The Lost Dungeon Crawling Rules of DnD

it's one of those strange but true facts about dungeons and dragons that despite the word dungeon being in the name of the game there doesn't seem to be a whole lot in the way of rules or guidelines or procedures for how to actually run a dungeon i'm certainly not the first person to notice this i see stuff on this all the time all over the d and d internet on forums especially from new players who are looking at how do i run a dungeon crawl surely there should be procedures for this there should be guidelines in the rulebook but there really isn't a whole lot so how do you go about doing that how do you make something that's tense and exciting and engaging for the players and not just a slog through room after room surely someone has solved this by now well the answer is yes someone has solved this early on in dnd the dungeon was d you barely left it anytime you were outside of the dungeon was mostly heading back to town to resupply or trekking back to the dungeon to go for another delve it was the core of the experience this goes all the way back to dave arneson who ran the first fantasy campaign pre-dnd he had an open world with lots of opportunities for players to explore for their characters to engage in politics and all sorts of things but what happened was that the players soon discovered that there was a dungeon underneath his castle not a very big one there was a couple monsters down there things like that and what dave discovered was that they would go down to the dungeon and they wouldn't want to leave or they would come up and they would want to go back right away the act of delving into these dark dangerous environments finding treasure solving problems bypassing or killing monsters was addicting and incredibly exciting for his players so there's something really elemental about a dungeon crawl it was kind of the killer app of d early on in the game early years of dnd everything was pretty much mega dungeons you would have these massive underground structures with hundreds or thousands of rooms that could be explored almost infinitely and that was the core of the game delving deeper and deeper finding more treasures more secrets and more wondrous things this slowly wore off over time especially as tsr moved into a d and d first edition second edition and so on and things started focusing more on overland exploration planar combat city campaigns things like that so the rules for how to do these dungeon crawls were slowly lost over time because there were rules especially if you go back to od and d or even things like basic dnd there is very carefully codified procedures for how to make these dungeon crawls tense and exciting and interesting and make it this addicting experience that players want to go back to over and over again so what happened to these rules are they just gone forever well the answer is no they're not they're still around today mostly in the form of older editions of d and d now you can pick up these older editions especially the moldvae basic rules which have a lot of great stuff in them but what i recommend is that you start out with old school essentials so that's this edition right here i have the all-in-one book right here but it also comes in this great box set where all the rules are broken into little books that you can spread around the table it's really great but anyway links are down in the description below what we're gonna do is look through this book and look through the rules and the way they were structured in early dnd and how they made dungeon crawling fun one of the cool things is that a lot of these rules are extremely modular they aren't hooked in to a lot of the other mechanics of the game that means that you can often take them as is and port them directly into whatever edition of the game you happen to be using whether that's dnd 5th edition or pathfinder or what have you so let's dig into the game and see what it can offer us so let's look through the rules for dungeon adventuring beginning with the sequence of play per turn to begin with we have wandering monsters that's step one the referee makes checks as applicable step two actions the party decides what actions to take for example moving searching listening entering rooms part three description the referee describes what happens if monsters are encountered follow the procedure described in encounters which goes to another page and of course we have end of turn the referee updates time records with special attention to light sources spell durations and the parties need to rest now you notice here that there's a lot of interesting structure here there are technical terms being used there's an almost board game like organization to this that makes things more tense and interesting so first of all let's look at sequence of play per turn all time in the dungeon is broken into turns which are generally about 10 minutes long this allows you to chunk all of your time and to hook other mechanics onto that you can attach things like resource expenditure the amount of distance that you can travel how long lights burn and all sorts of things onto this dungeon turn this is because early d d and dungeon crawling in general is about resource depletion or resource management dungeons by default are horrible dark dangerous places that man was not meant to go in order to survive them and come out with any sort of profit you need to be well equipped but the longer you spend down there the more your resources deplete and that's not just hit points it's also things like light for example as your torches burn down it's also things like your hirelings perhaps being killed off it's also things like more and more monsters appearing the longer you stay so controlling how much time you spend is an essential part of playing the game next let's look at step one wandering monsters this is something that's often made fun of in modern day but there's a very good reason for it when you're doing dungeon crawls if you have a dungeon it's often a great deal to make a list of the types of monsters that live down there doesn't have to be a very long one but they should be interesting flavorful and dangerous when players linger when they spend a lot of time in the dungeon monsters can show up typically this means that every time the wandering monster die is rolled if a one comes up then a monster appears you might roll this die every turn though a lot of times you roll it every other turn it depends on the dungeon and the game master's preference but the point is is that the things down here are dangerous time is limited be efficient the other thing to notice is end of turn the referee updates time records you are in fact tracking time down here a big part of that is light sources torches burn down after a limited amount of time now what some tables do is they actually track the number of turns before torches run out the other way that you can do it is you can roll a die periodically to see if torches run out that can be a way to get around some of this time tracking but either way it's going to be important part of the adventure next up we have a section on doors doors have a lot of rules in old dnd why would that be there's a reason that all of these rules are here to begin with we have secret doors so secret doors can only be spotted if characters are specifically searching for them so how would you even know to look for a secret door a lot of time this comes down to mapping if you're carefully mapping the dungeon where the rooms are where the passages are you can often find holes in a map where it's likely that you will find a secret door and you can begin searching for them this of course is going to take time if you fail to find a secret door time is lost torches are burned down perhaps monsters show up so you need to do this strategically and carefully we also have rules for locked doors and for stuck doors this is an interesting rule from early dnd where you have doors that are occasionally just stuck why would you have a rule like this well it means that there's another way that you can expend the player's resources you can try and force the door open or perhaps you can even chop it down if you have the right things like axes or hammers but of course that will take time and and also create noise so that means that things that are nearby that are looking to kill you are probably going to show up so it has the rules here for a surprise a failed attempt to force open a door eliminates any possibility of surprise that the party may have against any monsters on the other side of the door you're going to be listening at doors you put your ear to the door and if there's things on the other side the game master can tell you what it is if you roll well and therefore you can try and break one of those doors and surprise those monsters it's all part of the tactics that are inherent to the system you have doors swinging shut doors open by adventurers are likely to swing shut after they pass and so you can try and spike them open in order to make sure they don't swing shut behind you i mean they may get stuck after they close or perhaps lock behind you you also have monsters and doors monsters that live in the dungeon can usually open doors even stuck ones unless they are blocked magically closed or wedged shut with spikes so you're making sure that you have an effective route back to the surface the dungeon hates you the dungeon is trying to stop you and the monsters play by different rules there's a way in old dnd that the underworld is kind of a mythic underworld it's a place of darkness and dreams that lives beneath ours both literally and metaphorically and things on there don't necessarily make sense the dungeon itself hates you and the monsters are allied with it the way the doors will occasionally swing shut and lock or perhaps re-jam also means that players are going to have to explore more because if the passage back becomes blocked they're going to have to find another way next we have rules for movement players have a standard movement rate which is very slow and it's a number of feet per turn so over the course of 10 minutes you'd expect players to be able to cover a very large amount of space in a dungeon but the way it's structured is that it takes into account the fact that they are watching for traps they're trying to be quiet they're avoiding obstacles and so on and especially that the fact that the characters are mapping if you don't want them to do any of these things you can have them travel faster naturally but then you're going to run into problems traps are going to start going off around you monsters are going to start hearing you and so on and so forth so this creates a very methodical process of going through the dungeon where you know exactly how far you're going to go so in the next 10 minute turn i can travel this far down the passage and i can explore this one room you can start accounting for how far you're going to be able to go and of course you can take risks if you want to go faster next up we have rules for rest characters must rest for one turn every hour in the dungeon if characters press on without resting they suffer a penalty of -1 to hit and damage rolls until they have rested for one turn so you can't just press on and on and on into the dungeon it's a harrowing and exhausting process dungeoneering characters are going to have to stop and take a break every once in a while we also have rules for searching dungeons often include hidden features such as secret doors and traps adventurers can spot these by searching so you can explore a 10 foot by 10 foot area that's the amount that you can do at a time it takes a whole turn to do that your chance of success is by default a one in six chance however some types of adventurers have special abilities that make this more likely if you're porting this over into 5th edition dnd you might use a perception check or something similar and the referee always rolls secretly to see if they've found anything we also have rules for traps so for example there's only a two and six chance of triggering a trap if you do the action that would normally set it off this seems a little bit odd at first right if there's a flagstone that triggers a blade trap then you would think that stepping on the the stone would do it but it isn't always the case i suppose you could say that these traps are very old and they've been worn out by centuries of disuse and so they don't always work but there's other reasons for this as well it means that the person in the front of the party is not always going to be the person that sets it off if you have a row of adventurers traveling down a passage it's really unclear who is going to be hit by the trap so you can't guarantee that the toughest person is always going to be taking the brunt of the damage similar to the way that secret doors work there's a rule that monsters may be able to bypass traps without risk if the referee wishes now going by my personal opinion here i would not allow monsters to be able to bypass traps quite this way if monsters know where they are then it's easy for them to avoid it however i really like the idea of adventurers using traps in a weaponized sort of way so that they can set them off as monsters approach and take them out i love that aspect of the game so i wouldn't include that personally next we have rules for wandering monsters as i mentioned before so there's a frequency here a check is typically rolled once every two turns in the dungeon otherwise i mentioned you might do it more frequently depending on the environment that you're in and the typical chance of an encounter of a wandering monster is one in six so this means that on average you're going to run into some sort of monster once every 12 turns although of course it could be much more frequent than that depending on the circumstances and i love this little rule here which you don't see at all in a lot of modern editions wandering monsters are encountered 2d6 times 10 feet away moving in the direction of the party so there's actual rules for how far away they are they could start out much farther down the hall so you can see them coming and you can prepare or they can appear from around a corner really close and you barely have time to draw your weapons that's just another way to add more tension into the game the previous page includes even more information on wandering monsters especially these two sections right down here for example noise and light if the party's making a lot of noise or carrying bright light sources in a dark environment the referee may increase the chance of a wandering monster being encountered that's logical similarly if the party rests quietly in an out of the way location the referee may decrease the chance of wandering monsters being encountered so paying attention to your environment how you're moving what you're carrying are you wearing loud clanky armor are you carrying bright lanterns all of that could affect how dangerous the environment is old dnd was much more of a stealth game than you find in modern editions light as well has very specific rules so characters will usually want to bring a source of light with them on underground expeditions atypical light sources enable normal vision within a 30 foot radius so you know exactly how far you can see if you're in a large cavern you're gonna need to travel around to be able to see the whole thing similarly there's rules for light and surprise characters or monsters that carry a light in a dark environment are usually unable to surprise opponents because the light gives their uh presence away this is really important the surprise rules often grant the party a huge advantage in combat you always want to be able to surprise your opponent so if you think that they're coming up if you think there's monsters around the next bend you actually want to snuff out your lights to be able to to get the drop on them the rules for surprise are also especially interesting each side that is not already aware of the other side rolls at dd6 the referee rolls for monsters and the pc rolls for the party as a whole on a result of one or two means the side is surprised so this means that one or both or none of the two sides in a combat could be surprised in a situation where only one side is surprised the other side gains a huge advantage because the surprised side cannot act that round you have an entire round to just rush up and start hacking one of my favorite rules from early dnd that i feel is sorely neglected in modern editions is the monster reaction role basically when you come across a intelligent beast of any sort that you could you know reasonably communicate with and it's not clear if it's automatically hostile you roll to d6 the way that this is structured is that there's a bell curve most of the time the monster will be neutral or uncertain in some cases it will be unfriendly and might attack or indifferent or uninterested and in very rare cases it automatically attacks or is friendly and helpful this means that there is a much greater variety of types of encounters that you will run into you can run into some orcs that happen to be friendly although it's quite unlikely you can also run into things that you might be friendly that for whatever reason don't take a liking to you and attack immediately this means that you are not only having combat encounters you have the possibility of allying or parlying with the things in the dungeon making alliances forming factions and going about your exploration and your conquest of the dungeon in a completely different way pursuit is another rule that's especially important in a dungeon but is often ignored today if there's a monster chasing you how do you deal with getting away from it well there's an actual procedure here there's a rule for line of sight most monsters will not continue a pursuit if the characters get out of the monster's range of vision you can drop treasure if their monsters enjoy treasure that's not always going to be the case right there is a three and six probability that they will stop pursued to collect any treasure that the characters drop i love that rule so you're running away from a group of creatures that perhaps are treasure hungry you're throwing your coins behind you as you go hoping they'll stop and pick them up that's hilarious and it adds another tactical element you can also drop food hungry or less intelligent monsters may stop pursuit if characters drop food 3 in 6 chance so you can always throw away your precious rations as you dash down the corridor in order to hope that the monster will spare your life and of course obstacles burning oil a classic of old dnd or other obstacles may also slow or stop a pursuit the line of sight rule is particularly interesting because you want to get out of the range of vision this doesn't mean you have to go all the way across the dungeon a lot of the time this means you can just turn a corner so this would explain why you find a lot of these very old d dungeons have these corridors from room to room that are twisty and are always changing direction back and forth it seems kind of pointless and irrelevant why would you have corridors that are constantly changing direction well a lot of that is so that you can break line of sight and escape from monsters however possibly the most important rule in early dnd for making dungeon expeditions fun intense and exciting is the way that it hands out experience points as it says right here characters gain 1 xp per 1 gold piece value of the treasure this usually accounts for 3 4 or more of the total xp earned you can get some xp from killing monsters but it's not going to be much and it's going to be more dangerous so how does this rule affect the game it means that when you're doing these dungeon expeditions you're going to often want to avoid killing the monsters rather than becoming murder hobos and simply killing everything in your path most of the time you're going to want to perhaps do some diplomacy turn the monster to your side maybe use some stealth and get around them maybe block the way so that the monster simply can't come after you there's a lot more problem solving and strategy high level strategy used when exploring these dungeons once you implement this rule because it is now a rule that encourages exploration rather than combat so that's my overview of some of the rules from early dnd and how those rules help make dungeon exploration a lot more fun and interesting you can take those rules out stick them in your own game tweak them modify them but most of them will help in one way or another the xp for treasure rule is also especially helpful if you'd like to learn even more about older dnd and how the rules of those older editions help to facilitate a different kind of gameplay than you find in modern dnd check out the rest of my channel i have hundreds of videos investigating just that i have lots of reviews of older systems especially new modules that use older systems to create this type of gameplay if videos like that sound interesting to you hit the subscription button down below and the bell icon to get notified when i release new videos thanks for watching everyone i'll see you next time

Channel: Questing Beast

Views: 208,651

Keywords: questing beast, d&d, d&d 5e, dnd, dnd 5e, dungeons & dragons, dungeons and dragons, old school d&d, old school dnd, osr, osr d&d, osr dnd, osr rpg, The Lost Dungeon Crawling Rules of DnD, Dungeon Crawling 5e, DnD Dungeon Crawl, Running a Dungeon, Rule for Dungeon Crawling, How to Run a Dungeon

Id: uuJNIVcvHZ4

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2020