Automapper...

[Schaek]

I personally would like it if there would be no maps at all. Specially when I can run all over Deglos without it. It would be great if you actually would have to get to know the area to move there, rather than just map it once and take screenshots.... that's so OOC...

I'm not sure I agree. Sure it would be OOC to use maps to go to places where you've hardly ever been, because there is no way your char would remember after a few months or even years (maybe some ranger would remember...). Besides RL travelling and exploring takes only several minutes or perhaps a few hours, for your char this takes days. And he will really see those places, whereas we as players just see em on a flat screen. This gives rise to the fact that most chars should know their surroundings better/faster then we players can. So without the map function most players wouldnt know the way from A to B even as they've been there several times. So as it comes to directions you can also have the reverse of using OOC info, which I call using OOC ignorance. What I mean with this is there are places your char should know of but you dont. Especially when you're new to Avlis. IMO its also very OOC for a char not to know the neighbourhood he grew up in and lived all his life so far. My char moved to Elysia at lvl 1 so he hand good IC reasons not to know the place at all. But the place he should know, Deglos, was totally unknown to him aswell.

[Cath]

You should also be able to buy maps IC.
I don't mean stroll in to the Sloppy elf and buy a complete map of Deglos but you could get a rough one of the nearest area, same in Zural Dura, Minur-Khuzad, Marazdin and so on.

Then the character would only have to connect these and make notes to correct errors (which there would be of course).
You could also talk to locals and get rough descriptions to places and even be able to draw a rough map from that and then brush it up while walking there.

There is so much more to mapping IC than running around with parchment and quill in dark caverns.
So I don't think it's ooc to be able to get a decent map from the screen.
Much better than if you had to draw it all by hand from scratch as your character wouldn't have to.
As a professional guide and mapper I know my girl would.
Visit libraries, talk to locals, buy any map she could find - anything to get that map as perfect as possible.

[Dirk Cutlass]

But the place he should know, Deglos, was totally unknown to him aswell.

I had this problem too. Leo was supposed to have lived and worked in South Deglos for over 100 hundred years, but OOCly I knew very little of it. I did two things:

1) learn my way around it as quickly as I could
2) lie !

I said I knew places and routes to places which I didn't! I even took people off on journeys to places that really I only had the vaguest of ideas where they were! I just played along and got lost, or said that they must have dug new tunnels since I was last there etc.

I also talked a great deal about places without having actually been there. Eventually, I managed to find them in-game, and so the OOC knowledge slowly reached the level of Leo's IC knowledge.

I also said that Leo only knew South Deglos ... and of course how much "south" was a very flexible line .. it started off just 1 transition north of Nanshi Urbaz, and has been slowly creeping up ever since.