Mapping [Srsly, use trizbort.io!]

A while back, I was playing a geographically challenging (to me) IF game, but didn’t have any paper. I was playing it on my phone so digital notes would have been difficult and I kept getting turned around.

So, I disgorged the contents of my pockets (Tangent: I’m an anti-litterer. Which is a mixed blessing. If I don’t see a trash can, I tend to just pick it up and shove it in my pockets if it isn’t super wet and gross, which, tangent to the tangent, on sudden introspection, makes me sorta like the stereotypically klepto IF game protagonists. Back to the original tangent, this tends to lead to bulging pockets half or more full of rubbish and other random detritus, because I rarely remember to stop at a trash can to empty out my pockets.) onto the table I was sitting at and, after briefly inventorying what I had, began making a map using various receipts, bottle caps, candy wrappers, broken pens, and other random items.

I actually found this to be both easier and more intuitive than a pen and paper. One, a mismapped or incompletely mapped connection can be fixed by just shifting some stuff around, whereas I’d have to erase or scribble stuff out. Also, not knowing the extent of the map in various directions, I invariably miscenter and incorrectly orient the starting room on my paper (in regards to available real estate on the page) and end up crowding a ton of rooms in tiny hard to read boxes on one side of the page, with the other half mostly empty. Finally, there’s something tactile about it that clicked better in my head than a simple top down 2D map; I found I internalized the game’s geography faster than if I had drawn a map.

I’ve since tried to replicate this at home at my desk (not with trash, my wife would have my head, lol). I tried legos at first, but I found the clicking them together to be a distraction and an impediment to as quickly and fluidly making changes as simply shifting some pieces. I’ve currently settled on lincoln logs, and they work fairly well, but the uniform size of each log is sometimes a handicap. I’m still experimenting; I’m fairly certain my spouse thinks me mad.

ETA: Regardless, I highly recommend giving it a go sometime. It made for a surprisingly different experience. I’m thinking of hitting up a thriftstore and trolling their used board games to vaccum up a variety of various game tokens and whatnot. The lincoln logs will likely stay in rotation, but I think I need some other stuff added in.

ETA x2: Also, it’s just great fun, honestly. I suspect this might be a fun way to collaboratively play IF in person. Like, I currently have sticky notes that I stick on my lincoln log rooms with the name of the room and any random todos or notes, but I’m sure there are a ton of ways to approach this. Does anyone from the TTRPG realm have any intuition or thoughts here?

ETA x3: Hmmm… while technically in reply to this topic, this post has the potential to derail Max’s topic. Would someone please, if they’re willing, yoink this post into it’s own topic? @HanonO @Dannii @Draconis @DavidG @moderators (How many of you are there, anyway?) Much appreciated if you can, no big deal if you can’t. Thank you.

ETA x4: Oh! Yeah… You’re probably going to ask what to name it… uh… “Alternative Mapmaking in IF”? I dunno. Something like that is probably fine.

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Post-it notes on cardboard or index cards have sufficed for many in the past.

You can also make a map online with trizbort.io or download Trizbort for PC which you can feed a live transcript into and it will map as you play.

ETA means “estimated time of arrival” - do you mean “EDIT”? :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Edited To Add as well, I think. Too many acronyms!

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A blank piece of paper for me to make a map on. I get it out before I start a game, and it will become the world I’m about to enter, and that’s really exciting. I love making maps of IF games, and the anticipation of making one is an important part of the pleasure of IF for me.

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A top spiral notebook for notes and specific types of maps. I usually use TRIZBORT, but for smaller, puzzle-type maps, I always draw by hand. The compass rose map in Spellbreaker (which I haven’t written about yet) is the type of thing I hand-draw. I visualize the problem better when I draw it myself.

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Agreed, although in my case it’s an Excel document, with different sheets for different levels up and down

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I had not heard of that, I stand corrected.

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You and I can both agree on that!

(Thanks for the split, @HanonO )

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FWIW, I’ve only seen “e:” and “edit:” in my travels.

but what does “FWIW” mean?

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“For What It’s Worth”

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I think everybody must have this problem unless they are psychic(?) Just like ABOUT has become a standard in most games, I think something like MAP INFO should become standard, telling the player e.g. that the map is approximately 30 rooms wide and 20 rooms “tall” (is that the word in English?) and that the starting room is around 3 rooms from the bottom and totally to the left. That would be very useful.

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Scrivener for notes, ideas, plots, etc. and Trizbort for mapping.

Scrivener has an outline option that can be used for mapping but nothing beats Trisbort. IMHO

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I still hand-draw maps, both when playing and when writing. If I had two monitors I’d probably use something like Trizbort, but my brain hates to retain visual/spatial information for more than five seconds at a time, so I need to be able to glance back and forth instead of tabbing. I’m not quite sure why it makes such a difference, but it does. (Of course, I could split-screen, but if a map is big enough and complicated enough that I feel like I need to draw it out, it’s probably big enough that squishing it into half the screen is going to be a pain.)

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I use Miro.com , it is very flexible and the tool I use for planning, brainstorming and mapping my novels & short stories.

Since I‘m a long time user, I am pretty quick with it, so I use it for maps when playing IF - and I‘m pretty sure I will use it if I ever take on the adventurous task of writing my own IF.

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Maybe slightly off-topic but there needs to be more mapping utilities that don’t run on a webpage.

Doom 2 and IF are my games when the internet goes out for long periods of time.

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Trizbort is also available as an offline desktop app from https://www.trizbort.com/ (a separate project).

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I think this is Windows-only though…? I think I tried this one already. I’m currently using IFMapper, which runs on Ruby.

(EDIT: In case the author of IFMapper reads this: I love your program. I’m personally not looking for an alternative, but I’m simply hoping people can have a wider selection of offline alternatives in general.)

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Yes, I think so. It might work on other OSes with Wine, but I haven’t tried that.

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Yeah, I might test in on Lutris one day (no rush right now), but my first couple of attempts on Wine did not work very well at all.

It shouldn’t make much of a difference on Lutris, but Lutris is very handy for isolating and sandboxing programs for better stability.

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So, uh, no one else uses lincoln logs, or legos, or trash, or anything physical to map their progress? Just me, huh?

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