Turns and Rounds - relooking at exploration

[Alan Shutko]

I don't see why "turns" -- blocks of 10 minutes -- are as important as just saying "in 30 minutes the ogres will investigate" or "the water is filling up at a rate of one foot every five minutes."

The real world somehow gets along without a special name for a block of ten minutes, why can't D&D?

Turns are a lot easier for me to keep track of than arbitrary units of time. I can tick off turns (actually, I wrote a program for that) much more quickly than I can add things like "Ok, searching this room took 7 minutes, and it took 15 minutes to come down the stair while searching everything, but this is a small room and you can ransack it in two minutes...."

If you aren't interested in keeping track of time, that's fine. Lots of people just hand wave it and figure "Oh, well, it's probably just after noon now." But I thought keeping track of time was great since characters had a tendency to underestimate the time they spent messing around or would get a fair bit done and realize that it was still morning, so they could do more.

So basically, turns are a simplifying mechanic the same way rounds are in combat.

 

[AeroDm]

I think defining 'exploration time' is like defining 'wealth levels.' It is definitely helpful in setting a baseline, but it really hurts games that want to diverge from said baseline. If I want my game to move along at a quick exploratory clip, I'll have to rewrite all the exploration rules just like a game with a bunch of gold has to account for the change in wealth that correlates to power. Conversely, if I want an investigative campaign where people take their time and are thorough, a rule that allows someone to search X in a turn is going to ruin my fun. In sum, if it is introduced, it must be flexible enough to account for a range of play styles.

 

[Blackwarder]

We had somthing like what you are describing in an AD&D game I played in 15 years ago, the DM rule of thumb was that every thing takes twice as long to do than normal, except movement, that remain normal.

Warder

 

[Blackwarder]

I don't see why "turns" -- blocks of 10 minutes -- are as important as just saying "in 30 minutes the ogres will investigate" or "the water is filling up at a rate of one foot every five minutes."

The real world somehow gets along without a special name for a block of ten minutes, why can't D&D?

Maybe because it's much easier to track turns than to track arbitrary minute? The thing about turns is that they are flexible, somthing can happen on any point of a turn so on the one hand it a useful method of keeping time and marking player actions during exploration but OTOH it's flexible enough to allow the DM and players to hand wave stuff if they need to.

Warder

 

[Kynn]

Maybe because it's much easier to track turns than to track arbitrary minute?

... why?

What is special about 10 minute turns? (Why not 5-minute or 15-minute?)

 

[Blackwarder]

Nothing, it was just the first suggestion because that the way it was in earlier editions, you can have a turn lasting five rounds instead of ten... IMO though, ten is the magic number.

One more thing regarding turns, they would be usefull for tracking long duration spells (totally forgot abut this, didn't have them in 4e... :/ ).

Warder

 

[am181d]

I always found turns to be an unnecessary measure in prior editions. Assign actual time to activities that do not require a game term instead.

I suggest the following new units of time:

10 rounds is a "minute."

60 minutes is an "hour."

24 hours is a "blorg." Wait, no that sounds stupid. Oh well, I'll think of something.

Sorry that the units are all weird. I tried to set something up in metric first, and it didn't work...

 

[KidSnide]

I don't see why the game needs a new term for "10 minutes", but I agree that it would be useful to have a time management framework that helps the DM figure out how long things take, and let the PCs make a cost/benefit analysis about how quickly they want to proceed. This will involve figuring out whether 5, 10, or 15 minute blocks are appropriate, and how often the DM should check for "danger due to dawdling" in order to keep the game moving (by providing urgency) without slowing the game down by having wandering monsters exceed actual progress in the dungeon.

-KS

 

[nomotog]

Nothing, it was just the first suggestion because that the way it was in earlier editions, you can have a turn lasting five rounds instead of ten... IMO though, ten is the magic number.

One more thing regarding turns, they would be usefull for tracking long duration spells (totally forgot abut this, didn't have them in 4e... :/ ).

Warder

Maybe 5 is the magic number. That's how long a short rest lasts in 4e. Though the actual amount of time should be flexible.

I'm also thinking expanded turns would be good for things like ship combat or mass combat. I often see both of these systems redefine what a combat turn is. If there was a long turn allready in the system, they wouldn't have to do that and things would fit better.

 

[steeldragons]

Just thinkin'/typin' out loud here, keeping in mind some classic elements, the 3 columns of the new D&D, and some other things people have mentioned so far in the thread...

COMBAT
Round = 1 minute
1 Round = 3 MELEE Rounds
1 Melee Round = 20 seconds
(Spellcasting times would be described in MRs if they- or your game- bring back casting times. 1MR per spell level would seem to suffice. Any unused MRs in the Combat Round can be used for movement or whatever else, but a caster may not cast a spell in the MR immediately following the casting. i.e. in theory, a mage could cast 2 1st level spells in a single Combat Round on the 1st and 3rd MRs. Obviously, casting a 2nd or higher level spell does not allow enough time to cast again until the following Round...

But I digress...)

EXPLORATION:
Turn = 10 minutes
1 Turn = 10 Rounds
Searches, skill use, etc...."explorer-ish non-combat stuff" is measured in Turns. "Taking 10" or "Taking 20" is literally translated as spending 1 or 2 turns on an activity.

SOCIAL:
Hour = (guess!) 60 minutes
1 Hour = 6 Turns (iow 3 skills/activities of "taking 20")
Social interactions, royal audiences, sharing drinks at the tavern, gathering information, visiting, attending or entertaining guests, reading body language, etc. requires time...even if you are only speaking to someone for a few minutes (going to a meeting, setting up the scenario, opening the conversation, getting access to the person you're actually trying to speak with, etc.), the "Social" time frame is by the Hour.

...which breaks down to Turns (10 minute increments)...which breaks down to Rounds (1 minute increments).