D&D General Hot Take: Dungeon Exploration Requires Light Rules To Be Fun

[vagabundo]

That's not what I am talking about. Those aren't "heavy rules" they are part of the gameplay loop (as @Charlaquin said).

What I mean is a game with 1000 character options and a bunch of situational modifiers and multiple steps to achieving singular and simple results are "rules heavy" and make dungeon crawling unfun. Complex, long, grindy combats. System where you have to count up a bunch of situational modifiers before you can make the roll to do whatever. Basically, modern D&D system isms.

I listen to 3d6 Down the Line podcast and in a recent episode they were fighting a high level undead cleric, a Mummy and a few Shadows. That combat took an hour and a half of the podcast, with one character death. They are in a Mega-dungeon complex and follow the process for B/X (OSE really) dungeon crawling pretty rigorously. Long combats are a feature of D&D. I'm pretty sure my 4e group would have completed the combat in about an hour to be honest.

I also remember a guy who had a blog on following the 1e DND combat rules to the letter (as much as thats possible) and the combats took a long time.

You can speed run combats with decent DM planning, but thats at odds with classic dungeon crawling processes. Morale rules do help - which is why I use them in my 4e games.

 

[borringman]

Given there's no formal definition of dungeon crawling, and since your PC is exploring a dungeon, then I say yes, it is dungeon crawling. What it may not be is resource management.

I think that's a genre vs. expectation thing. To your point, yes, D&D5 fits firmly within the loose definition of "dungeon crawling" genre in that many adventures take place in "dungeons", a misnomer D&D itself created. But anyone time-warped from the AD&D days might be shocked to see how irrelevant the "dungeon" part of the game has gotten. It's become something of a misleading expectation.

Case in point, a recent session took place in an extremely cold area. The DM just made us all buy winter gear. That was it -- mandatory 5gp expense. Even if we hadn't, the rules on cold weather are. . . well, this:

That's not an excerpt; that's the entire section. Among other things, it doesn't matter if the temperature is 0 degrees F or absolute zero; also note you could be naked and soaking wet in a hurricane-force blizzard but if it's one degree F (still well below freezing!) you're perfectly fine. I call this "design afterthought": Sure, the DM could improvise something more sensical, but if that's the inevitable result then why have a rule at all? Because people expect one. This is what I daresay @Charlaquin is referring to as rules thrown in there, just to be there.

Like I said, D&D5 gets a reputation for having fat rulebooks, but the survival mechanics are shockingly sparse.

 

[Reynard]

I am talking about these tables

View attachment 374638

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Weapon damage goes on your character sheet, and the second table is optional.

A Note: I think people SHOULD play with the second option because it makes the fighter better, but it does increase the fiddliness of play.

 

[Reynard]

I listen to 3d6 Down the Line podcast and in a recent episode they were fighting a high level undead cleric, a Mummy and a few Shadows. That combat took an hour and a half of the podcast, with one character death. They are in a Mega-dungeon complex and follow the process for B/X (OSE really) dungeon crawling pretty rigorously.

So a major encounter with a high level caster was more involved and took longer than usual. okay. What, if anything, is this supposed to say about general play?

You would be hard pressed to get a consensus on the statement "4E combats are faster than TSR era combats."

 

[TiQuinn]

I think that's a genre vs. expectation thing. To your point, yes, D&D5 fits firmly within the loose definition of "dungeon crawling" genre in that many adventures take place in "dungeons", a misnomer D&D itself created. But anyone time-warped from the AD&D days might be shocked to see how irrelevant the "dungeon" part of the game has gotten. It's become something of a misleading expectation.

Case in point, a recent session took place in an extremely cold area. The DM just made us all buy winter gear. That was it -- mandatory 5gp expense. Even if we hadn't, the rules on cold weather are. . . well, this is it:
View attachment 374642
That's not an excerpt; that's the entire section. Among other things, it doesn't matter if the temperature is 0 degrees F or absolute zero; also note you could be naked and soaking wet in a hurricane-force blizzard but if it's one degree F (still well below freezing!) you're perfectly fine. The original Wilderness Survival Guide's rules were, uh, well whatever you thought of them, they were considerably more involved.

Like I said, D&D5 gets a reputation for having fat rulebooks, but the survival mechanics are shockingly sparse.

I think the profile of a D&D player has changed dramatically since the 70s and early 80s. A lot of those folks were from the wargaming community so getting really fiddly with tables and resources was simply the way the game was played.

By second edition, though, you could already start to see some of those rules shift. Getting XP for treasure became an optional rule so having porters and spells like Tenser’s Floating Disk became a little less important. My first campaign I played in the DM allowed max HP for the first three levels. Players started asking about options for their characters and the game slowly but surely became more about heroes conquering a dungeon rather than foolish adventurers going into a dungeon to likely perish. Even the artwork from first edition to second edition underscores the shift.

 

[borringman]

Right, which is why I agree with what you said earlier about how D&D isn't really what it's presented as.

There's much more to the difference between AD&D and 5E than tables and lethality. Whatever anyone thinks of AD&D1/2, the dungeon mattered, as in it demanded your attention, whereas by 5th edition it's just a glorified apartment complex for monsters to fight. Nowadays anything that gets in the way of combat feels like, well, that it's getting in the way, so we get threads about simplifying it.

 

[Mannahnin]

Everything on those tables except the to-hit matrix goes on the character sheet. I reject the notion that a to-hit matrix is "heavy."

I am talking about these tables

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View attachment 374639

Reynard's misremembering which rules are optional, but the character sheets for AD&D had multiple rows for different weapons, so you'd precalculate and write down the appropriate numbers for each weapon your character carried. Including all the varying values against different ACs using the weapon vs. armor type modifiers.

If you found something mid-session there could be a need for book reference, but that would be more the exception than the everyday use case.

 

[borringman]

IIRC you'd write down stats for weapons you were proficient with, whether or not you had them, because there were only so many. Often times I'd play a fighter that was proficient with club, because you never knew when you'd have to bludgeon an orc captor with a femur.

Point is, yeah, most of this stuff was written down in advance. Player options were extremely few by modern standards, so combat was usually much faster than these days, if far more monotonous. Much of the stuff that turned AD&D combat into a slog was many years' worth of supplementary rules added afterwards and often incompatible with each other. YouTube demonstrations always make sure to include those for clickbait spectacle.

 

[Reynard]

Reynard's misremembering which rules are optional

I am in the middle of a move so my old books are all boxed up. I am this close to buying the AD&D DMG PDF just so I can find the reference! (Like all gamers, I hate being wrong.)

 

[Mannahnin]

I am in the middle of a move so my old books are all boxed up. I am this close to buying the AD&D DMG PDF just so I can find the reference! (Like all gamers, I hate being wrong.)

I am incredibly sympathetic.

I'm referencing PDF copies as I write my responses, as you might have guessed by this post.

Edit: the words "optional" and "optionally" appear 13 times* in the DMG. They're generally for small things / tweaks to sub-systems. As the introduction tells us...

Thus, besides the systems, I have made every effort to give the reasoning and justification for the game. Of course the ultimate reason and justification is a playable and interesting game, and how much rationalization can actually go into a fantasy game? There is some, at least, as you will see, for if the game is fantasy, there is a basis for much of what is contained herein, even though it be firmly grounded on worlds of make-believe. And while there are no optionals for the major systems of ADVANCED DBD (for uniformity of rules and procedures from game to game, campaign to campaign, is stressed), there are plenty of areas where your own creativity and imagination are not bounded by the parameters of the game system.These are sections where only a few hints and suggestions are given, and the rest left to the DM.

(emphasis mine)

*
p20 DM may optionally elect to have some poisons be slow-acting
p28 Large shields may optionally give an extra 1pt of AC against small (non-war engine or giant-hurled) missiles, but be careful about encumbrance if you do this!
p64 At short range the DM may opt to use a d4 for distance off target for grenade-like missiles instead of a d8 as normal
p82 The DM may optionally allow characters to be knocked unconscious instead of instantly killed if knocked to as low as -3, not ONLY 0 HP exactly as is the normal rule
p113 Optional double rate of fire at a 10% penalty rule for use with firearms from Boot Hill
p113 (Boot Hill crossovers again) Optional allowance of a saving throw against dynamite explosions (but increase the base damage from 4-24 to 6-36 if you do this)
p143 drawing an additional card with the Idiot card from the Deck of Many Things is optional
p169 Scimitar +2 optionally treated the same as a magic sword if your campaign setting centers scimitars, in which case use the provided sub-table with seven different types of magic scimitars
p182 Random encounter table footnote that you may optionally treat an inappropriate result on the table as no encounter rather than re-rolling
p195 Random lower planar creature generation tables, footnote that mandibled and suckered mouths, and barbed or stingered tails may optionally be poisoned (4 in 6 chance).
p227 Glossary reference to optional rules on death at what HP
p228 Glossary reference to HP for same thing