So, I love me a good dungeon crawl, and one of the ways in which I do it is to label each corridor/room and populate it. This means when the party moves, they don't move square by square, but rather room by room. This also means I'm less likely to do random encounters unless the party decides to take a rest.
But at the same time I'm wondering if anyone else here does it differently. I don't play in public games, only with people that I am very familiar with. Also, I'm the only GM as no one else in the group has any experience with it. So, how do you do party movement in your dungeon crawls?
If we're talking about 1E, it's 10 feet per round per 1" of movement rate. However, if the party is mapping, the rate is halved. I use a hand counter to track round by round. Every x number of rounds calls for a wandering monster check, x set according to the area and desired pace, generally somewhere between every 25 to 100 rounds.
It's easy enough to do it this way. And it helps improve time-keeping in general. Some players have expectations that the durations on buffs reasonably match what's in the book, and since I skew magic items towards consumable and limited-use items, buffing is probably more common in my games than average. Also, sometimes I just need to off-screen movements of guards and patrols.
Quote from: mudbanks on February 21, 2022, 09:46:53 PM
So, I love me a good dungeon crawl, and one of the ways in which I do it is to label each corridor/room and populate it. This means when the party moves, they don't move square by square, but rather room by room. This also means I'm less likely to do random encounters unless the party decides to take a rest.
But at the same time I'm wondering if anyone else here does it differently. I don't play in public games, only with people that I am very familiar with. Also, I'm the only GM as no one else in the group has any experience with it. So, how do you do party movement in your dungeon crawls?
Do you use graph paper? Because it's trivial to track movement on graph paper.
I have everyone write down their standard party order for certain situations (10' corridor, 5' corridor, door entry ect.) used to do this on paper but
we usually use miniatures for this nowadays. I tend to enjoy random events so I'm usually pretty good about remembering to check for wandering
monsters, I usually have some such encounters somewhat planned out, and whereabouts their lair might be, though some dungeons may not have
any such encounters at all. For example, if there's a cave complex of say, 36 troglodytes, i might have a common room with 18 by default, less however
many they might encounter as wandering monsters, if they didn't meet them in the halls, they'd find all 18 of them there.
Most times i'll check once per turn in a dungeon setting (as opposed to about 3 times a day for overland travel), i keep track of time on an index
card/log i make up with current hp for the PC's and other such info, ticking off rounds and turns. Playing 1e right now so the standard 10 feet per
one inch of movement (generally 6" or 9" for the party as a whole, though the thief and mage alone can make 12") applies. Depending on the
dungeon encounters can be anywhere from 1 in 6 to 1 in 12 in most of the ones I've run, though there are always exceptions.
For 5e D&D: I tend to do encounter checks at real time = game time, so if the players spend half an hour nattering, I typically roll a d6 and 6 = encounter. When moving through dungeon I typically have the PCs move their move+dash (on tabletop or Roll20 battlemap) at a time then redraw/reveal map. For typical PCs that's 60' move. I might say only move your speed if it's a crowded dungeon, PCs are mapping, etc. Every 10 moves I'll typically roll an encounter check. If the party short rests (1 hour) I make 2 checks.
Quote from: S'mon on February 22, 2022, 03:25:17 AM
For 5e D&D: I tend to do encounter checks at real time = game time, so if the players spend half an hour nattering, I typically roll a d6 and 6 = encounter. When moving through dungeon I typically have the PCs move their move+dash (on tabletop or Roll20 battlemap) at a time then redraw/reveal map. For typical PCs that's 60' move. I might say only move your speed if it's a crowded dungeon, PCs are mapping, etc. Every 10 moves I'll typically roll an encounter check. If the party short rests (1 hour) I make 2 checks.
Exploring at "Move + Dash" pace seems likely to trigger a lot of traps and miss details, but in 5e that likely doesn't matter much.
Quote from: mudbanks on February 21, 2022, 09:46:53 PM
So, I love me a good dungeon crawl, and one of the ways in which I do it is to label each corridor/room and populate it. This means when the party moves, they don't move square by square, but rather room by room. This also means I'm less likely to do random encounters unless the party decides to take a rest.
But at the same time I'm wondering if anyone else here does it differently. I don't play in public games, only with people that I am very familiar with. Also, I'm the only GM as no one else in the group has any experience with it. So, how do you do party movement in your dungeon crawls?
There are lots of different ways to do party movement in or out of a dungeon.
Some just describe it and keep mental track of where things are. I use this alot combined with the next method. The players are supposed to map things based on that info.
Some just describe it but have a map on hand that they are secretly tracking things.
Some draw the map out for the players as they go.
Some use tiles or other other tools like dioramas in some manner.
Some used a program to do it. One of our local DMs did.
And other ways. And even variances on how exactly or when those or other styles come into play even.
In BX for example dungeon movement is unified
Searching a 10x!0 area takes a whole 10 minute turn.
A character can move their whole movement rate in a turn. Which is 120ft, or 12 10ft spaces on the average map. This was when exploring. Movement could be faster in known places.
Encumbrance slows movement to 90/60/30' per turn as it accumulates.
The characters have to rest 1 turn after every 5 they have been moving about. So a 10 minute break after 50 minutes of creeping about.
This allows for a pretty good idea of how far the characters can go in a dungeon every turn.
Example, doing a complete circuit of area D of Keep on the borderlands would take about 2 in game hours, 12 turns. This counting two 10 minute breaks. This assuming not stopping to search anything and taking the most direct course with no detours. With detours and searching and fighting... well. They are gonna be there a while.
Quote from: HappyDaze on February 22, 2022, 03:32:27 AM
Quote from: S'mon on February 22, 2022, 03:25:17 AM
For 5e D&D: I tend to do encounter checks at real time = game time, so if the players spend half an hour nattering, I typically roll a d6 and 6 = encounter. When moving through dungeon I typically have the PCs move their move+dash (on tabletop or Roll20 battlemap) at a time then redraw/reveal map. For typical PCs that's 60' move. I might say only move your speed if it's a crowded dungeon, PCs are mapping, etc. Every 10 moves I'll typically roll an encounter check. If the party short rests (1 hour) I make 2 checks.
Exploring at "Move + Dash" pace seems likely to trigger a lot of traps and miss details, but in 5e that likely doesn't matter much.
Oh, I don't assume it's 6 seconds per 60' of movement, more like 1 minute perhaps.
Quote from: Pat on February 22, 2022, 02:30:21 AM
Quote from: mudbanks on February 21, 2022, 09:46:53 PM
So, I love me a good dungeon crawl, and one of the ways in which I do it is to label each corridor/room and populate it. This means when the party moves, they don't move square by square, but rather room by room. This also means I'm less likely to do random encounters unless the party decides to take a rest.
But at the same time I'm wondering if anyone else here does it differently. I don't play in public games, only with people that I am very familiar with. Also, I'm the only GM as no one else in the group has any experience with it. So, how do you do party movement in your dungeon crawls?
Do you use graph paper? Because it's trivial to track movement on graph paper.
I use gridded maps so that would be more or less the same thing. Sometimes I use maps by 0one too.
When playing online, I use 5' squares and players move square by square until I tell them to pause. When playing at the table, I go room by room. For the benefit of those mapping on paper, I give the length of a corridor, but we don't really move figures until they encounter enemies.
I don't track time spent walking in either case. Any other activity takes ten minutes, whether it is looting bodies, checking for traps, picking a lock, or searching for something hidden. Each of those ten-minute activities risks a wandering monster, usually on a 1-in-6. After rolling each die, I can drop it in a cup to note that another ten minutes is past. When there are six dice in the cup, they have been in the dungeon for one hour.
I'm not sure of the best way to handle this, I just kept the narrative and estimated time spent. Combat is a figured in rounds so that takes care of itself. But then, sometimes real time is useful. I was once made a reference to a wet patch on the floor, just to make the narrative a little more interesting than "The tunnel continues for thirty feet". The players thought about it, discussed it, argued over strategy, tried all sorts of things to test for traps or strange anomalies, curses, whatever. It was so hard to keep a straight face. It was a puddle.
I try to focus on narrative rather than numbers. If the time doesn't matter then everything is an estimate. So really it depends on what the PCs are doing. For example, there was one session where the PCs were inside a Spelljammer that crashed in the ocean. It was important to keep track of the movement and time because the ship was filling with water. That's an extreme example where after a number of rounds they're waist deep in water. Then it's shoulder level water. Then they're treading water with only a head's space between the ceiling and the water level. In those situations the narrative is tied to the numbers. That's the extreme. Otherwise I do something like this:
60ft per minute: Normal pace, looking for traps and hidden stuff, not using stealth.
30ft per minute: Investigating the area, tracking, or using stealth. Full perception. *
15ft per minute: Investigating the area, tracking, and using stealth. Full perception. *
*This doesn't include investigating a room or scene. Realistically, if I'm sneaking around it would take longer than a minute to investigate a room, but not a hallway. So this is really just moving through an area, looking for clues, creatures, and traps. If they stop to investigate then we're on a narrative time.
All of this is rough estimates. I tell the PCs beforehand so they have an idea. So I'll say, it's a big hallway. It will take about 3 minutes to sneak across and look for traps, tracks, or clues. As a DM, I want to keep the information mechanics as open as possible.
It depends which game style you are using:
1) Theater of the Mind
2) Abstract Minis
3) Grid & Measurement
I'm a big fan of random encounters...but I plan them in advance.
AKA, the dungeon level has 6 wanderers and I have them statted out in advance and I know WHY they are wandering around (guards, hunters, lost, other raiders, etc). I use 6 because I like rolling D6 and it's plenty enough for me BUT surprises me a bit to which "random" encounter occurs.
I tend to do like mudbanks from the OP and go room by room rather than having timed movement. I will sometimes do declaring a marching order and then getting a general idea about how they proceed (i.e. are they going cautiously but steadily, or checking traps all the time, etc.), then saying how far they go before something happens.
Compared to some, that means I'm somewhat freeform. Still, this is the same way that most GMs handle PCs moving around in a city or in the wilderness. It's less strictly time-based, but it means that a dungeon can have some empty sections (for example) and less time is wasted on them.
Quote from: AtomicPope on February 22, 2022, 07:54:43 PM
I try to focus on narrative rather than numbers. If the time doesn't matter then everything is an estimate. So really it depends on what the PCs are doing. For example, there was one session where the PCs were inside a Spelljammer that crashed in the ocean. It was important to keep track of the movement and time because the ship was filling with water.
That sounds all well and good. But there's never a time in my games where time doesn't matter. It's more a question of scale. I've put a ton of thought and examined things from different angles and have concluded that round-by-round is usually the most appropriate scale for dungeon exploration. But if there are situations where segment-by-segment is more appropriate, I'll do that instead. Or I'll do turn by turn, hour-by-hour, or even 4-hour blocks. Day-by-day and week-by-week scales are usually used for "down time."
Personally i just use the dungeon sequence from B/X and spice it up as needed.
I track movement by the turn (i.e. 10 mins of game-world time), and mark off turns on a piece of paper. There are ten 1 minute round to the turn. The movement rate depends on what the PCs are doing.
1" of movement rate is equal to 10 ft. in the dungeon. Say the slowest member of the party has a movement rate of 9", and no one is considered encumbered. The party's basic movement rates in the dungeon would be:
- Careful exploring/mapping (x1): 90 ft. per turn.
- Following a known route (not exploring/mapping) (x5): 450 ft. per turn
- Fleeing/Running (x10): 900 ft. per turn.
For more complicated actions (e.g., searching and interacting with a room) I go with how many turns I think it would reasonably take, given the exact actions and circumstances. There are some guidelines in the 1e DMG:
- Door (search for traps): 1 round
- Door (listening for noises): 1 round
- Room (mapping, casually examining a 20x20 area): 1 turn
- Room (thoroughly searching after initial examination: 1 turn
- Secret Door (checking for by simple means like tapping in a 10x10 area): 1 round
- Secret Door (thorough examination for means of opening in a 10x10 area): 1 turn
Tracking by turn makes it pretty simple to keep track of time, which is important for keeping track of expenditure of light sources, wandering monster checks, et cetera.
Thanks for the replies! Keep em coming! I feel like I'm learning a lot too just by looking at how each table does it.
Also, since we're on the topic, how would you reveal fog of war to players, let's say if using graph paper or gridded maps?
Quote from: mudbanks on February 23, 2022, 07:29:38 PM
Thanks for the replies! Keep em coming! I feel like I'm learning a lot too just by looking at how each table does it.
Also, since we're on the topic, how would you reveal fog of war to players, let's say if using graph paper or gridded maps?
Years ago our DM was gifted several resin cast terrain dungeon sets. He planned a short dungeon crawl campaign for the summer with "fog of war". Each section was covered with paper and slowly revealed when we investigated. It was pretty amazing how adding miniatures and terrain awakens imagination. It inspired me to take cheaper routes with a battle mat and dry-erase dungeon tiles. Using dungeon tiles can be easier as you can draw up the rooms, halls, and encounters before hand. I've been using those dungeon tiles for city encounters since they're not as connected as a dungeon.
I just do scenes/encounters/rounds (D6 system) if time and danger are not a pressing concern; describing each terrain "block" in between like "outside the room a damp stone hallway stretches down and to your left into darkness, at least 100 or more feet you judge by the dancing torch light and echoes" and if they are not all about proceed with caution and check for traps then i will just summarize, a descriptive montage if you will, (a scene essentially) of the intervening time and travel until the next significant event/encounter/terrain block.
Scenes can include skill checks to get through and are faster/looser than an encounter, which is different in that it has the potential to "collapse" into combat rounds. Scenes are setup and exposition and story telling, sometimes with an attached skill check or two like rolling opposing command skills to determine which side ends the scene with an advantage in the way they have deployed their troops. Or perhaps a diplomacy roll at a described feast whose outcome will impact the composition of the next scene or it's encounters, failing to convince a noble to lend you some troops for the battle in the next scene that takes place a few weeks after. Think of it like this; combat rounds are the lowest tier component of gameflow, and they fit inside/under an encounter (which need not actually have combat), and encounters fit inside/under scenes though a scene need not technically have an encounter.
Kinda like:
Scene 1: you creep through dark tunnels beneath the tower looking for a hidden treasure room.
Encounter 1: Giant rats amid bones in a pit, random dead guy loot to be had.
combat round 1: kenny attempts to mount a rat, rat does not feel the romance.
so on...
Encounter 2: Searching the marked area (TN 15) reveals hidden door to treasure room (see index card) guarded by 2 gargoyles (see index card).
combat rounds: gargoyle fight
Encounter 3: discover imprisoned squire, social skill rolls and roleplay to see how this turns out hope it doesn't become combat rounds, and hey, maybe a free squire to carry your loot!
Quote from: AtomicPope on February 23, 2022, 08:24:47 PM
Years ago our DM was gifted several resin cast terrain dungeon sets. He planned a short dungeon crawl campaign for the summer with "fog of war". Each section was covered with paper and slowly revealed when we investigated. It was pretty amazing how adding miniatures and terrain awakens imagination. It inspired me to take cheaper routes with a battle mat and dry-erase dungeon tiles. Using dungeon tiles can be easier as you can draw up the rooms, halls, and encounters before hand. I've been using those dungeon tiles for city encounters since they're not as connected as a dungeon.
I got a colour laser printer & laminator, this lets me print out rooms/scenes in advance from electronic maps, an 8"x11" area for around 20p in ink & laminate I think. My friend Matt also left his 3D Dwarven Forge with me though so I often use that instead.
Quote from: mudbanks on February 23, 2022, 07:29:38 PM
Thanks for the replies! Keep em coming! I feel like I'm learning a lot too just by looking at how each table does it.
Also, since we're on the topic, how would you reveal fog of war to players, let's say if using graph paper or gridded maps?
See my notes in the prior post.
First D&D I played the DM game descriptions and the mapper, me, plotted them out on graph paper as we went.
Or the DM can draw it for them as they go.
Or use tiles and place them as they go.
Or have parts of the dungeon map covered with strips of paper removed as they go.
Or use a program that reveals the map as they go.
And likely many others.
Quote from: mudbanks on February 23, 2022, 07:29:38 PM
Also, since we're on the topic, how would you reveal fog of war to players, let's say if using graph paper or gridded maps?
The players map as they go. I'll correct mistakes if the mistakes would be obvious to the PCs (i.e., if the mapping error is from poor communication between me and the mapping player, like a door misplaced on a different wall, or something like that).
I don't often use a battlemat for dungeon exploration, but if I do I'd draw what the PCs can see, as they go.
Quote from: mudbanks on February 23, 2022, 07:29:38 PM
Thanks for the replies! Keep em coming! I feel like I'm learning a lot too just by looking at how each table does it.
Also, since we're on the topic, how would you reveal fog of war to players, let's say if using graph paper or gridded maps?
Fog of war takes care of itself if you remember that (1) it is the DM's job to verbally describe what the characters see, and (2) it is the players job to draw a map from that description (if they want one).
Quote from: Vidgrip on February 24, 2022, 03:57:45 PM
Fog of war takes care of itself if you remember that (1) it is the DM's job to verbally describe what the characters see, and (2) it is the players job to draw a map from that description (if they want one).
Yes, exactly.
And for mapping, if the PCs map is "wrong" because of a failure in the DM to player communication (such that the error would be obvious to the PC given what they can perceive), I'll correct it. If the map is off a bit but the error is one the PC could easily make given what they can perceive, then I won't correct it.
Quote from: Philotomy Jurament on February 25, 2022, 10:59:38 PM
Quote from: Vidgrip on February 24, 2022, 03:57:45 PM
Fog of war takes care of itself if you remember that (1) it is the DM's job to verbally describe what the characters see, and (2) it is the players job to draw a map from that description (if they want one).
Yes, exactly.
And for mapping, if the PCs map is "wrong" because of a failure in the DM to player communication (such that the error would be obvious to the PC given what they can perceive), I'll correct it. If the map is off a bit but the error is one the PC could easily make given what they can perceive, then I won't correct it.
100% all of this for fog of war.
For movement, I keep it similarly simple: I let the players tell me what they do and where they go and I periodically estimate how much time has passed and note it (aloud). I never bought into the idea of time and distance being tightly coupled. Movement rates vary. Activities vary. Some corridors are slower than others.
Quote from: mudbanks on February 21, 2022, 09:46:53 PM
So, I love me a good dungeon crawl, and one of the ways in which I do it is to label each corridor/room and populate it. This means when the party moves, they don't move square by square, but rather room by room. This also means I'm less likely to do random encounters unless the party decides to take a rest.
But at the same time I'm wondering if anyone else here does it differently. I don't play in public games, only with people that I am very familiar with. Also, I'm the only GM as no one else in the group has any experience with it. So, how do you do party movement in your dungeon crawls?
Theater of the mind. Players say where they are and what they are doing.
Depends on what's happening.
You got a dungeon with nice, smooth floors and straight halls movement ain't hard. You got one with potholes, cracks, sharp rocks everywhere then that's different.
Does the party just charge down the hall looking like that Monty Python movie all bunched together or do they send some scouts while the others hang back to see what happens?
Figure what they did. They go in with light gear. They find the dragons horde! They stuff as much as they can in whatever they got they ain't moving back as fast as when they got there. Dragon comes back and chases them they better ditch the loot or else.
How big is the place?
Graph paper is pretty cheap.