I even hinted at doing just that, trying to forge a connection between the archival nature of play-by-post games and a characters' memory:Zhym wrote:Do you mind if I keep track of the maps that have been posted in this thread?
dmw71 wrote:...you do have the ability to to back and retrace your steps by re-reading the various thread(s). These artifacts will serve as your characters' memories. If you want to go back and piece everything together, your character remembers. If you don't, your character forgot, or got lost.
I get that you're one of the newer players to my game, and I'm trying to give you new guys some leniency when it comes to certain things, but the game quickly becomes less fun when I'm forced to defend or debate my decisions (<--- again, you're not allowed to read through the other threads but I'm dealing with another similar situation with another group).Zhym wrote:It's the first campaign on this board I've seen where character mapping is an in-game issue.
I didn't think I would need to make a house rule or spell out the fact that I would expect players to map (or go all Hansel and Gretel and leave a trail of breadcrumbs) since I'm not familiar with any edition of the game where the rules indicate mapping is just implied. Every rule that I've read, and how I've always played, requires the players to make the effort (or not).
Well, this isn't "other" games, and since I don't follow games I'm not a part of, I don't know how other DMs handle this. If a DM wants to just give the players GPS, that's their decision and I don't fault them for it. That is now how it's done in this game, though.Zhym wrote:In other games, my request was a trivial one that was answered with either a map or "later, when I have time."
I'm a bit of a stickler for details. I do track exactly how many spells have been cast that day, and how long the spell has been in effect once cast. I do track how many rounds a torch has been burning, and how much weight a character is carrying, and whether or not the character actually owns the piece of equipment they're stating they want to use. And, as we now know, whether or not the characters have been making any effort to "map" while exploring.