What’s in a map?

I haven’t done much over the last few weeks — high stress means that I’ve basically been working non stop, and the source of stress is only just now over (and I’ve actually spent a bunch of time on the couch over the last day or so, for a medical thing). So forgive me not having much to talk about today, but I thought I’d share a couple things I was thinking about, including a rather long idea about maps and physical things inspired by spinning guild. 

But first, some random things from the week!

I made a Pixie Pocket Belt from a tutorial by Morale Fiber, a crochet blog I really enjoy reading. Unfortunately, I don’t have pictures yet, but I hope I’ll have a chance to drag out the mannequin this week and photograph it. It’s made from a bunch of the yarn scraps in my scrap bag, along with a handful of ripped fabric bits from my scrap fabric, so it’s not very cohesive, but I had an idea for replacing the Gavotte Cardigan (on hold again, for Reasons) with a Gavotte Pixie Belt, because I sort-of-accidentally-on-purpose started a yellow thread pouch and maybe thought about adding slip stitch bee stripes on it. I’ve also been working on another Papagena Shawl for my mother, and it’s coming along (not quickly, but overall). I’d forgotten how long the rows got by about halfway through! The Ensign of the Week thing I’m working on is, again, relegated to “soon” because I don’t have any play testers or any time to work on it. I haven’t forgotten about it!

Now, the actual thing I’m here to talk about. Tuesday, I went to the main meeting of my local spinning and weaving guild (WSG, for short), held over video call, to hear a wonderful presentation by Robyn Spady, a renowned weaver, on weaving with novelty yarns. Now, I am very much not a weaver, and I usually only go to the Saturday spinning group meeting because I don’t have time in the week. However, I found myself with enough time this month to drop into the main meeting and hear this presentation. 

I really know nothing about weaving, so I watched her presentation in wondering amazement, and mostly thought about the pictures she showed of the results of her experiments with different yarns and drafts and patterns. One of the weavings sort of reminded me of a map of rivers. Later that day, I was letting my mind wander, and I thought about that map-like weaving. One thing I thought about was the idea of maps as a representation of a place, and turning that on its head. 

I recently reread Maphead, by Ken Jennings, and one of the concepts that stood out to me was the idea that a map represents a place at a certain point in time. It’s an idea that shows up a lot in gaming, with tactical maps and minis to represent a fight scene in a place, or GM maps to describe a room, or even just the idea of exploring a map to find out what adventures it brings. Even though the maps I thought about change, they only change because something in the world they represent changed first. I’d call that connection unidirectional, because change in the world changes the map, but change in the map does not change the world. 

So what happens if I make the connection bidirectional? What happens when changing the map changes the world in response? And what would it mean? It’s an interesting theoretical question, and I keep thinking about it in my head. The idea I have is a game, either a worldbuilding thing or as part of a larger game, where the map and the world are connected in this bidirectional way. An example would maybe be burning a hole in the map and summoning fire into the world; alternatively, dropping a live animal onto the map to bring in a huge creature, or using glitter on the map as an illusion. 

This is sort of different from the standard thinking about maps. 

Firstly, it requires a map that’s more than a piece of paper. Paper is fine, but a lot of the time, TTRPG maps are paper — graph paper or large sheets of paper, with a set scale and a set definition. This can start as a piece of paper, but it’s going to end up being different, because you’re adding physical objects and manipulating them to change the world, as well as changing the map in response to changes in the world caused by your first changes to the map (and so on). You get a glue gun out to put slowly drying slime on the dungeon floor, pour water on the map to add a new river, and take off a few coins when the adventurers find the treasure chest at the bottom of the closet. It’s physical manipulation, and it’s going to, by necessity, be at a different scale, and not necessarily a set one. The map still represents something, but when you add physical things, it becomes more than a 2D piece of paper; it becomes your link to the world. 

It’s also a proactive thing, rather than a reactive thing. If your only limits on what happens in the world come from what physical things you have on hand and how you interpret them, that’s more creative freedom than in a D&D-like game of rules and set interactions. You choose whether that dirt on the corner of the map is muddy grime in a dungeon, grave dirt marking a vampire’s coffin, just plain dirt on the ground, or something else entirely. You don’t just make the map react to the world, the world reacts to the map, and you can choose how. 

This idea wouldn’t fit well in a D&D game, I think, because in D&D, the GM controls so much of the world — everything but the PCs — and the players react to the world. This is an open framework for discovering the world and the map, relying on the players’ collective imagination. One player cannot control the whole map or the whole world, because anyone can add to the map and change the world. 

I’m not sure I’d call this a game, in and of itself, but I think in many ways, it’s like something I did as a little kid, drawing and then adding more to the drawing to show more things. It’s a thought experiment, turning an assumption (that the map cannot affect the world it shows) on its head and seeing maps differently. What do you think?