Among the most commonly forgotten and/or outright ignored rules in Dungeons & Dragons concerns wandering monsters. Once every 10 minutes of game time (in OD&D anyway; other editions of the game employ slightly different timescales), the referee rolls a six-sided die. A roll of 6 indicates that a wandering monster has appeared and one or more tables is consulted to determine their type and number. Even if one is not, as many contemporary referees seem to be, opposed to the idea of wandering monsters, it is very easy to let this rule fall by the wayside. I know this well, since it happens to be me regularly and has done since I first began to play D&D.
I have a theory of why this is so. Unlike combat, each of whose rounds is played out individually, the 10-minute turn is much less directly concrete and the activities occurring during it are often abstracted rather than explicitly played out. As a result, turns "stick" less in the mind than combat rounds. This is compounded by the fact that often nothing of note happens during the course of a turn beyond simply advancing further down a passageway (and mapping it, of course). After enough turns of "nothing" happening, they tend to blend into each other and all but the most fastidious referee is going to lose track of in-game time.
This is why I propose rolling for wandering monsters once every 10 minutes (or whatever interval) of real time. This may seem radical, even nonsensical, but I think there's merit to the idea. For one, it's much easier (for me anyway) to consistently keep track of actual intervals of 10 minutes. Second, it's an additional incentive for the players to get things done. Over many years of refereeing, I have observed that players have a tendency to, as one of the players in my House of Worms campaign would say, faff about. However, given the limited time available for play, it behooves the players to stay focused on the matter at hand. The threat of a wandering monster roll every 10 real minutes might serve to light a fire under them, don't you think?
Obviously, this approach demands some degree of flexibility. For example, I wouldn't make a wandering monster roll in the middle of an active combat, even if the 10-minute mark had arrived. There are probably a handful of other circumstances where I'd be similarly inclined. However, the wandering monster rule exists, I suspect, as a pacing mechanism, as well as a potential drain of resources, which is why it's vital to ensure it's used rather than forgotten. If tying it to the real-world passage of time aids in this, I don't see an immediate problem in doing so (though I am sure my readers will find plenty of problems I've overlooked).
I approve of this rule. in fact, would set a visible timer on my phone, and change the interval depending on where they are, or maybe what they are doing. Breaking into a warehouse at 11 pm? every three minutes
ReplyDeleteDelta does something like this, every 15 minutes I believe. For online play I'd probably lengthen the time interval because everything seems to take longer online, but otherwise it seems perfectly reasonable.
ReplyDeleteI have a semi-regular OD&D game going on (as in it gets run almost board game like, once in a while when the regular AD&D campaign needs a night off, we'll pick up the OD&D game) For this game I make extensive use of wandering monster rolls, but I key it to distance on the map, which I figure takes the party approximately 10 minutes to walk to certain points. So it may not be exactly a turn, but close enough. I really only ever use wandering monsters for this OD&D game, and it's confined to strictly dungeon crawling, which in my mind makes it easier.
ReplyDeleteThe original multiplayer Fighting Fantasy uses real out-of-game time for in-game effects, so you're not the only radical out there!
ReplyDeleteI haven't read OD&D in ages, is there any change it says to check every 10 minutes instead of every turn? One day of real time equaled a day of game time according to some OD&D scholars so that would be a nice consistency. Anyway I like the idea alot.
ReplyDeleteGreat idea.
ReplyDeleteForgive me if it's not helpful to bring up, but the "Overloaded Encounter Die", as originally proposed by Brendan S. (Necropraxis) and elaborated by others (notably, Gus L. on for his "HMS Apollyon" posts) is a solution to this issue that I've used and liked quite a bit. Rather than picking something it might be easier to pay attention to (real world time), it tries to make "1 exploration turn" stickier by having a roll every turn no matter what, which sometimes has important effects (wandering monster, torches go out, magic expires, etc).
ReplyDeleteI like this idea too, but it lends itself to an expanded table where there some monsters, some environmental happenings, some dungeon dressing or nothing. D12 or D20.
DeleteI don't track real time during game. Heck, I do better jobb with tracking turns than being aware of how much time passed in real life when I'm running a game. Thus your idea would only work for me with an alarm, which isn't just immersion breaking, but also gives meta data to players who notice it. I will stay with my clunky little turn and encounter tracking sheets.
ReplyDeleteI dislike encounters happening at random intervals, but I don’t mind the content of the encounter being random. It’s been a long while since I got to run a proper dungeon crawl, but what I liked to do was designate certain points on the map – this otherwise empty room, this stretch of hallway, this dead-end tunnel – and roll for a random encounter when the players reached that point on the map.
ReplyDeleteThis idea certainly has some advantages, but it does remove the time pressure aspect of random encounters. Some of that could be put back in by defining certain time consuming activities and check for random encounter during those activities.
DeleteThe other part of trick was that I never told my players that this was what I was doing… and any time I felt they needed to “Get on with it!” (to quote Monty Python) I’d just roll some dice behind my screen and flip through my Monster Manual…
DeleteBX had the roll every other turn, with a monster showing up on a 1.
ReplyDeleteI usually make a roll in every "empty" room, plus one as the party leaves a room to see if they have an encounter before the next room. I otherwise roll if they are futzing around in a room or take more than two turns to get to the next room (B1 has some long corridors, for example). Plus, of course, every time they make noise, including a battle with wandering monsters!
Yes, that last one sucks, but that's the way monsters roll. Hear a battle. Check in to see if you can get a mal or kill off the weakened winner...
Dungeon Life!
OD&D has pretty crazy amounts of time assigned to actions. How slow you move btb really doesn't make sense. 10 minutes is a long time (let's not even discuss the vast amount of time and potential actions contained in a 1 minute round), But if you are playing a really procedural game rolling for wandering monsters every 10 minutes real time makes a lot of sense.
ReplyDeleteAngryGM uses what he calls a "tension pool." (https://theangrygm.com/definitive-tension-pool/)
ReplyDeleteI've been using the OD&D method (1-in-6 every ten minutes) forever. It's useful for forcing players to make impactful decisions. Searches for traps and secret doors always take ten minutes. Players know that searching is a risk to be weighed against a 1/6 chance of a wandering monster that will yield no significant reward, but bleed them of spells and hit points. In most cases I don't even keep track of time, but just roll whenever they stop to search or investigate something. I don't require a roll to find hidden things. If they search in the right place, they find it. Even so, the risk of wandering monsters means they choose to move quickly and miss about half of the hidden things in a dungeon setting.
ReplyDelete