Dashing through the Halls

I have run a total of seven sessions now on Roll20 using the Swords & WIzardry rules. I am running a series of old school dungeon adventures that started with In Search of the Unknown. Before the sessions started I thought it might be cool to have no VTT maps and let the players map the dungeon. I did create a few one-room battle maps so that character placement during combat would be clear.

But then I bought some highly-detailed VTT maps for In Search of the Unknown and I wanted to use them. So the rest is history. I love creating maps so I do not mind that the players do not have to worry about mapping.

But I have found that I am struggling to keep up with the players. I don’t know if anyone else has encountered this phenomenon. It never came up in previous online games I played as a player. As soon as I reveal 60 feet of the corridor the players race their tokens to the end of the corridor. If I reveal a room they all race into the room.

The problem is trying to keep up with them. If there is a trap in the corridor keyed as room 21 and I still have the adventure open at room 12 I could miss it. I have taken to scribbling a lot of notes on the GM layer of the map. Short notes so I know that something is coming up and I can stop play. Usually by saying “freeze”. Then all of the players stop moving as they know they have run right over a trap.

I had one trapped hallway with three separate spear traps at 10-foot intervals. I revealed the entire hall from the fog of war and the lead character moved his token right to the end of the hallway. I was charitable and had him move back to the first trap that he triggered.

I do not have the time to write original material but I am re-writing everything we are playing so I think a few more hallway traps are going to come into play.

Anyone else experiencing this phenomenon?