No, I'm not moving to Australia. That would be dope, but that is not what this is about.
Arnold K over at Goblin Punch Blog wrote a phenomenal post what he coined "the Underclock." It it replaces Wandering Monsters, Event Dice, Overloaded Encounter Dice, Hazard System, and Tension Pools. Click on any of those links for great thoughts from more experienced creators than myself. There are a lot of great systems out there, but at my table they are hard for me to track. Now, I am not a very experienced Dungeon Master. I played in High School, did some play by post through college, then didn't pick up a book again until my middle son dug the 1st edition monster manual out of my closet and decided he wanted to play. My gaming group consists of a 7 year old, an 8 year old, and a 13 year old.
What really drew me in was Arnold's breaking down suspense vs. surprise. The red text is quoted directly from his blog post that I linked previously. I want that - I want suspense.
Suspense vs Surprise
- Surprise is when the alien suddenly attacks.
- Suspense is when you know the aliens are getting closer. You are running out of time, and you are running out of ammo. I think that most DMs want their players to feel suspense, more than surprise.
- A truly random roll (a flat 1-in-6 chance) doesn't offer much suspense. Surprise, but not suspense.
- To increase suspense, you want the players to feel like they're running out of time.
However, I think the actual problem with all of this time tracking is that it isn't intuitive. I am steeped in G+ (when it was around), blogs, podcasts, discords, reddits, etc that are focused on "old school play." Listening, reading, and writing about it is my hobby. I have heard all the arguments about why the 10 minute dungeon turn makes sense. The problem is, it still doesn't (to me). Forty feet, about ~13 yards in 10 minutes. That is 4 feet per minute. The average step length (start with both feet together, lift your left foot and step forward, now both feet are on the ground with your left foot in front of you right foot - that is your step length) is 2 to 2.5 feet. Now, if you lift your right foot and step forward so it is now on the ground in front of your left foot that is called a stride. The typical stride is approximately 5 feet. Your character walking down a 10 foot wide hall is literally taking less than 1 stride per minute. That is sickeningly slow.
To put it another way, a mile has 5,280 feet or 132 increments of 40 feet. It would take a character 1320 minutes (10 minute turns) or 22 hours to walk one mile in the dungeon. From the base camp on Mount Everest to the summit it is just shy of 13 miles and can be completed in 2 to 3 days (according to some quick google research). We will take 3 days, that is 4 miles per day!
For our typical adventurer that 13 miles is 68,640 feet which could be broken down into 1,716 segments of 40 feet each. Each segment would take 10 minutes to traverse so it would take 286 hours. Assuming a forced march of 10 hours per day, the adventurer would take nearly 29 days to make it from base camp to the summit.
"But that's outside! Adventurers go faster outside!" I hear you exclaiming. That adventurer in the wilderness is traveling at base 120 / 5 = 24 miles per day x mountain terrain (50%) = 12 miles per day. The adventurer is actually 3x too fast!
Yes, and no. I used this example because while most of probably do not a great grasp on what the trek up Mount Everest is from base camp to the summit, we can probably agree that it is an extremely challenging climb. It is done at night so that you have light on your way back down. It is HARD. But you know what is harder? That 40 feet of 10 foot wide hallway stretched out before our adventurers.
I'm extremely open to someone disagreeing with me and opening my eyes to something that I am missing, but right now in my opinion the simulation is wrong and that is what causes the dissonance time tracking rules that make them so hard to implement at the table. We cannot imagine moving THAT slow.
If we wanted a closer approximation, we'd be looking at 400 feet per turn for dungeon movement, or forty feet per minute of travel (that is still only walking .45 miles/hr). And perhaps there is the answer. Perhaps the movement speed isn't wrong, maybe its the length of a turn. What if turns were per minute? Take out your phone, set the timer for one minute, and do nothing but watch it. A minute is a substantial amount of time when you stop and really observe its passing.
So a 1 minute turn, reminds me of the 1 minute combat round. Maybe AD&D was onto something. If you were making checks every other turn (2 minutes) that means that the party would encounter something every 10ish minutes which feels a little too frequent.
I'm not a fan of usage dice (The Black Hack) for my consumables (except wands because I like not knowing when the last charge is spent) but I like it as a mechanism. Here is my thought -
Every other minute (now equal to one turn) the players spend in the dungeon they roll for Danger. Danger starts out as a D20. On a 1 or a 2 the Danger increases and the dice goes to the next size smaller (D20, D12, D10, D8, D6, D4). A 1 will actually result in another roll immediately on the next die size down. When a 1 or 2 appear on a D4, the jig is up and the adventurers are actively being hunted.
Certain actions will automatically reduce the die size without a roll:
- Loud noises (breaking down a door, cave in)
- Getting into protracted combat
- Leaving obvious clues behind (trashing a room, spiking doors, dead bodies)
Certain actions can increase the die size (once the die has been reduced below d20 it cannot get higher than d12 again unless the party leaves the dungeon for an extended period of time).
- Hiding in secret rooms
- Concealment/Illusion magic
- Silently taking out guards/sentries
This would result in an average of 30 checks (1 hour) before shit hit the fan. Every time the die decreases that is a chance for the DM to give a portent of the dangers lurking so there is plenty of opportunity to build tension.