Pointcrawl of the Pale - a Maps Bandwagon post
For this post, I'm hopping on the Prismatic Wasteland Maps Bandwagon.
Maps make abstract space into something you can point at and argue over. Some types of maps (like hexcrawls) encourage exploration. Some others frame the limited space players have to navigate carefully, for instance grid-based battle maps.
In Aiguilles' extraction loop, the best loot lies off the beaten path, but with limited respirator capacity, each one you take is air you’re spending. Curiosity taxes your chances of survival. The cartography needs to reflect this tension. The map should give each sortie the necessary structure, while leaving plenty of blanks for players to fill in. A scavenging crew in a hostile environment with limited air supply needs to know where they are, where they're extracting, and what lies between the two. This is why I've decided to build a pointcrawl procedure.
Here's how Yochai Gal defines them in Cairn 2e:
Pointcrawls are a way of displaying potential points of interest on a map, including their entrances, exits, and connecting paths. Unlike hexcrawls, which provide omnidirectional paths by default, pointcrawls provide a set number of focused routes between locations. This approach abstracts some of the elements common to wilderness exploration, while maintaining the more interesting tidbits.
In short, pointcrawls are great to compress space into decisions. In the Pale, crews leave notes for each other, cairns. For players, map annotations. For their characters, diegetic marks to warn and guide them, left by others: Chalk on walls, stones stacked at junctions, recording devices left on repeat. The map may not be the territory, but cairns are the key to both. “Choir nests east. Don’t.”
And when crews make it back to base camp, they share their knowledge of the Pale, extracted at a steep price. Around a fire, with a hot meal, before the next sortie comes. Community as a compass.
Stay sharp.