Keldryn
Adventurer
The first couple of session in Bittermold Keep, I just drew the map on the Chessex mat as they explored. One of the players drew a copy on graph paper.
I can't draw to save my life however, and once they reached the areas where straight dungeon hallways open up into caves, I found it that it was taking me far too long to try and draw cave walls -- I wanted to be accurate, as there are multiple routes on the map that should line up.
Since we weren't really using the grid for combat anyway, I took the unlabeled copy of the map, erased all of the areas they had not explored yet, and printed it out. During the game, as they explored, I just took their map and traced the outlines from my map. After another session or two, I printed another updated map. They had been traversing much of the dungeon multiple times at that point, so I figured that the more accurate map was a good representation of how they were revisiting the dungeon multiple times.
I have thought about doing that, but in the end it felt like too much hassle to keep all of the pieces organized. ;-)
Sure. Maybe the best way to phrase it would be "fiction first" vs "gameplay first."
When I referred to "what makes sense," that was in terms of the purpose of a room and what would be feasible to build within the fiction of the game world. The cramped spaces generally make more sense from this perspective.
A 10' wide dungeon passage is essentially a road. Why would anybody build 10' wide corridors to connect rooms when a 5' (or even narrower) corridor would accomplish the same thing with less effort? 10'x10', 20'x20', etc rooms often make sense as bedrooms, kitchens, storage rooms, etc. When playing TotM, it's easy to avoid thinking too much about whether or not the space can really accommodate all of the action occurring within it.
(The whole dungeon being alerted on the first combat is an entirely different issue.)
With a "gamified" map, you're designing your map to create interesting gameplay situations. I'm primarily talking about combat here, as that's the primary reason to use a battlegrid and minis. Tactical combat generally takes a lot longer to play out than TotM, so if you're going to play out a battle on a grid or terrain, then make it worthwhile! Wide open spaces, choke points, elevation changes, terrain features that can be used to cause damage or block enemy movement, etc.
If the dungeon layout is too cramped for combatants to move around or is essentially just a chessboard with some spaces blocked off, then tactical combat is an exercise in tedium. Give me JRPG-style taking turns hitting each other; at least the battles are over a lot faster!
This is essentially the 4e approach to map design (excluding Keep on the Shadowfell of course). Yes, the environments should make sense from an in-universe perspective, but the primary concern is whether the environment allows for interesting gameplay possibilities.
Often, this means that I'll create the on-table representation of the environment first, and then create the fiction to give it a context that makes sense. That is, if I'm playing an RPG with tactical combat.
