I’ve long been dissatisfied with maps of 3D spaces more complicated than a few storeys. Maps for things like TTRPG dungeons are usually split into levels (assuming all the rooms and corridors fit neatly into separate floors, with stairs and ladders the only signs of a third dimension), isometric (i couldn’t find a good example. These look nice, but have to exaggerate the vertical dimension a lot and large maps have rooms hidden behind rooms), or everything as a single top-down map (very messy).
Digital maps should be able to solve all of these problems with things like a moving camera and transparent rooms, but in my experience they don’t. The Elder Scrolls 3-5, for example, use that third kind of messy top-down map. TES II: Daggerfall has very complicated dungeons, and its map is the best map design i’ve seen for a 3D area too expansive to be isometric and not vertically neat enough to be split into levels. It’s still terrible,1 but i’ve still never seen anything else come close to how much of a complex dungeon it lets you see. I guess video game developers have decided that making simple areas is easier than figuring out how to navigate complicated ones.
I could try to design and produce a line of translucent building blocks for physical models of complex structures, or make big Blender models for every city with an underground area bigger than a basement, or go learn how to mod Daggerfall and use its map for custom structures, but surely there must be a better option.
So how do you all handle it? Do you keep your dungeon maps neat enough or small enough to use layers or an isometric perspective? Accept the mess of a top-down view of everything? Is there some tool or drawing technique that’s perfect for this sort of thing, and i just haven’t found it? Am i really best off using Blender or Minecraft for this?
1Part of the tutorial dungeon from that game:
You are always going to have to adjust your approach to the space you are actually mapping as they are going to have different features you want to highlight. Even with a 3d model you will often want to see from the outside or otherwise generate projections of it rather than use the actual thing. Generally I prefer schematic maps for the most part. I care more about how you move through a space than where precisely things are.
When I have done more traditional dungeon maps, the best tool I’ve had is using a stack of tracing paper, with multi-level features drawn on each layer they intersect. This is because most built dungeons are going to be built by human-like folk and we go sideways much better than we go up and down. For natural spaces Insuggest you look into the maps cavers draw. They care much more about distance from intersection and rate of descent than precise direction (which is actually hard to get right in caves in any case.)