Player Drawn Dungeon Maps

Blizzard Pass Caves - 1985

One of the products of face-to-face gaming in a dungeon style adventure is the Player drawn map.  Often messy, confused and completely wrong. I kept most of the maps my players drew over the years. I remember them being pretty bad and always being asked to help correct them. But when I looks at some of them they are pretty good, and a lot of them are pretty amusing.

Now I do most of my playing in Online games. In an early online game (in 2009) I played with Fantasy Grounds II I drew a map out of habit.  I transferred the rough scribbles to an image in a paint program and posted it to the website the Gamemaster was maintaining. The GM was surprised that I bothered. It was for a Castles & Crusades adventure (I think one of the published ones).

Since then I stopped creating a map.  Either Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds II provide a perfect map for the players if the GM chooses to use the function.  The GM reveals it as you explore but I have never had a GM unreveal it as you pass. So once you explore an area it is forever uncovered and there is no need to remember the way out.

Castles & Crusades FG II - 2009

I think it might be interesting as a Gamemaster to only reveal those areas that the players can see and is illuminated.  It would be interesting if the players got lost after a big fight as they are trying to get to an exit.  This would also make those dungeons that have moving corridors workable in an online game. I believe one of the early online game tables had an option to show only those area lit by a light source attack to a player icon.