Mapemounde is an analog (non-electronic) map-game design jam. Participants will be given a theme, a design goal, and 10 days to create a playable draft of an original map-game.

Usually, games use maps to enhance the participation of the players and to make sure everyone knows where their character or party is. Mapemounde intends to encourage the creation of games in which the map is not a simple tool, but an essential part of the game which is central in shaping the story.

Mapemounde will run from April 8th to 18th.

The jam begins April 8th at 00:00 (Pacific Daylight Time) and ends April 18th at 00:00 (Pacific Daylight Time). The voting phase begins immediately afterwards, from April 18 at 00:01 (Pacific Daylight Time) until April 28th at 00:00 (Pacific Daylight Time).

The theme of Mapemounde is always “maps”. This means you should create a map-game: a game in which maps are crucial points. You should create a game that interacts with the map, a game that is a map, a game that allows players to create maps, etc. Feel free to explore the theme.

The design goal changes every year. It is a rough indication to allow participants to focus on the same objective. It can be a concept, an instruction, a flavour text or a quote. The design goal is the polar star to follow during the jam. The design goal of this first edition of Mapemounde is “A game in which the map portions belong to different ages”.

You can participate alone or in a team of an unlimited number of members. We also have a community, so you can decide to join the other participants and form a new team (this is the way we prefer because we love ideas coming from people with different backgrounds).

Your map-game can't exceed the limit of 4,000 words. If you need to check the length of your map-game, you can use Wordcounter.

You can certainly incorporate ideas you worked on before the jam, but for Mapemounde you have to present an original work, never published before. Take care not to infringe other people's intellectual properties.  It's okay to use quotations or excerpts from other works as well as getting influenced by others' works, but always reference your sources and be respectful of the work of others.

You can write your map-game in the language of your choice. Mapemounde is not a jam where it's important to win and the voting system is more useful to you than to any other participant. So feel free to propose a map-game in your language.

All map-games must be shared and licensed under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Once the jam ends, on April 18th at 00:00 (Pacific Daylight Time), you have ten days to evaluate the other submissions. You don’t have to evaluate all of them, or even a certain number, but we invite you to actively participate in this phase. If you can, leave a comment or short review to the author, we assure you that they’ll appreciate it even more than your votes. For your evaluation, follow these criteria, and rank them with 1 (low) to 5 (high) stars:

• How well the game fits the theme and goal of the jam;
• How strongly maps are integrated in the game’s design;
• How elegant the game’s design is;
• How captivating the tone, feel and style of the game are;
• How easy to understand and use the game’s rules are.

During the jam and the evaluation phase, be respectful, helpful and constructive. We are guided by the Mammut RPG Manifesto, and so are the events we organise. Learning from each other, interacting respectfully and fostering a community of players and designers are key values to us, and we think they are the real treasure at the end of this map.

Mapemounde is a game design jam. You have fun together and you win all together.

Nevertheless, we are keen to somehow reward the authors (or teams) of the three most-voted games. They will receive a bundle of map-games in PDF format, containing:

• Companion's Tale by Laura Simpson;
• How to Host a Dungeon by Tony Dowler;
• Fall of Magic by Ross Cowman;
• The Quiet Year by Avery Alder.