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There is a question of whether or not it is permitted under the revised DME guidelines.

I won't comment on that. But if you assume that it is either permitted or you don't care whether or not it is permitted, then the key is to understand the impact that the terrain you select has on the encounters you use.

Using the maps from the minis sets or the Fantastic Locations adventures will rarely result in one-sided changes the way that a previous poster suggested. For the most part, maps that were designed for competitive play were also designed to be relatively even. Unless you try, you are unlikely to box players in. You do run the risk of unboxing players when it was the author's intention to screw them with placement and terrain. (Personally, I think that adventures that do that ought to be screwed up, but that's beside the point). If you are running one of the many many many higher tier adventures where the only way to get to the multitude of ranged monsters is over a wide chasm bridged only by a narrow, rickety bridge (that is, of course trapped) and the other side is guarded by boneclaws while the PCs' side provides no cover from any of the monsters, you will have trouble replicating that set of characteristics with a fantastic locations map. (Even Dragondown grotto and the dwarven ruins river map from the 2.0 starter set have more cover than that and the lack of an exposed victory area or a victory countdown will make those maps less favorable to ranged monsters than they were to ranged warbands in the minis game). In fact, the primary impact that using the poster maps will have is simply that they are bigger than the standard LFR encounter areas. The larger area will reward monsters and PCs with ranged attacks and mobility based powers and will allow monsters to split up in order to avoid being all pinned at once. That is, itself something to be careful of, but it will rarely have the dramaticaly disparate impact that previous posters have suggested.

The other thing to be aware of is what the terrain does. It's relatively simple for most LFR maps. There is blocking terrain, difficult terrain and that's it. Every now and then there is a table, desk or similar structure that comes with its own rules. With a lot of the fantastic locations, though, you will need to decide how you will treat forest terrain (does it block LOS; how much of it does it take to block LOS, etc), market stall terrain, water (is it all difficult? Does it require swim checks?), spiderwebs (what do they do?) etc. Using those maps to run MYRE adventures, I have found that players generally respond well to terrain rules from the minis game (which is handy for me because i remember them and they are designed to allow simple rules and quick determinations) but you need to explain those rules to the players so they know what they are seeing and how they can interact with it.

Before the revision to DME, I used Fantastic location maps for East 1-1. The first encounter works very well on Temple of the Prismatic Flame. (I think giving the fire bad and magma hurlers more room to manuever makes that a little bit more deadly, but not a lot). I used Dungeon of Blood for the next two encounters, but if that seems a bit evil for a dwarven temple, broken demongate would probably work quite well instead.

Mar 17, 2010 -- 12:42PM, Sartredes wrote:

If it's a private game, I say you can use a different map. If it's a public game, like a convention, where completion time is important, then I advise against it.

I don't see how changing a map necessarily makes it slower. Sure, certain changes would make it slower (e.g. adding hazards) but other changes would make it faster.

I'd say that making minor changes to a map is valid under DME, for instance making it a bit smaller or moving pillars around or placing a door one square to the left, or having four thorny bushes instead of three. I note that such changes happen quite frequently by accident, too, as sometimes a DM in a hurry doesn't exactly copy the map given in the adventure, and I don't think that's a big deal.

Making major changes, such as adding a pool of lava that wasn't there before, sounds similar to adding a monster that didn't previously exist in the module: that is, not valid per DME.