Fully Revealed Map and Corridors, and Doors

During one adventure in our "Fulton Horizons" campaign, "The Terrible Secret of Diceman's Fortress", and one adventure in the Slipstream campaign "Break Marlon out of Jail",  I drew the whole adventure map out on the big 3 foot paper with 1inch grids and revealed it to the players and we used it like a board-game board.   The conceit being that the players had computer access to the map of the compound in both cases and knew where they were.

It certainly does speed things up to do it that way.  It could be done with fantasy dungeons, if the players have a treasure map of the dungeon too.   It eliminates the need to fumble for tiles and makes the action clearer.   I doing the same thing now with the Awesome Squad' solo game.

One thing I noticed while drawing "Treasure Map Dungeon A", is that I'm much more likely to draw 5 foot wide corridors than 10 foot wide corridors.  The larger corridors look more like extended rooms or formal galleries than corridors when you draw them.  However,  fighting in 5 foot corridors is much nastier, brutish and drawn out than fighting in 10 foot corridors.  It's somewhat surprising the difference it makes.

The other thing I found myself doing was putting in Locked Doors on the map.  Maybe because Secret Doors didn't make sense for solo play, maybe because the mapping program I use for hidden maps doesn't have a locked door icon, so it seemed novel to put them in.   Having locked doors makes thieves even more useful and having a Bend Bars Lift Gates score of note to be more useful too.

Finally, when I was doing some solo work on the map, I found myself having the party use their "Open Doors" number to be able to open the doors (the normal, non-locked doors), just as Gary (peace be upon him) Gygax intended.   The idea being that dungeon doors are warped, rusted and stuck for the most part.  The practical result is that if no one in the party can open the door, it doesn't get open, and if the first person who tries, fails, there's no chance for the party to surprise the enemy.

I think the fact that the map is already laid out and no time is needed for set-up makes me more willing to attend to the details of real dungeoneering. 

There's definitely a trade off.  Revealing the map takes away some of the mystery, but it does make the adventure easier and faster to manage