hmmm... how\'s this for an idea:
Some sort of central authority that can give out an official seal of approval for self-made maps. That way people buying these maps could ensure themselves that when the map says \"X marks the gold\" it doesn\'t mean \"X actually marks a family of really pissed of dragons\"
Expanding on this idea, maybe you could even have two different types of seals: one for veracity (gold means gold, dragons means dragons) and one for completeness (the entire dungeon/whatever has been explored and mapped out).
Of course since this could be considered a cheat, each of these seals would have to come at a fairly steep price to the map maker which he/she in turn would charge the people buying the map so that there\'d be more \"unsanctioned\" maps in circulation (every time you buy one of those you could be taking a risk).
There are other ways of making sanctioned maps yet more valuable: if there\'s only one place (e.g. Great Library ala AD&D\'s Candlekeep) in the world where you can get the map verified, you\'d have to incur travel costs to get there; distribution of the seals could be limited to a certain time period and even then they could be limited in numbers; you could submit a map for verification and get it back with an official \"we don\'t know about this area either\"-seal ...
So what do you all think about my ideas?
Moraudin