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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack Daniel" data-source="post: 5413652" data-attributes="member: 694">It's a simple and innocuous construct of the game, a mechanic so subtle that one almost doesn't notice when it's gone, but I think D&D really started to stray when 3.0 came out... and they got rid of the game turn.Let's just set aside for the moment AD&D's ludicrous one-minute combat round.  Let's look at how time and player actions were measured in classic D&D.  Combat encounters were handled via the ten-second combat round; dungeon exploration with the ten-minute game turn; and wilderness travel by the day.  Each of these units of time, the first two being pure artifice, do their respective jobs of structuring gameplay very well.Combat in classic D&D was based on the round, just as it is now.  The main difference was that back then, there was a specific sequence of actions (rather than the cyclical initiative, with each player deciding their actions when their turn comes up).  For those of you who haven't played the auld game, this is how it worked:1) Taking into account the aims and relative intelligence of the monsters encountered, the DM secretly decides what the monsters' actions will be (this happens first as a matter of fairness, so that the DM isn't just reacting to the players' tactics).2) All of the players declare their intended actions.3) Initiative is rolled, 1d6 for each side in the battle.  High roll goes first; ties indicate simultaneous actions.4) The combat sequence is followed: Movement > Missiles > Magic > Melee > Miscellaneous.  The side that won the initiative goes through all the steps first (e.g. if the players won, all the PCs who are moving move, all the PCs who are shooting shot, etc.), then the other side goes.  If the initiative was simultaneous, everybody acts at once, one step in the combat sequence at a time.This might seem really, really strange to players who are used to the d20 system's cyclical initiative mechanics, but in practice (and in the hands of a DM who isn't daunted by several actions all happening at once) the old way turns out to be extremely efficient, such that battles in the old rules are resolved very quickly.Initiative mechanics, though, are really just a matter of taste.  I happen to prefer the old system, since there isn't a lot of "waiting for your turn to come back around," but whether you play classic D&D with its ten-second round and group initiative or 3rd/4th edition with its six-second round and cyclic initiative, it all comes out the same: hit, miss, roll damage, repeat until the monsters are dead.  Combat is not the centerpiece of the game (or at least, it shouldn't be); it's an afterthought, a delay-of-game, an obstacle that the players must overcome to get back to the good part (dungeon exploration)!  The dungeon-crawl, though, has been completely unstructured from 3.0 onward.In classic D&D (and I believe AD&D as well, but don't quote me on that), there was a dungeon-crawling sequence as well as a combat sequence.  In one ten-minute game turn, the players could be expected to move their full speed, thoroughly search a small room, conduct a battle and clean up its aftermath, or take any other action that might reasonably happen in under ten minutes.  The game turn structured wandering monster checks, reaction rolls, and simple things like spell durations and how long torches stayed lit.  "Game turns" might be just another way of saying "tens of minutes," but as a mechanic it's astonishingly handy to have in the toolkit.So why did WotC kill it?  I guess they didn't want "turn" to be used as a potentially confusing rules term.  (Oh, that rambunctious WotC, always killing things off to avoid confusion.  They killed off basic D&D to avoid confusion between the D&D and AD&D game lines, and they killed off the game turn to avoid confusion with having "your turn" come up during a combat round!)  Fine, maybe they could've called it an "exploration period" or a "dungeon crawl action unit" or something, but it shouldn't have been done away with.The game day, too, was more structured back then.  There was a algorithm for wilderness travel.  At the beginning of the game day, the DM rolled to see if the party would get lost, if so rolled for the direction, rolled to see if there would be a random monster encounter that day, etc.  Then the players could travel and explore up to their wilderness movement rate (slowest character's full speed divided by five; so that a typical unencumbered human, with a speed of 120' per turn, could move 24 miles per day).  And since most hex maps were conveniently drawn at the 1 hex = 24 miles scale, a typical party would crawl one hex per game day.  Overland travel thus has game mechanical structure comparable to a dungeon crawl.  Whether that accords with your personal tastes or not, it's useful.These are the kinds of things that should probably exist in the rules of a game that purports to be about looting dungeons and slaying dragons.  Just sayin'.</blockquote>

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