Dungeons and action economy

>>49710758

Check Moria?

In LotR party has long footslogging sessions with actual combat and exploration taking place only in key locations. You have a couple of points that are connected with long tunnels or caves. Add some side tunnels or even chasms that were not on the maps before that players can explore and from where your random (or not so random) encounters can jump on them.

Bonus is that all dungeon can't jump party at once because it inhabitants actually far away and can't hear anything happening in other cluster.

>>49710908
I'd like that idea a lot more if I wasn't building for more standard/varied stuff. Also I usually handle Moria-scale action with rules and time scales more similar to hex crawling.

I will probably at least include "long tunnels" as an option though. It would be a good way to break up levels and such.

>>49710908

Well I don't see a problem with ending a dungeon in 30 minutes or an hour. Biggest timesinks would be checking for traps or trying to open locked doors without noise. And maybe some riddles or puzzles.

Opss, >>49711131 meant for this post >>49711069

>>49711131
I mean... total time isn't too much of an issue, but how I've got it written movement is like 90 zones (my spaces are approx 15 feet) per turn.

I suppose I could also reduce the time per action. Maybe a 3 minute/15 minute split instead. Even 30 zones is quite a lot. Your movement is still likely to come across a bunch of branching paths, encounters, and enemies in its path. Which makes treating it as a single action seem iffy.

So far:

>healing
>searching
>tampering/lockpicking
>certain kinds of looting?
>altering terrain
>traversing long tunnels, maybe long climbs
>spell prep? item crafting?

The way I like handling it is one that I saw in ACKS (and probably exists in B/X and other OSR too). Dungeon exploration happens in 10-minute "turns", in which the PCs are assumed to be taking great care to avoid traps and excess noise while mapping and doing other things. Most actions, such as carefully moving a reasonable distance, searching a small room for traps, participating in a combat, or battering down a door, occupy one such turn. Of course, in each turn it is assumed the players will also do things like communicate in-character, bandage their wounds, loot bodies, clean blood off their weapons, and maintain their dungeon-maps. It means that PCs can go through multiple torches and spend a solid part of their day dungeon-crawling, and will even need to take breaks or start to face exhaustion.

>>49710758
>Mainly, walking speed is fast. For most dungeons if you move through unimpeded you're going to see all of it in about 15 minutes in game (currently the smaller actions in my game are ~10 or 15 minutes, with the larger being ~30 minutes or an hour). Even at a pretty stingy 2mph. This means that movement should be free or virtually free, but that takes out a pretty big action sink I'm used to relying on in combat and hex crawls.

Simply strolling through a corridor rightly should be free or nearly so, but moving slowly and carefully enough to spot traps, ambushes, and secrets while mapping out a dungeon from the inside should take much more time.

If the PCs just walk through the dungeon like they're commuting to work, they're not going to have a chance to notice well-hidden traps or treasures, and they're more likely to be ambushed too.

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171KB, 600x765px

>>49712967
>probably exists in B/X

Yup, that's the B/X standard.
The thing to remember is that it's pitch black down there, and you can't see more than 30 feet out with your torches and lanterns, and you need to bring them over close in order to inspect walls and floors and ceilings. It's a slow, laborious process if you want to be sure not to step on a tripwire or miss a faded inscription on the wall. The benefit of going at exploration speed is that the DM describes your surroundings well enough for you to map them, and doesn't skim over anything. If you want to just blow on through at your combat move rate, I'll let you, but all traps trigger for you, and you auto-fail wandering monster checks, because they will hear you and see you.

Also as a GM, a chunky 10 minute turn lets you cram small actions together and not have to count a bunch of individual nonsense. I just kind of eyeball the stuff they're doing and think "Yeah you could probably do that much in a turn." Lets me tack minor things onto a regular turn and bundle multiple things up into their own turn, and handwave the exact timing.

>>49712967
>>49713609
About how far would you get in one of these slow moving turns?

>>49714007

Generally 120 feet (about 40 meters) for one turn of creeping, searching, mapping, and whispering.

>>49714609
That's good to know. And a lot more workable. About 8 zones.