I am running an adventure in Pathfinder and I use a very large square board and some homemade model walls to define areas such as dungeons or houses and other stuff. However, building maps on the board every time someone explores a new place is really tiring for me and boring for the players.
It's especially boring when they just want to enter a house, or go to the blacksmith to buy some stuff, and leave. So I started building maps only during combat sections.
If I build one before the fight begins, that alerts them that there's about to be a fight, so to avoid that I have to build it right after the battle has started. But when I do that, my players whine that they didn't understand how the place was laid out and that they wouldn't have engaged in combat if they had known exactly where they were on the map.
How can I make sure everybody understands where they are and how a place is laid out, without asking them, while not alerting them of an impending battle?
Best Answer
I typically use non-combat mapping to help show the relative distances between things and the players. This is typically done using a "You are here" dot for the players and simple lines for relevant features. I even use notations on the map to denote distances given the map is often "not to scale".
This means that I still build for a combat, but the players already have a good idea of the size and spatial location before they choose to attack or whatever.
e.g.