Room Sizes...

[Harshax]

GURPS seems to do alright with 3' hexes, as well as HarnMaster. 2' Squares or 3' Squares doesn't 'challenge' fantasy any more or less than 5' squares or 100' x 50' bedrooms.

With 2' squares, not that I'm saying this is a reasonable approach, you have an approximate space of a human sized creature standing at attention. When at the ready, he effectively threatens all the squares around him. Sort of reminds me of the squeeze rules for large creatures trying to fit in smaller spaces - they can do it, but they get penalties to attack, can't threaten with reach, etc.

 

[Surgoshan]

I dunno about you, tovarisch, but I'm not five feet across in any direction but the vertical. I'm pretty sure that the suggestion of 2' squares was only considering the two dimensions depicted on a battlemap rather than a cube with two-foot edges.

 

[Hussar]

/snip for brevity

Wow, 1 minute apart and we posted almost exactly the same thought. Great minds think alike.

And, for novelty's sake, I agree almost 100% with Celebrim.

On the difference between architect and stage production: That's pretty obvious really. Dungeons have always had to compromise between verisimilitude and playability. And, usually, they go far further into playability. You don't put a giant in a 10x10 room. Ever. It's not even a good idea to put him in a 15x15 room. He fits, he doesn't even have to squeeze. But, let's face it, he's a victim waiting to have sharp pointy things stuck into him by wandering PC's.

Look at pretty much every map for every module and you'll see maps that lean more towards "fun place to play" rather than "realistic". From time to time, you'll see maps that are more "realistic", Paizo's Savage Tide -There Is No Honor forex - has a couple. But, even then, the corridors are WAY too long to really work. But, they have to be that long so you don't have one encounter bleeding into another.