So, in your first paragraph; You'd simply generate a room-to-room display disregarding where they lay.. kinda like those huge "maps of the internet" that Bob Dole invented? Diku-MUD, I'll look into that, thanks.
Only storing the outlines of the room is something that completly passed me by. This way you could, in theory, have a room that's oddly shaped too.. at least in my theory. Which is to say.. random.
The MUD itself is basically a large test of my oop/mod_perl/SOAP abilities through Perl. Of course.