Paths in Tabletop Games

 (this is the second element in the Cognitive Mapping for Tabletop Games series. The other posts are Intro, Landmarks, Nodes, Districts, Edges)

Element 2: PATHS

    In life, and video games, paths are useful for mapping in a few ways, all fairly obvious.

• They are the simplest way to mentally connect two spaces. (Think about the difference between following a highway between New York and Philadelphia, and following the moon and tides to make the same trip.) As a result, a direct path between two places is the fastest, most effective way to add that space to travelers' Cognitive Maps. 

• Also, paths are usually labeled (or distinguished in a clear way), which lets them serve to catch lost folks wandering in the wrong direction. I can't count the times a street sign made me realize I was pointing the wrong way!

• A quality that makes paths handy is a process called path integration, when someone guesstimates the distances between path landmarks and path directions to guess how far/in what direction the starting point was.

    However, paths also have interesting qualities which limit their value. 

• Weirdly, they are unidirectional! That is to say, when you walk a trail, turn around and return, your brain thinks of that one trail as two paths: one for each direction. Any hikers know the quandary of getting lost while staying on the paths, and this is why?

• Secondly, paths are temporal in nature, meaning the amount of time you spend on them is tied to their identity in your mind. Anyone who walks a road they usually drive or bike is familiar with feeling confusion at seeing many more landmarks on their trip than usual, not to mention how crazy slow it is.

    This series of landmarks is often the key that lets people remember the paths! 

    As an example of all these ideas, let's look at my daily walk to school as a child! I knew my trip rather simply: First, the short trip to Happy Bodega on the first corner, then the long long walk to the red trashcan across the avenue, then passing the pigeon-poop tree immediately after the trashcan, and finally a short walk with school in sight. I remember the walk back separately. The first leg of the journey on my walk home was to the old junky car next to the hair salon, then to the same red trashcan, Happy Bodega, and finally to my building's green front door. The trip always felt longer going home, and as you can see, I didn't use all the same landmarks. However, because I was so familiar, if you asked me to tell you which direction home was from any one of those landmarks, I could point, and guess how many blocks away!

Paths for tabletop

    I don't think we need to match all the qualities of Cognitive Map paths for the table! For one, I can't imagine how we could model path integration without gridded or hexed paper. Not only that, but designing paths as unidirectional seems difficult to achieve, and unnecessary! We're trying to improve the players' understanding of their region--not confuse them.

    So, what does that leave us with? 

1. If it's very important to have the players get from one spot to another, put a direct path there. (It's much easier to remember the stone road between the Iron Door Saloon and Witchville than it would be to remember 4 leagues northeast, then turn southeast and walk 1 league. If the road is labeled Saloon-Witch Rd., even better--now the players can stumble upon it and know exactly what's on either end.) 
2. If it's important the players have a lifeline when they get lost, put a path there. (For instance, the old elven road in Mirkwood.)
3. When describing the path, describe it as a series of steps, from one little landmark to the next.
4. When the players travel slower, describe more landmarks. When they travel faster, describe fewer.

Other posts in the series:

1. Intro
2. Landmarks
4. Nodes
5. Districts
6. Edges