I used to love big, fancy player maps in fantasy games… and then I started learning about historical cartography, and… whoah. I’m now almost offended when PCs in fantasy worlds have detailed setting maps.

Despite all of it’s many historical problems, one thing that was pretty good about _Kingdom of Heaven_ is the bit about how to find the Holy Land: “You go to where the men speak Italian, and then continue until they speak something else.” The maps of that period made essentially no claims to cartographic accuracy; they were merely illustrative. This is west of this and north of this, y’know, roughly. You’re French and you want to find your way to Jerusalem? You hire someone who has been, and hope they don’t rob you and leave you stranded. Or, you know it’s “East,” so you go east on whatever trade route or road you’ve got, and you get to your next destination, and you ask. I love the feeling of strange discovery this engenders, even amongst the people who are from that setting.

It was actually a bummer for me running _The One Ring_, because I felt like I shouldn’t give the players the full map. Maybe a handful of hexes around their home areas, plus the hexes for whatever route they had taken to Lake-Town. If they wanted anything else, they would have to ask around, or just go for it. Buuuut one of my players is an old Rings-head and knew the general layout like the back of his hand. A new world, like FL, well, that might offer some opportunities!