RPGaDay: Map

A few months ago, I played a game of the new Hellboy RPG.  It was newly kickstarted at the time, but a sample adventure was available.  I thought they'd done a reasonable job, given the limitations of the 5e system, which certainly wouldn't be my first choice for Hellboy, but there was one thing about the adventure that we really got stuck on, and that was the map.

Stylistically, they'd done a great job.  Whoever the artist was, they managed to make a map that looked like it came straight from the pages of a Hellboy comic.  No, the problem with this map was something far stranger.  Toilets.

It can be painfully obvious when an adventure set in the UK has been written by Americans, and this was no exception.  All the players were Irish or British, and very familiar with the kind of 18th Century building this was supposed to be, particularly where plumbing is concerned.  This house had so many toilets.  So many toilets.  An absolutely unreasonable number of toilets.  To the point where we could hardly focus on whatever it was that BPRD had been sent to this house for, because round every corner was yet another goddam toilet.

I'm strongly in favour of including toilets on RPG maps.  Far too often I've found myself looking at a dungeon or a spaceship and asking myself where anyone goes to relieve themself.  I always include toilets on my own maps.  But there's a limit.  A point where toilets cease to add realism to a map, and instead merely add questions.

Several months later, when I think about the Hellboy RPG, the first thing I think about is toilets.