Darkvision Ruins Dungeon-Crawling

[Bill Zebub]

Apply the existing rules. Constant disadvantage for perception is a thing right? It would be worse if you are on unfamiliar ground. I know not to walk “back there” but an intruder does not.

Also, what about a mixed party? If you walk ahead, alone to get the benefit of dark vision…cost benefit a analysis…you might get boned.

It you are a party with light sources, you are not surprising “them” but they could surprise “you.”

It’s just a feature of you apply the rules and a double edged sword possibly.

But the fact is lax rules application happens. We get tired…and at times it reduces mystery I suppose. But can you read with darkvision? Make out colored words from the background? Black and white and disadvantage are not perfect senses…

Yes, all this is absolutely true. And...

...imo it's just more rules needed to fix something that was a mistake to put in the game in the first place.

YMMV, of course.

Also, if anything Elves should have good eyesight under moon & starlight, but not be able to see underground. Again, YMMV.

 

[Distracted DM]

This is it right here for me. Torches are a resource that needs to be spent like any other, but it doesn't seem to be in vogue to keep track of those things these days.

The "ten minute turn" exists in dungeon crawling for a reason; it is a tool for the GM (and players) to know the status of their light sources and ongoing effects. It's also why there are upgraded lighting sources even included in places like the PHB. The intent is for players to be eager to get their hands on an oil lamp since they last for 6 hours (or 36 dungeon turns) on a single pint of oil and are more space efficient than carrying bundles of torches around.

I completely understand that the book keeping aspect is not of interest to people and so things like darkvision exist (in my opinion) to take away that aspect and streamline play for those individuals. But for those who do enjoy the resource attrition, it can feel cheap and frustrating to work around.

I really feel that part of the challenge of a mega-dungeon is (and should be) needing to resupply every so often and being cognizant of ones limited resources. That's why the size of them should be such an "oh dang" moment for the players. Not only are there dozens of rooms and hallways that are filled with baddies, but how many torches and lockpicks and rations will they need to go through to explore them all? Maybe they start to consider returning to town, purchasing a mule, and loading that up with supplies to hitch by the entrance so they don't have to go all the way back to town. Or maybe they start to think that it might be worthwhile to establish a more permanent camp around one of the entrances.

As zakael19 said, the tension of limited resources creates interesting avenues for decision making.

And I'm not saying this style of play is impossible so long as darkvision exists, but its existence does remove a little of the pressure that would otherwise be present in a dungeon-crawl style of play.

I think dungeon crawling, even in 5e, really benefits from doing time in 10-minute chunks. It helps me as a GM to manage time that way, I only recently started trying it that way, and now I want to do it more consistently.

Re: darkvision and 5e... 5e has unlimited cantrips- light is a cantrip. Would it be more interesting if you had to choose between a casting of Light or having acid splash/Ray of frost etc if needed? Yeah.

 

[R_J_K75]

I think dungeon crawling, even in 5e, really benefits from doing time in 10-minute chunks.

AD&D, at least 2E had turns, which was 10-minute intervals to track time outside of combat. AFAIK this was removed in 3E and hasn't been re-introduced since. I still use it, but as far as I know 5E doesn't have any method to track time outside of combat besides long and short rests, and time traveled overland, but I may be wrong.

 

[Li Shenron]

The "ten minute turn" exists in dungeon crawling for a reason; it is a tool for the GM (and players) to know the status of their light sources and ongoing effects.

I completely understand that the book keeping aspect is not of interest to people and so things like darkvision exist (in my opinion) to take away that aspect and streamline play for those individuals. But for those who do enjoy the resource attrition, it can feel cheap and frustrating to work around.

You make a very good point... D&D has long been full of "handwave items" or abilities that can totally negate the need to worry about one limitation or resource management aspect.

The fact that those handwave items are treated as players' entitlements (even if at a cost) instead of being first and foremost a DM's campaign-based decisions, also leads to secondary problems.

One consequential problem, is players thinking that they have to make their characters (or group) pile up on handwave items: for example, a PC (or party as a whole) "must" have an ability/spell/object to handwave the darkness problem, another for the trap problem, another for the food/water problem, another for the "locked door" problem... After getting rid of all the problems (before they even occur in practice), then the same players complain that their character builds doesn't have room for anything special or unusual.

Another problem deriving specifically for not having to care about how time consumption equals limited resources consumption, is that players get the habit of thinking they in fact have infinite time. This creeps into creating the culture of "infinite retries" for any task that isn't immediately successful, causing in turn the game designers (or DM) to introduce more rules unless they just like playing a game where PCs just always succeed, or having to come up with other narrative ideas to make time matter again.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It requires a particularly narrow view of dungeon crawling to consider lighting the main element of it to my view. Like all information gathering powers it reduces/eliminates that particular part of it, but its not the whole gig.

 

[payn]

It requires a particularly narrow view of dungeon crawling to consider lighting the main element of it to my view. Like all information gathering powers it reduces/eliminates that particular part of it, but its not the whole gig.

For some folks its an enormous chunk of it though. Which is why i'm not surprised to see shadowdark being praised for doing dungeon crawling well. Its bespoke to the survival sim resource attrition attention level that is too much for a lot of folks.

 

[Thomas Shey]

For some folks its an enormous chunk of it though. Which is why i'm not surprised to see shadowdark being praised for doing dungeon crawling well. Its bespoke to the survival sim resource attrition attention level that is too much for a lot of folks.

They're going to want what they want, but I can't say I saw lighting issues being that big a gig half a century ago when everyone was freshly starting with D&D. You might get a bit more juice out of things that made darkness, but under routine circumstances there were too many ways to get at least partly around any such problems pretty early (Continual Light comes to mind).

 

[DEFCON 1]

They're going to want what they want, but I can't say I saw lighting issues being that big a gig half a century ago when everyone was freshly starting with D&D. You might get a bit more juice out of things that made darkness, but under routine circumstances there were too many ways to get at least partly around any such problems pretty early (Continual Light comes to mind).

Yep. Maybe others played differently... but for me the focuses of dungeon crawling were about exploring areas, fighting monsters, and working your way around traps. That was what dungeon crawling was about. The whole resource-management thing was there, sure... but we weren't playing for that... that was just some smaller thing we had to keep half-an-eye on while doing all the important other stuff. As you say... there were plenty of ways to get around the lighting issue, so it never ended up being "a thing" that we had to get tactically savvy with or work on.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I'll reiterate that while "resource management" in Shadowdark is one aspect of lighting, it's really only a minor one.

What makes it fun is that you can unexpectedly lose your light at critical moments.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, all this is absolutely true. And...

...imo it's just more rules needed to fix something that was a mistake to put in the game in the first place.

YMMV, of course.

Also, if anything Elves should have good eyesight under moon & starlight, but not be able to see underground. Again, YMMV.

This is a big issue with darkvision IMO. It's a simplistic stand-in for literally all forms of better vision. We used to have more granular ways (not way, ways) to determine what a being can and can't see, and I think that was worth it personally.