to tell the players where they are, and where the rooms are in relation to each other. When they go down the stairs are they in a hallway? Or are they in the great hall? Where exactly is the sitting room, or the library, or the kitchen, or the winecellar? I envision narrating to the players what they see as they move around the lodge or open a door , not just saying 'theres a kitchen, a library, a hall, a hospice - where you wanna go?'
Not including a simple map has meant that all the information about the positioning of the rooms is lost to me. I will have to come up with a map of it myself, or use one of the maps that other helpful GM's have provided, and I shouldnt have to do that. The people writing these adventures should be making the GM's job as easy as possible, not deliberately hiding useful info.
Please take note FFG - by not including at least a rudimentary map, you have made my job as a GM harder. I am also very worried that this trend will be continued in the upcoming campaign, which I was previously looking forward to. Please tell me that it is not so.

Come on guys ! We are GM, aren't we ? Our imagination is our strength !

Players are traveling through our creation all the time, so we CAN invent some creepy manor's plan, can't we ?

Let's make a stand against all-made-for-me-consumers point of view.

We are GMs. And GM rules !

In which case, what is the point of buying or using pre-made adventures at all? If you are against 'all-made-for-me-consumerism', then it seems to me that you disagree with the entire premise of pre-made adventures.

A 'pre-made' adventure is supposed to be just that - a pre-made adventure. People (consumers) purchase them so they dont have to work at making their own adventures ie- they are 'all-made-for-me'. Surely a criteria for judging the quality of a pre-made adventure is that the information given is as complete and easily accessible as possible?

I would have thought so.