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Cartographyby ScorpiaSome companies,such as Sir-Techand New WorldComputing, wouldeven gift graphpaper sheetstogether with theirgames.Many gamers today take automapping forgranted. Very likely, they couldn’t imaginea product without it. We of the (cough) “eldergeneration”, however, know otherwise. Those whogo back to the “golden era of gaming” remember well,perhaps all too well, the joys of manual cartography.I learned my lesson fairly early. It wasn’t long, as Iwandered in the mazes of Colossal Cave and Zork, beforeI realized that random scraps of paper or sheetsstolen from the printer just weren’t going to do thejob. It was time to get professional about this. I boughta stack of graph paper, a package of pencils, and thatmost important item, a blister pack of erasers.Actually, mapping out the adventures games usuallywasn’t too bad. Aside from an occasional nastytrick or mean maze, they were pretty straightforward,and most important, nothing was out there waitingfor lunch. RPGs, however, were quite another matter.Despite being on mere 8-bit machines, the RPGswere big, and seemed all the larger because mappingwas a very slow process. There you were (or I was),carefully pencilling in one step at a time, and thereall the critters were, ready to pounce and rip out yourheart, lungs, and assorted other organs for appetizers.In no time at all, you were turned around, andonly twenty minutes later (if you were lucky), did yourealize your careful cartograph was somewhat inaccurate.It’s amazing how many erasers you could gothrough mapping out just one game.The prime example for huge was the first Might& Magic. I still have my 50+ maps from that one. Yep,that many. It seems incredible now, to look at thoseold sheets, and ponder the time and effort needed todraw the maps, one step at a time.There was one saving grace, though: the dungeonswere all standardized, being the same size andshape. Naturally, size was different in different games,but if you were doing M&M, you could count on eachoutdoor area, each town, each dungeon level, beingthe same 16×16 square.Of course, that meant 256 happy little steps persection, each one carefully mapped. With notes, naturally,on where things were found, where traps were,where messages appeared (and what they said), andso on. And fighting off monsters galore almost everystep of the way (it’s odd how Monsters Galore showedup in every RPG; busy little critter!).While Might & Magic was the most excessive interms of mapping, other games weren’t far behind.The Bard’s Tale, for instance, required a fair amountof cartographical effort, though it featured a mere onetown and no outdoors. Seventeen maps for that one,each a generous 22×22 in size, and our friend Monsterswaiting for us everywhere.I don’t know if it’s possible to adequately conveywhat it meant to map-as-you-go. This was work, realwork. Okay, you knew the size of the dungeon, drewit on the graph paper, numbered the sides, and usuallyknew your starting point. Say it was X3, Y5; here werethe stairs out. Everything else was unknown.12