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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Keldryn" data-source="post: 9808103" data-attributes="member: 11999">Ultimately, I mostly ran that dungeon TotM (and continue to run Shadowdark that way). I'll typically sketch out the rooms on the player's map as they explore (it's too tedious to narrate room dimensions and all the back and forth involved in that).I initially started with drawing the map on a Chessex mat and letting the players draw their own map based on that. Originally, I was planning to use 3D terrain.I have hundreds of 3D printed dungeon tiles (Fat Dragon Games), but it's so difficult to replicate existing maps with them, particularly when a dungeon map has multiple "loops" that need to line up correctly. Many sessions in, and I still haves used them in my Shadowdark game. Players can cover a lot of ground in the dungeon quickly, which requires a lot of pre-built sections (as it's way too time consuming to build with individual tiles during play). Even with hundred of tiles already printed, I'll run out before building even a third of the dungeon.One thing I found with using the battle mat is that the maps in the Cursed Scrolls 'zines and in Scarlett Minotaur feel really cramped when you draw them out on 5' squares and actually start putting minis down. And this applies to many old-school adventures. I've been running Shadowdark as an open-table Western Marches sort of game, so I've had anywhere from 2 to 9 players in a single session. The maps have a lot of 5' wide hallways and 20' rooms, and the believability really falls apart when you make a physical representation of that and shove 6+ PC minis into it (not to mention any monsters).Taking a cue from video game design, you really need to build the physical layout to support the gameplay if you're going to use a physical representation of the environment on the table. As opposed to drawing a map based on what makes sense or based on realistic proportions, and then trying to create a battle map from that. This approach worked really well for me when using the 3D tiles in a 5e game that I was running previously.Shadowdark movement and positioning is all pretty abstract, and combats move pretty quickly. Overall, I prefer how the game runs as theatre of the mind, as the focus on the game is on exploration and not set piece battles.</blockquote>

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