I DMed my first session last week. We are playing the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure from the D&D 5e Starter Set.
My players haven't yet entered the first "dungeon" but will likely do so next session (LMOP spoilers):
They encountered the first goblin ambush and barely won that fight, so they wanted to reach Phandalin as soon as possible to get into a safe place. They noticed when they reached the village that the two dead horses on the road and the fact that Gundren and Sildar never arrived to Phandalin may be a hint that something went wrong, so they plan to come back to the ambush area after a restful night.
While we're all new to D&D mechanics, I'm the only one who knows (mostly thanks to this RPG Stack) that drawing a map is a serious thing and can be very useful in some big dungeons.
I plan to tell them that they may start drawing a map to avoid getting lost, but I don't really know how to introduce this to them.
I'm afraid that if I just say that they should draw a map, they'll just draw a map for every place they go, "just in case", which could lead to a waste of time in game and IRL for less interesting places. I also don't want to let them go without a map when they might need it (specially thinking for the last dungeon of this scenario), but I don't want to have to tell them when they actually need it.
I'd like them to really choose when they want to take time to draw it, but since I forgot to tell it to my players at session 0, I'm afraid that If I tell them now, they will take it to mean: "You should draw a map right now."
How can I introduce a group of new players to the map-drawing system in a way that lets them judge when they need it?
I guess that experience with the system will be a big part of that judgement, but I'd like for them to start from a neutral point of view with map drawing, so they'll not have a bias about it.
Answers have to be backed with experience about introducing map=drawing to players. Bonus points if the explanation lets the player successfully catch the interest of it while understanding that it is useful only sometimes.
To clarify my question:
- Am I talking about players or characters' player drawing a map?
I'm talking about players physically drawing a map, not only their characters. For me, it brings out some realistic side and I like it pretty much. (Maybe my players will not like that, but that's not the point here. Understand here that it's not that I don't care if they don't like it, but rather I'm asking this question here without knowing that fact, so just ignore the possibility that the player may not like it, or address both cases in your answers.) If they draw a map, they can navigate into the dungeon without telling which direction they take for each intersection. If they don't, I think it's much more realistic and interesting to test the real memory of the players instead of assuming their characters remember everything they see. It's also a way to give advantages to players who pay attention to description and may make it easier to "punish" distracted players (don't worry for them, I'm not that evil). - Why don't I use my own sketches?
I don't want to use my own sketches; I'd like my players to choose when they want to draw the map. And when they do, I want them to do it themselves. I already read on RPG Stack some interesting question about "counter" map-drawing to try to lose parties in a maze and I may use it later. I don't want to lie to my players by giving them a fake map that doesn't really represent what they see (maybe they can find a fake map during an adventure, but it's another point). - Why do I want them to draw a map?
As I wrote above, I would enjoy having them invest into drawing a map. But it's also for when they will need a map to not get lost in a very big maze or similar – for example, if we play the Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage adventure.
Best Answer
I recommend not forcing your players to draw maps
From everything I have experienced with players new and old, having players make the maps doesn't work well and I would recommend not doing it at your table without careful consideration and good reason.
When making any change to your game, you should consider and be clear on at least a few things:
It's unclear what your goal is with this change and who it is for
As I will mention below, you should be very careful about crossing in-game and out-of-game challenges. But more than that, you don't seem to have expressed a compelling reason to need this beyond the fact that you (and currently only you) want it.
If you don't have a clear reason to make the change you need to be very careful that you aren't introducing issues for no gain.
Do your players want this change or just you?
You say:
Right off the bat, this makes me concerned about the mindset here. You need to take into consideration the wants and needs of the whole table, not just for you, and the sooner you do the better. So whether or not the players will like it is very much relevant.
Talk to the players before going any further and figure out if this is even something they remotely want, because if they don't, then you are wasting your time and everything else is moot.
Forcing players to draw maps can have serious practical issues
To give context to the below list, one of my most extensive experiences with player mapping came from an enormous and complicated dungeon which the DM required the players to sketch out. We sketched each room to exact dimensions to grid level accuracy, which was often useful because there were encounters in many of them.
If you're situation is substantially different from this, the extent of the problems will certainly vary. However, I think these problems will have to be dealt with to one extent or another regardless of the context.
There are may be ways which could reduce some of the impact of the issues, but I haven't tested any and so won't address that in my answer.
Every one of these issues is one that has repeatedly come up at my tables throughout the years.
It takes a lot of time
I'm not joking when I say this, even in a simple dungeon, having the players draw maps can and likely will slow progress to a crawl. This is because it requires the DM to give all the information about the room (dimensions, locations, doorways, location on the map, etc.) while the player is sketching. During this time the DM could instead be describing the room narratively, interacting with the PCs with their actions in the room, looking at encounter information, reading ahead, or literally any other productive task. Instead, they are describing a map which they have drawn out in front of them to someone else who can't see that map. Even if the players hear and translate that information perfectly onto the map, this still takes precious time away from a session that could be used for other things.
At tables I've played at, the time it takes to draw the map out in real time has been a large source of frustration even among people that enjoy making the map.
Mistakes will be made
No matter how obvious you think your description of the room is, the map-drawers will accidentally get it wrong. A lot. They'll do things like accidentally flip width vs height, put the door on the wrong side, attach the room on the wrong wall, etc. And when they do you have to spend even more time to have them erase it and then correct it. This happened once in an error so bad the DM had to take it home and sketch a decent portion of the map again.
And that is if you manage to notice the error. Many times I've had DMs not notice until hours later that a mistake was made on the map and now suddenly this room won't fit! You think this won't happen to you, but it will. DMs are busy and even if you take (even more) time to check over a drawing, you too will miss errors (a common source of DM error: the fact that you are looking at their map "upside down").
Sometimes, you will end up just giving up and (re)drawing things for the players because of misunderstandings in which case you might as well have done that from the beggining.
It's only interesting, at most, for one player at a time
You mentioned worrying about players not paying attention before. Well this is a great way to get them to pay even less attention.
It only takes one person to draw a map and it isn't particularly a thrilling process. Even if the group is theoretically interested in doing this, only one person gets to do the fun part, and the rest of the group is left with nothing to do. Expect phones to come out and people to leave and get snacks or drinks while this occurs. This is the opposite of one of the things you mentioned wanting to do which is to keep their attention. At most, you get one player's attention and lose the rest of them while things are worked out. I have personally experienced it both as the checking out player and observing others doing the same.
New players have enough to keep track of
You mention this is for new players. This is going to be a challenge to them but they likely will already have their hands full trying to learn and manage their characters and new abilities and roleplaying. Having them take time away from that can lead to less-prepared and engaged players.
Using IRL challenges to represent in-game abilities can be problematic
You say that, but then most of your question is dedicated to introducing how this real-life map will affect the in-game world and the PCs. This is an issue you need to sort out. Unless you have player buy-in, real-world challenges should not affect the abilities or successes of the PCs in-game. Or, at the very least, that line should be clear and made apparent to your players and only implemented with their explicit buy-in.
Players generally play games because they want to do stuff that they are not capable or wanting to do in real life. Making game challenges depend on real-world successes means that players who aren't good at that task get their in-game characters punished unjustly.
So, if this is your main motivation for doing this, please reconsider.
You don't have to assume that a character remembers things perfectly, but the game already has mechanics in it to address that. The characters can draw maps just fine without having to have the players do so in real life. You can even simulate this with a survival or some other check (or a series of them).
Think of it this way, what if one of the PCs was a map-drawing master. An explorer by trade with an unerring sense of direction (a Ranger, say). What sense does it make to make that PC's map-making success depend on the result of the players' skills? Will that enhance the fun at your table?
Conclusion
I don't recommend doing this because, in my experience, it is a whole lot of hassle for potentially (if not entirely) no positive gain in fun for the table. Forcing players to draw all the maps has a lot of potential pitfalls and many groups won't find enjoyment in it.
Here's what you should do before considering proceeding with his idea:
tl;dr
In the end, having players draw maps is not going to kill your game or drive your players away (likely). However, if you're going to do it you have to do it for the right reasons, with player buy-in, and with an awareness of the potential issues.