D&D 5E Keeping track in mega-dungeons?

[DRF]

Hi everyone

I'm a fairly new DM, and this Saturday I'm going to run my first really big dungeon: The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan from Yawning Portal. My question is how I and the players can keep track of things. I obviously have my DM map from the book, and I usually draw on my battlemat, but I'm wondering how to ensure the players can keep track of things. I was considering having them draw their own crude maps as we go along. Would that work? How do you guys handle big dungeons? In this particular dungeon there's little reason to ever back-track (in fact it would be close to suicide), but you never know.

I'd love some ideas, experiences and input (also about the dungeon if you have any). Thanks!

 

[iserith]

If someone in the group LIKES doing maps, then suggest they do one as a navigational aid. But don't force that task upon them. You can probably safely assume that the PCs are reasonably intelligent, at least enough to be able to get back to places they've been or even infer where other potential paths might lay based on their current information.

As far as their resources like hit points, spell slots, and equipment, I would explain to them that it is their responsibility to record the use of such things on their sheets and to be reasonably diligent about it since part of the challenge of the game is managing said resources. Good faith buy-in on this from your players should be sufficient to make sure things are fair and alleviate you from having to perform audits. If you think someone isn't up for this sort of "honor system," you might consider replacing that person with a player who is.

If I were to offer a single piece of advice in regards to handling big dungeons, it would be to "telegraph" the monsters, traps, and hazards with clues in your description of the environment. This might already be in the boxed text provided for you, or it might not be. "Telegraphing" is like foreshadowing. It's you, the DM, providing clues of what to expect so that the players can make reasonably informed decisions to improve their chances of success. This is an effort to making the game engaging and fair. If the players pick up on the clues, investigate further, and then are able to avoid or otherwise gain an edge in dealing with a challenge, it is very rewarding for them and incentivizes the players to pay attention and engage with the environment. If they do not pick up on the clues and get hit with a monster or trap, then they can at least look back at your description of the environment and know that it was their decisions that got them into this mess, not the DM hiding information from them.

 

[robus]

Another thing to contemplate is time keeping. There's not a lot of support for it provided by the DMG, but I think for megadungeons it's important to track it so you know when to trigger wandering monsters (if you're using them). A simple method recommended by the AngryGM is to use dice to track the passage of time in a visible manner. He assumes that a engaging with an encounter space in a superficial manner takes about 10 minutes (combats are typically resolved so quickly -under a minute- that they don't add any real time). So every time they leave a room add another dice to your time keeping pool (when you have 6 an hour has passed). If they choose to spend extra time to thoroughly search a room add more dice to the pool to account for that.

To trigger a wandering monster pick up the dice and roll them - if any dice comes up 1 then a wandering monster is triggered. What's great about this is that the passage of time becomes visible to the players rather than some arbitrary thing happening in the background that you spring on them.

A cool twist to this to use different size dice depending on the dangerousness of the area they're exploring. Relatively safe: d10, moderate: d8, risky: d6, dangerous: d4.

There are some other details you can read about here: http://theangrygm.com/hacking-time-in-dnd/ There's a lot of great stuff there, but the author is a piece of work. I used to be a fan, but I think the guy has real issues and it's not really all in fun... so caveat lector!

 

[DRF]

Another thing to contemplate is time keeping. There's not a lot of support for it provided by the DMG, but I think for megadungeons it's important to track it so you know when to trigger wandering monsters (if you're using them). A simple method recommended by the AngryGM is to use dice to track the passage of time in a visible manner. He assumes that a engaging with an encounter space in a superficial manner takes about 10 minutes (combats are typically resolved so quickly -under a minute- that they don't add any real time). So every time they leave a room add another dice to your time keeping pool (when you have 6 an hour has passed). If they choose to spend extra time to thoroughly search a room add more dice to the pool to account for that.

To trigger a wandering monster pick up the dice and roll them - if any dice comes up 1 then a wandering monster is triggered. What's great about this is that the passage of time becomes visible to the players rather than some arbitrary thing happening in the background that you spring on them.

A cool twist to this to use different size dice depending on the dangerousness of the area they're exploring. Relatively safe: d10, moderate: d8, risky: d6, dangerous: d4.

There are some other details you can read about here: http://theangrygm.com/hacking-time-in-dnd/ There's a lot of great stuff there, but the author is a piece of work. I used to be a fan, but I think the guy has real issues and it's not really all in fun... so caveat lector!

Thank you! Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is a time-sensitive dungeon and PCs are punished by poisonous gas every hour they're in there! I'll have to check out the time keeping thing, it would definitely help me keep track of when to trigger the gas damage.

I am familiar with AngryDM. I think his good points are buried under a mountain of extreme verbosity and an extremely poor attempt at offensive humor without really committing (he censors his own swearing? Really!?). His style of writing is just poor, which is a shame because he does have good ideas.

 

[Shiroiken]

I track time in minutes in dungeons, and usually make a wandering monster check every 15 minutes (or every hour if settled in for a rest). Traveling hallways is done by travel pace, but unless you have long hallways, this seldom happens. Actively Investigating/Searching takes 1 minute per door/room/chamber/whatever. Combat takes 1 minute, unless it goes over 10 rounds, then it rounds up to 2 minutes. Normally keeps things moving, and you can just tick off the time on scrap paper (or you can be anal retentive and use a spreadsheet like I do).

In general, I require people to determine what they're paying attention to for Passive Perception (Floor for most traps & trapdoors, Walls for secret doors and some traps, Ahead/Behind for monsters). This prevents the "super passive perception" character from doing everything.