perrinmiller
Adventurer
DM Workshop #10: Dungeon Crawls
DM Workshop #10: Dungeon Crawls
This topic can be the bane of many a PbP game. There is nothing like repeated posts of "I will move down the hallway to the next door to listen and look for traps." Every game can have one, not just D&D. Many a published adventure for D&D has them, but they are also expected to be played face to face around a table where you can accelerate things much easier, too.
With that in mind, I think it is a art to figure out how to get through them in PbP, while keeping interest up.
Determine what you want your players to get out of the dungeon itself. If they need to explore everything, but there are several empty areas and a few traps to keep them cautious it can take a long, tedious time. But the main point of playing is to have fun. Spending days RL moving from one corner to the next as the map is slowly revealed is not fun. The DM cannot expect the players to role-play meaningfully with nothing to react to either.
So, if the point for the dungeon is to find a few rooms with monsters in them and a few traps, then everything else is just dead time in between. There needs to be a way to accelerate things, yet preserving the obstacles and surprises. This is the art of managing a dungeon crawl.
Some things to consider that can help:
1. If there is a natural leader of the group, let them make executive decisions so there isn't a debate at every intersection. You can even establish this policy OOC. Or perhaps the rogue who is leading the way looking for traps is designated to make those calls.
2. Streamline trap searching. This is usually what is keeping the DM from just moving the scene along to the next room as there needs to be a chance to look for them rather than stumble into them. Any experienced player group will automatically do this if they think there is any chance. You can establish a Standard Operating Procedure for it and then operate with it in effect.
It is easy to use taking 20 on Search or Perception as they explore, but sometimes there are time constraints that make it impractical (for example, the wizard's Mage Armor spell only lasts and hour). Usually at lower levels taking 10 is too low to find the expected DC of traps too. Best thing is to establish an effective Take 15 or something in that ballpark instead of just rolling dice. Since there is no consequences for failure, you can keep rolling until you beat a certain DC regardless.
However, I just have my players do this: "Search (+7) until beat DC22" Essentially the DM rolls the Search checks when necessary. And, it is only necessary when the DC of the secret door or trap is higher than the DC they set for their searching (DC24 for example). But, since they are not Taking a 15, the DM needs to roll to see if the dice roll to beat DC22 is able to beat the higher DC. So they might get lucky and find that harder trap anyway before they walk right into it thinking there is no trap.
3. Consider providing them a map to help with exploration. This could even be completely OOC knowledge if you can trust your players with that. But, you can give it too them for an IC reason instead. Provide them a crude "treasure map" that gives the basic layout to allow them to provide more general courses of actions to streamline the exploration.
4. Make sure every significant DM update leaves something for the players to react to. If the hallway continues along with some turns but no intersections or doors, don't stop in the middle unless there is a good reason. Better to just move them all the way until they reach the next intersection or whatever. The post OOC to tell them why and if they had an action they wanted to to do, let them retroactively do it. As usual, continual OOC communication can go along way.
5. When there are lots of rooms that are not empty, but don't contain much of importance (like treasure, traps, or encounters) then find ways to group multiple locations together in DM updates. I ran a group through a 15 room lighthouse that had no monsters, traps, and very little treasure, but they needed to go through it for plot reasons and there where things to see. I ended up advancing them level by level (5 floors) instead of room by room, assuming the lead characters would step forward and look into the next open doorway to make sure it was empty of monsters.
DM Workshop #10: Dungeon Crawls
This topic can be the bane of many a PbP game. There is nothing like repeated posts of "I will move down the hallway to the next door to listen and look for traps." Every game can have one, not just D&D. Many a published adventure for D&D has them, but they are also expected to be played face to face around a table where you can accelerate things much easier, too.
With that in mind, I think it is a art to figure out how to get through them in PbP, while keeping interest up.
Determine what you want your players to get out of the dungeon itself. If they need to explore everything, but there are several empty areas and a few traps to keep them cautious it can take a long, tedious time. But the main point of playing is to have fun. Spending days RL moving from one corner to the next as the map is slowly revealed is not fun. The DM cannot expect the players to role-play meaningfully with nothing to react to either.
So, if the point for the dungeon is to find a few rooms with monsters in them and a few traps, then everything else is just dead time in between. There needs to be a way to accelerate things, yet preserving the obstacles and surprises. This is the art of managing a dungeon crawl.
Some things to consider that can help:
1. If there is a natural leader of the group, let them make executive decisions so there isn't a debate at every intersection. You can even establish this policy OOC. Or perhaps the rogue who is leading the way looking for traps is designated to make those calls.
2. Streamline trap searching. This is usually what is keeping the DM from just moving the scene along to the next room as there needs to be a chance to look for them rather than stumble into them. Any experienced player group will automatically do this if they think there is any chance. You can establish a Standard Operating Procedure for it and then operate with it in effect.
It is easy to use taking 20 on Search or Perception as they explore, but sometimes there are time constraints that make it impractical (for example, the wizard's Mage Armor spell only lasts and hour). Usually at lower levels taking 10 is too low to find the expected DC of traps too. Best thing is to establish an effective Take 15 or something in that ballpark instead of just rolling dice. Since there is no consequences for failure, you can keep rolling until you beat a certain DC regardless.
However, I just have my players do this: "Search (+7) until beat DC22" Essentially the DM rolls the Search checks when necessary. And, it is only necessary when the DC of the secret door or trap is higher than the DC they set for their searching (DC24 for example). But, since they are not Taking a 15, the DM needs to roll to see if the dice roll to beat DC22 is able to beat the higher DC. So they might get lucky and find that harder trap anyway before they walk right into it thinking there is no trap.
3. Consider providing them a map to help with exploration. This could even be completely OOC knowledge if you can trust your players with that. But, you can give it too them for an IC reason instead. Provide them a crude "treasure map" that gives the basic layout to allow them to provide more general courses of actions to streamline the exploration.
4. Make sure every significant DM update leaves something for the players to react to. If the hallway continues along with some turns but no intersections or doors, don't stop in the middle unless there is a good reason. Better to just move them all the way until they reach the next intersection or whatever. The post OOC to tell them why and if they had an action they wanted to to do, let them retroactively do it. As usual, continual OOC communication can go along way.
5. When there are lots of rooms that are not empty, but don't contain much of importance (like treasure, traps, or encounters) then find ways to group multiple locations together in DM updates. I ran a group through a 15 room lighthouse that had no monsters, traps, and very little treasure, but they needed to go through it for plot reasons and there where things to see. I ended up advancing them level by level (5 floors) instead of room by room, assuming the lead characters would step forward and look into the next open doorway to make sure it was empty of monsters.