I actually never really liked teleportation systems all that much. To me, they never really fit in well with the plot; say a giant army was approaching a village, and everyone was running away... why not teleport?

IMHO, if you use a teleportation system, you have to explain it. Granted, most games do, (airships, seaspouts transporting your boat, etc). Don't just make it "magic"!

I usually enjoy world maps as opposed to just walking forever or teleporting (FF and Mario World come to mind). I've just always liked being able to see kinda where I'm going in the next couple of hours, then battling to get there. Oh well - just my preference.

As for (paper) map, it's probably a good idea. I haven't actually decided whether or not to add one into my RPG (how many of us are making RPGs, anyway?!) because I don't think it will be all that necessary, as I'm going to employ a strict linear plot that won't allow much backtracking. So no mapsies for me.

Oh, I forgot to login, but that post above is mine. ^^

oh, how easy it is to forget the username/password box :)

What I was thinking was to put up a minimap on the top right part of the screen that the user can access via a hotkey, then have a more detailed, larger, map avaliable through the Menu system. So you'll be using a combination of both.