D&D General The 10' hallway default. How? Why?

[Sacrosanct]

10' is a pretty good distance. The other thread about a 5ft square helps put things in context of the actual scale. Which makes me wonder, "How did the 10' wide hallway become the default size?" That's an incredibly wide hallway, and real life tunnels and dungeons and castles don't even come close to being that wide. Especially odd to consider when the builders of D&D tunnels and hallways are small goblins or kobolds.

And yet, pretty much every dungeon passage and castle hallway in early D&D is 10' wide and 10' tall.

 

[orangefruitbat]

Counting in 10s is easier...

 

[Charlaquin]

Because squares are 5 feet, and two characters aren’t allowed to occupy the same square for more than 6 seconds. Having to walk single-file down hallways would be a pain.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

So large monsters can come and go as they please?

 

[LordEntrails]

Cuz;

• a party of 6 has two font line folks?
• fighting in a hallway where only 1 melee person on each side leaves much of the party with little to do?
• ...

In short, cuz it's more playable and fun.

 

[Leatherhead]

It's kind of weird you know.
In a game called Dungeons & Dragons, people tend to extremely underestimate the impact of dungeon design on combat.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Because squares are 5 feet, and two characters aren’t allowed to occupy the same square for more than 6 seconds. Having to walk single-file down hallways would be a pain.

The 10' design was there from the beginning. Before there were 5ft squares and such in the rules, and when movement was still calculated in inches.

 

[Tony Vargas]

"How did the 10' wide hallway become the default size?" real life tunnels and dungeons and castles don't even come close to being that wide.

I'd always assumed because the default indoor scale was 1" = 10' so when you sit down with your graph paper to design a dungeon you use 10' as the unit, and it's most convenient to draw rooms & corridors along the lines.

1" = 5' has always been much closer to the nominal 25mm (more like 30+) scale D&D figures have always used. Was it 3e or late 2e that finally got around to adopting that?

 

[LordEntrails]

I've always wondered... perhaps 10ft hallways are an added remnant of architectural scale and the graph paper that was available at the time? i.e. 1/4" graph paper also fits a common architectural scale of 1":40'

 

[LordEntrails]

1" = 5' has always been much closer to the nominal 25mm (more like 30+) scale D&D figures have always used. Was it 3e or late 2e that finally got around to adopting that?

I don't think so. I mean my old lead cast minis from OD&D certainly were not 25mm scale. When we switched to 25mm (3E) those figures were noticeable larger. But I suspect someone around here will know for certain what the old scale was.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I don't think so. I mean my old lead cast minis from OD&D certainly were not 25mm scale. When we switched to 25mm (3E) those figures were noticeable larger. But I suspect someone around here will know for certain what the old scale was.

A lot of wargames back then used 15mm, as did Traveler (IIRC, though I never laid eyes on a Traveler mini). But for 1e AD&D, when I got serious enough to start buying & painting minis (badly!) it was already officially 25mm. But what that meant never seemed consistent - I remember getting a druid figure back in the day, don't remember who made it (Grenadier, maybe?), but it was like 7' tall next to the better-sculped Ral Partha's the DM had.

I still have some old minis, and, yes, they're noticeably smaller than the current plastic ones, but not, like 15mm vs 25mm smaller.

 

[Mort]

10' is a pretty good distance. The other thread about a 5ft square helps put things in context of the actual scale. Which makes me wonder, "How did the 10' wide hallway become the default size?" That's an incredibly wide hallway, and real life tunnels and dungeons and castles don't even come close to being that wide. Especially odd to consider when the builders of D&D tunnels and hallways are small goblins or kobolds.

And yet, pretty much every dungeon passage and castle hallway in early D&D is 10' wide and 10' tall.

Gary already had stats for the Gelatinous Cube and wanted to make sure dungeon corridors could accommodate it?

 

[Sacrosanct]

I don't think so. I mean my old lead cast minis from OD&D certainly were not 25mm scale. When we switched to 25mm (3E) those figures were noticeable larger. But I suspect someone around here will know for certain what the old scale was.

Grenadier started with 15mm. Then 25mm with Ral Partha. And Reaper up to 35mm. I love some of my old minis, but they look less imposing on the same table with Reaper minis lol

"Great barbarian? That looks like a halfling!"
"Is that a baby wyvern?"

 

[Sacrosanct]

Gary already had stats for the Gelatinous Cube and wanted to make sure dungeon corridors could accommodate it?

I thought it was the other way around. The GC was 10' square to fit the dungeons. I could be wrong though.

 

[Mort]

I thought it was the other way around. The GC was 10' square to fit the dungeons. I could be wrong though.

Sorry, I was being facetious.

The Gelatinous Cube, as far as history goes was designed for the 10' square dungeon corridor.

Doesn't mean Garry didn't secretly design it first and just didn't tell anyone (no not really).

 

[erachima]

The correct answer is almost certainly that the designers weren't architects and just picked a round number.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The Gelatinous Cube, as far as history goes was designed for the 10' square dungeon corridor.
Doesn't mean Garry didn't secretly design it first and just didn't tell anyone (no not really).

Sure, that's transparently obvious.

 

[DEFCON 1]

As was mentioned, probably just ease-of-use. Back in the day, each square on a sheet of graph paper representing 10' just made for easier counting and faster description. When players were expected to actually map their own journey through a dungeon, being able to recalculate a described 40x30 foot room into a drawn 4x3 square on graph paper just made it so much more efficient and precise. And a corridor described as 80 feet long could be drawn out at 8 squares simply and quickly with no additional math required.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

So that players with characters using large weapons that need lots of room to swing would not whine about the lack of space for their awesome greatsword or get yelled at when they hit their own teammates when a smaller hallway made them stand too close together during combat.

 

[zenopus]

I'm guessing it was what Gygax thought worked best on standard graph paper (say, 4 or 5 squares per inch) for a reasonably sized dungeon map. One can fit more/larger rooms and longer corridors if using 10' per square scale. If using 5' per square you'd fit less rooms per sheet (or make them all smaller) and the corridors would be half as long. Per Mike Mornard, Gygax rarely used minis in play so table scale didn't matter so much as mapping convenience.

Gygax was drawing maps in a style like the one below in the beginning. (See here: Visualizing Castle Greyhawk)

The rooms would be pretty tiny at 5' per square, but are reasonably sized at 10' per square. For ease in drawing, it makes sense to use the same size squares for corridors.