"Maps" Blogwagon: Maps with Perspective...

Oop, gotta see what Prismatic Wasteland's been thinking about. Ah, "The Map is Not the Territory But It is the Topic"

Ooo... maps... always a favorite...

So, long ago on Ye Olde Blogge, I posted up what could be some appropriate content for this wagonload of bloggage. From the pages of a fortuitous Ebay find, I talked a bit about maps and illustrations of places that No Longer Exist, either by the actions of humans or nature...

There is something about having a couple of old topographic maps that memorialize a mountain that occasionally, and violently, reforms itself. Most recently, at a moment that we just happened to be able to witness it. 

Something that went from this:

Topo maps from Here

to this:

And as I mused before - What happens when our Party of Heroes(tm), bearing an old, faded map, crest the horizon, expecting to find Proportional Peak, on top of which the Gem of Plot Advancement resides...

... only to find the smoking Crater of Catastrophe. 

bummer.

Does an inaccurate or out-of-date piece of information (map) misinform or mislead the players/PCs to a dead end or hazard? Is the error of the map by ill-informed cartography or perhaps by ill intent? Did the GPS just lead you to drive into a pond?

Like rumors, perhaps maps should be suspect. Perhaps vague, if not downright misleading/incorrect. Maps that are an amalgamation of versions by wildly variable cartographers. A hodge-podge of landmarks, contradictory names, and scale errors. Omissions or obfuscations for personal or political purposes.

Do we really want to trust the scribblings and 'X' on this map? Where is it really going to lead us? 

So what about maps that don't look like maps?

The goblin map-vendor hands you this: 

or this:

"Yep, boss! Shows you right where ya need to go - Have a nice journey!"

Interestingly, both of these examples are nautical in nature. And map specifically from the viewpoint of a traveler on the water. 

The first, a pair of wooden "tactile" maps, carved to represent a set of islands and a section of coastline in Greenland. Counting points and ridges, and one can track which bay or point that they are navigating past as they sail to their destination. Almost a three dimensional representation of topography and landmarks, if you are familiar with the interpretation.

Second, a "stick map" used by Pacific islanders to navigate between islands. They don't map landmarks. They map the water itself, in the form of wave patterns and swells formed by both open ocean, and by the currents' interactions with islands and landforms. A knowledgeable navigator could read the patterns of wave action around their boat and track them to their destination island over the horizon. 

Maps that represent a completely different medium, or at least land from a very specific vantage point. 

Which raises the question, what would the merfolk maps look like? Probably something like this:

In my last campaign, the players/PCs got the "Snake Map" - recovered from a rubbing on a marker-stone.

Perfectly clear

Later intelligence informed them that the "diamonds" on the back of the snake represented an old network of border posts (and a major plot point).

A later found map gave these points names. Although the map also depicted settlements and landmarks with different names from the current time, as well as roads that no longer existed. Much figurative (and occasionally literal) overlaying of maps and armwaving was necessary to figure out exactly where they were in the world. Are we at the fourth, or fifth point on the map? Did we miss something?

"here be dragons"

(I just realized that the strongpoint at the "head" of the snake was occupied by a naga during the campaign. Ha.)

Hmm. I was going to ramble on about some other ancient maps, but then started ruminating more on the "perspective" idea. What does the map depict? And can a map show the invisible, or at least the hidden?

I guess it depends on the tools... 

source

Same terrain, two separate sets of "eyes." Arial photography on the right, LIDAR on the left. A fault zone hidden by our beloved Northwest vegetation. A hidden hazard, and more evidence of that past (and potentially future) violence that the Earth periodically doles out... 

And, while surface topographic maps may be familiar, how about "topography" under the ground? Here's a potentiometric map, showing the relative elevation and flow of groundwater, in this case. Information gathered from numerous points (wells) to play connect the dots and illustrate the flow of groundwater through and aquifer (and its interaction with local surface water, in this case). 

source

And, of course, note that the water completely ignores those human-drawn boundaries... :)

Contamination also tends to not respect property lines....

source

Rather than relative elevations, this map depicts relative concentrations. Again, perhaps invisible (subsurface), the mapping tools being data points of wells and lab analyses. But a map that shows where something is present, how much there is of it, and where it may be going. 

One more.

bam!

More contours. More violence... Local gravity anomalies from the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub impact, again found through remote sensing, mapping the unseen. 

So. Ruminations to put out there. How might we find ways to "map the hidden" in our own games? What magics or technologies might be employed to show a secret world, or depict that landscape from a perspective or view that twists expectations?  What is laying just below the surface? ...