Question about moving thru a dungeon

[bonesjackson]

Hi, I'm kinda new to all this and I was wondering how you should DM a party crawling through a dungeon?

Should I describe each room / hallway etc to the PCs and have them tell me where they want to go and THEN when there is an encounter break out the map and the minis?

or

Should I just use a map (I use 2 of the D&D minis maps under a piece of glass) and have the PCs move on the map itself in some kind of turn based order?

Any help would be hot.

Best,

Bones

 

[Felonious Ntent]

Your choice.
Both work.
I have played both ways. I prefer the 2nd but I am more visualy oriented.

 

[IronWolf]

For Dungeon Crawls I tend to have the players move their mini's along as I draw the map on a battlemat. This way if there is an empty room with no encounter, they don't get tipped off meta-game wise because I didn't break out the minis and battlemat. I like to use minis for combat though, helps keep things in perspective, IMO.

 

[LostSoul]

The way I see D&D playing out is more like what you see in a movie or a novel. You have various scenes that get all the screen time, and the routes that the characters take to get there are not so important.

Each room (or encounter area, which could be a trap in a corridor) is a scene. These scenes are linked by the tunnels and corridors that make up your dungeon. You only focus on the scenes and just ask the PCs what route they take from there, to figure out what scene they are going to come across next.

I only bring out the miniatures when they are needed - where there's combat - and the rest of the time I just describe the scenes they come across. It's good to tell them what the corridor that links these scenes is like ("The passage is cold and wet and smells like rotten fish", "Make Listen checks. (If they make them) You think you hear what sounds like gutteral whimpering coming from down the passage."), but don't get too bogged down in that.