My Life As A Gamer: Expeditions, Explorations, Encounters (Part Four)

(Notes: The Player's Handbook (PHB) and Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition (AD&D1e) cited as needed. First post is here, and Tuesday's is here, and yesterday's is here.)

In the talk about travel overland and delving in the Dungeon, I talked around the procedures that govern these activities. Now that you are in the correct frame of mind, those can be addressed.

Travel overland and delving the Dungeon concerns itself with distance over time. This is, by necessity, an abstraction; do it for real and you will find a lot of details that are presumed by the procedure because the game doesn't operate with such fine tolerance. A similar presumption governs Dungeon delving.

Overland

Summarized (DMG p. 47), the Dungeon Master (DM) takes the party's Movement Rate in Miles (p. 58) and cross-references it to population density and terrain to determine distance travels in a day. The chart (p. 47 again) tells the DM how many Encounter Checks to make; Population Density tells him the odds of an Encounter. When Encounters happen, the DM goes to Appendix C and rolls on the appropriate Outdoor Encounter Table for the terrain (p. 182-189). One day passes for every travel increment.

Dungeon

Summaried (PHB p. 102), the DM takes the party's Movement Rate in Feet. Delving defaults to Exploration mode, where time passes in 10 minute Turns and the party is presumed to be mapping and otherwise going slowly with care. Every three Turns, check for Encounters unless circumstances dictate deviation from this norm (DMG p. 190) at a 1 in 20 rate (p. 170).

When this is not the case, speed increases. Retracing a known route is Rate x5; so a normal distance takes only two 1 minute Rounds. Fleeing is Rate x10; normal distance is per Round, provided the party is not Encumbered.

Combat movement uses the Fleeing Rate; your man moves 1/10th that Rate per six-second Segment (all PHB p. 102).

Consequences

This means that tracking both time and distance is a lot easier than it seems.

In the Dungeon, every Turn is 10 minutes; if you have spells, torches, lanterns, etc. with durations this makes it easy to track them and thus to track other periodic checks (such as Wandering Monsters) and otherwise mind party resources vs. progress.

Overland, every day is Rate in Miles; it is no surprise that parties will (a) want to mount up if small enough and (b) prefer to follow blaized trails/road/etc. to speed up travel and make provisions last as long as possible.

Combat is one minute per Round, granting the same benefits that a set time:activity ratio for Turns offers. Segments are more of a corner case, mattering more to handle those specific situations, and will be address when I get to Combat.

Observations

Most players will, in a proper campaign with strict timekeeping (DMG p. 37), find that overland travel be handled away from the table during downtime communications provided that there is a reasonable expectation of no hostile encounters will occur. The DM should emphasize that this is for players to secure.

Players will also prefer that certain time-related issues, such as Spell Memorization, also be done during downtime. The DM should not budge on this. As with recovery from injury and disease, training times and costs, Spell/Item Research, etc. these are deliberate and intentional balancing mechanisms the disruption or removal of which inevitably make a game turn to shit.

Players should be encouraged to roll and play multiple characters if they expect to play when their preferred character is locked down due to needing to be out of play for one of the aforementioned reasons.

Players should also be encouraged to handle dangerous encounters in a prudent manner. More on that tomorrow.