Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Yep, that's the way. Drawing out the whole site ahead of time risks that work being wasted if they suddenly decide to go somewhere else.So I'm new to the world of gridded play. I ran my first session using it two weeks ago. First encounter I just drew out an area with symbols for statues and other obstacles. The second encounter I went all out and drew an entire eight room house that the PCs infiltrated. I had drawn it out and used pieces of paper as a fog of war, removing them as PCs entered rooms.
I can see the first method being the primary way to use a grid. The party enters a room with an encounter and I can draw out that specific room.
I use a gridded chalkboard, and draw out what they see when they get to it. It's on the players to add what I draw to their own maps, as once it's erased I likely ain't drawing it again.

Tips from here: don't get married to the grid and don't force everything to "snap to grid". It's mostly there to show scale and distance as an aid to positioning (and mapping!) for the players, and if someone puts their mini half in one square and half in another, so what: leave it be. Use feet rather than squares for your AoE areas, and measure if you have to (measuring comes up surprisingly infrequently, all things considered). Also, 3e-4e-5e are quite harsh when defining what can fit in a given area e.g. by RAW only two front-liners can fight side by side in a 10' wide passage when reality says there's clearly room for three.Do you guys draw out entire dungeons? Or just specific rooms? Any other tips or tricks for a newbie to on-grid play?