TFT Dungeon Crawling

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Weren't the two Death Tests dungeon crawls without the traps?

If by this you mean to ask if there are any traps in the tunnels connecting the rooms to each other, no. There are plenty of traps located elsewhere though!

As additionally informed by the rules: "(2) You need search for no "secret" doors. All chambers, passages, etc., will be clearly marked. This is a test of skill and bravery, not eyesight." - Jackson, Steve. The Fantasy Trip: Death Test. Austin: Metagaming, 1980. p1.

I hope that answers your question.

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by JLV

I should mention here that when I'm talking about dungeon crawling, I'm talking about BIG dungeons. Anyone, even in TFT, can probably survive a five-room dungeon or even one somewhat bigger, such as pretty much ALL the programmed adventures out there.

But the issues (especially of health) become major when you're looking at something like Barrowmaze or Rappan Athuk. There is no way a TFT party, consistent with the TFT rules (and not house ruled to a faretheewell) could do even half as well as a typical S&W or D&D party does in them. What I'm hoping for is some tweaks to the health situation that allow the possibility of managing that resource more effectively in order to permit an actual mega-dungeon experience. That's what I was getting at in my OP (which, alas, didn't make it over to this thread in its entirety).

Agreed with your definition of Dungeon Crawling. I always felt that there were 3 major reasons that dungeon crawls were so satisfying -

1. Character advancement/improvement.

2. Exploration of the unknown maze.

3. Resource management (and the concomitant ability to survive a significant number of battles before the resources run out).

D&D managed to provide all three, from the very beginning. In particular, the much derided hit points system allowed for resource management and numerous battles (however unrealistically). And resource management was very straightforward with the Vancian magic system.

As my previous post indicated, I think that there are 2 issues in TFT dungeon crawling to contend with:

1. Allowing players to survive more than 1 or 2 combats, preferably by their own abilities, not fortuitous discoveries of healing potions.

2. Not slowing the game down significantly.

Issue #2 precludes a simple fix for #1, like doubling or tripling ST for hit points. Doing that will make TFT combats last significantly longer (and make them more boring as movement gives way to slugfests). TFT combats are faster than D&D 3rd ed., but slower than the typical AD&D "theater of the mind" combat that I ran. Time-consuming tactical systems frustrate the classic dungeon crawl in my opinion because they limit the number of combats possible in a game session.

TFT's combat system is barely fast enough for a dungeon crawl in my opinion. I'd jealously protect its speed.

Therefore, it seems to me that you need some kind of damage recovery system *after* each fight is over. However, this system should also be limited somehow to provide a resource management aspect.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by JLV

Under the rules as written, dungeon crawls are pretty much a non-event (unless the dungeon has racks of healing potions in various rooms scattered throughout the place), because basically you wind up getting wounded pretty badly in fairly short order and have to disengage and return to town for a few weeks of leisurely healing. By the time you come back, at least some of the rooms you "cleared" previously have been reoccupied, perhaps had new traps set up and old ones re-set, maybe even had some new construction in the form of new walls or doors put up. In short, you would NEVER be able to clear a dungeon like Castle Greyhawk or Rappan Athuk under TFT rules -- at least not with a "normal" party of say, six to eight PCs (unless attribute bloat had had several hundred hours of play to rear its hoary head). The only way it could be done with even "mid-level" characters (say 40 attribute points or so) would be to just keep feeding characters by the hundreds into the meatgrinder non-stop in a steady war of attrition...

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Any game with a quasi-"realistic" combat system will be unable to match D&D for dungeon crawling. My campaigns had a *lot* of healing potions (and I allowed them to heal 1d6 ST). Perhaps not realistic, but what are you gonna do?

Hmm. Labyrinth adventures were a mainstay of play in my TFT campaigns, right from the beginning. There were no racks of healing potions involved, no healing spells, and no house rules adding hitpoints or adding luck points. 40-point characters were considered high-end characters. Mid-level seems to me more like 36 points.

What we did houserule, was to track every individual wound and let physickers treat each wound, not to make it easier but because healing per-battle made no sense to us otherwise.* That effectively does add a LOT of survivability especially against light & moderate injuries, and with armor. (* Why does it make no sense? Trog takes four -2 hits in one fight, then can only be physicked once for +2. Bob takes a -2 hit and gets physicked, again and again as many times as you like. Result: Trog is at -6 and will take 12 days of rest to recover. Bob could take -2 hits and get physicked all day long and have 0 damage.)

How did we manage to survive labyrinths with many combats? Well, having played and won most of the Microquests, we had a pretty good sense of tactics. That goes a long way to learning how to reduce risks of getting hurt. Applying that to campaign play also helps - be stealthy and smart about how you go about it.

But also, it was about being smart and prepared at the adventure management level, mainly meaning you come prepared and bring enough people for the adventure you're on. It was pretty clear even for the first adventure that a party going (in this case) a week or more off-road into a deep forest to find a particular labyrinth was going to want to have some pack animals to carry ample supplies in and loot out, at least one wagon that can carry wounded as far as it could go through the woods, at least one physicker whose main task in battle is to not get hurt, and enough fighters for 24 hours of guard shifts and so that when there were wounded, they could be guarded while they healed up in the woods, and there could even be some people who could continue to adventure from camp at the same time. Bring enough people for the job, and expect casualties and unexpected challenges. Either have multiple characters per player, recruit/befriend/join NPCs, and/or don't go on adventures where you're screwed if some of you get hacked up.

Actually managing the situation of taking wounds and needing to heal was part of the challenge of play and what made the game feel like the situation it was supposedly about. Just like Death Test or Grail Quest, a major challenge of play is being able to survive a series of situations without being able to heal up between each one. But in ITL, there's a whole world and more detail and more options. Can you actually figure out ways to manage to survive the situation described, or is it hopeless for you unless you are practically invulnerable because you have a barrel of healing potion? When healing is fast and abundant, it can remove a major element of play, make the details of what happens less consequential, and raise the stakes to more like the players always survive with little/no consequence, or get killed. I also feel it's a far more interesting and immersive gameworld when there are unpredictable outcomes including death and defeat, lasting wounds accumulating, a need to consider retreat & recovery, and not getting to be the only ones who heal and recruit NPCs and move around the world.

Now, looking at some D&D-style adventures, sure those tend to look ridiculously deadly for TFT (even the first "non-magical weapons have no effect" monster could wipe many good TFT parties), but that's because they play entirely differently and that's what it takes to make those games even interesting because the combat is abstract and the main combat mechanic is slowly eroding a huge pile of hit points and there's no map and little/no tactical game about how you fight and might manage to not get wounded.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I could see a TFT variant that would modify TFT to be better suited for dungeon crawls. The best idea I've had over the years:

Only half of a figure's ST (round down) represents actual ability to withstand damage. The remainder is "luck points" that can be recovered after every fight with a few minutes of rest. However, this recovery ability is limited each day. ...

Were you playing with physickers working the way I described? Because this can have a similar or even stronger effect (it depends on how big each wound is), and actually makes more sense rather than requiring an abstract luck mechanic.

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Also, you may want to consider getting rid of double and triple damage for minor monsters. Or not.

When PCs start having armor, many foes need double or triple damage to pose much threat at all.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

Agreed with your definition of Dungeon Crawling. I always felt that there were 3 major reasons that dungeon crawls were so satisfying -

1. Character advancement/improvement.

2. Exploration of the unknown maze.

3. Resource management (and the concomitant ability to survive a significant number of battles before the resources run out).

D&D managed to provide all three, from the very beginning. In particular, the much derided hit points system allowed for resource management and numerous battles (however unrealistically). And resource management was the main focus of the Vancian magic system.

As my previous post indicated, I think that there are 2 issues in TFT dungeon crawling to contend with:

1. Allowing players to survive more than 1 or 2 combats, preferably by their own abilities, not fortuitous discoveries of healing potions.

2. Not slowing the game down significantly.

Issue #2 precludes a simple fix for #1, like doubling or tripling ST for hit points. Doing that will make TFT combats last significantly longer (and make them more boring as movement gives way to slugfests). TFT combats are faster than D&D 3rd ed., but slower than the typical AD&D "theater of the mind" combat that I ran. Time-consuming tactical systems frustrate the classic dungeon crawl in my opinion because they limit the number of combats possible in a game session.

TFT's combat system is barely fast enough for a dungeon crawl in my opinion. I'd jealously protect its speed.

Therefore, it seems to me that you need some kind of damage recovery system *after* each fight is over. However, this system should also be limited somehow to provide a resource management aspect.

EXACTLY! Those are the same main themes I've noted after 43 years of playing RPGs, and your proposed solution would seem right in line with the problem, which really IS a "resource management" issue. And, I'd add, that dungeon crawling, especially in those gigantic dungeons that we all grew to love, is one of the great attractions of Fantasy roleplaying; ever since we all read about the Mines of Moria the first time, we've all looked for those megadungeon experiences.

Of note, games like Call of Cthulhu (another extremely highly lethal RPG) would have the same issues if they actually did Megadungeons, but since it's "modern" combat in time-sensitive situations which are designed to allow for a lot of downtime between confrontations (by requiring investigation/research and travel and those sorts of things), the lethality of CoC combat comes out in the wash -- you have time to recover, and that time can be spent actually roleplaying the scenario. Plus, if you confront anything truly hideous, odds are that you'll go insane, or faint, or something, and wake up hours later without any idea of what "actually" happened! ;-)

The biggest maze I ever saw in CoC was in the tunnels beneath the pyramids on the Giza plateau, and I think there were a total of *four* actual encounters (including the "Boss" encounter) in a mile or so of passages...

So maybe one potential answer is, if you keep lethality in TFT to its current level, to provide something useful/interesting/effective for the players to do in their downtime besides sitting around staring at the thatch in the ceiling while slowly healing up (and frankly, working as a mule skinner or a pottery caster isn't it). Oh, and just say right up front that players/FMs should eschew megadungeons as not a productive use of their game-time.

However, here's an interesting philosophical point for keeping things the way they are: If anyone can actually "clear" a megadungeon, how could it ever have gotten as bad as all the legends about that megadungeon make it? If the Dwarves could clear and reclaim Moria, it never would have been a spooky and horrifying as it was in the book. Maybe the mere fact that it sits there unconquered, beneath the mountain or the old ruined castle or whatever, is because it CAN'T be conquered. The best you can do is go in on a quick commando mission to kill a particular beast, or recover a particular article, or seal off a particular section so whatever lives there can't get out any more, and dreams of "clearing" it are just so much nonsense without a literal army going down there with you. Mind you, that still takes away one of the great adventure themes of other FRPGs, but maybe that's enough to overcome the problem anyway, at least thematically. You can still have a megadungeon, but it's an unattainable goal...

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Hmm.

[B]What we did houserule, was to track every individual wound and let physickers treat each wound, not to make it easier but because healing per-battle made no sense to us otherwise.*

In effect, you created the kind of “recovery” system I posited, though different than my idea. I don’t think I’d care for it because of the hassle implicit in tracking every discrete wound (and occasionally auditing the players), but that’s highly subjective. It *is* a lower footprint modification, which is always a Good Thing.

Now, looking at some D&D-style adventures, sure those tend to look ridiculously deadly for TFT (even the first "non-magical weapons have no effect" monster could wipe many good TFT parties), but that's because they play entirely differently and that's what it takes to make those games even interesting because the combat is abstract and the main combat mechanic is slowly eroding a huge pile of hit points and there's no map and little/no tactical game about how you fight and might manage to not get wounded.

Well, I always enjoyed it, despite the realism issues (if realism can be meaningfully discussed in a game with magic and dragons).

Were you playing with physickers working the way I described? Because this can have a similar or even stronger effect (it depends on how big each wound is), and actually makes more sense rather than requiring an abstract luck mechanic.

Never gave it a full workout. And since RPG damage systems - including TFT - are highly abstract themselves (compared with real life), I don’t have a problem with using luck points. If they make the game more fun that is. And since we’re modelling a particular game’s general approach to a certain type of adventure, it stands to reason that some similarities might occur. Form follows function, etc.

When PCs start having armor, many foes need double or triple damage to pose much threat at all.

Perhaps. I was only musing.

[Anthony]

This thread seems to have started from inaccurate premises -- that traditional dungeon crawling doesn't involved 'dungeon peristalsis'. Since first edition D&D, the standard for dungeon crawling was "continue through encounters until you run out of healing and/or major damage spells, then camp", and, absent time pressure, camping every fight makes sense. It's really just a question of how long you want people to camp, and even that only matters when there's time pressure.

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by Anthony

This thread seems to have started from inaccurate premises -- that traditional dungeon crawling doesn't involved 'dungeon peristalsis'.

Not sure how that relates to muscle contraction and relaxation. Please clarify.

I stated - and there seems to be some agreement - that classic dungeon crawls were fun for 3 main reasons - character advancement, exploration of the unknown and resource management. We then discussed ways to adapt TFT to better reflect the classic D&D experience (while still retaining most TFT features).

I’m not sure how that constitutes “inaccurate premises”.

Since first edition D&D, the standard for dungeon crawling was "continue through encounters until you run out of healing and/or major damage spells, then camp", and, absent time pressure, camping every fight makes sense. It's really just a question of how long you want people to camp, and even that only matters when there's time pressure.

I’ve heard that but no one EVER camped in my dungeons. If they had, they would almost certainly have been wiped out. And in the early campaigns I was a PC in, we never did that either. I was fortunate to have two excellent DMs in my early days. They particularly avoided the Monty Haul campaigns. Danger was very real in their games. Foolish acts usually resulted in serious consequences...

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by ecz

- Revised death rules to allow PCs (only) to survive under ST 0
- Chemical products to heal a few hits ( the healing unguent, 1d6-1 hits healed requiring 1d6 hours to take effect, possible bad collateral effects if more than one is used per day ); cheap as it costs $300;
- Major healing potions, (instant effect, like ordinary potions, but heals 1d6+1 wounds ) costs $ 600;
- First Aid talent (1) IQ 8. 1 hit healed in five minutes making a 3D/DX. If later the hero learns Physicker, this talent costs only 1.
- Healing spell for Clerics. Basic version for "Priests", improved version for Theologian.
- Healing potions are the most common magical treasure you can find on the killed opponents

Even with all the above often the Party must quit the exploration and return home for a medical timeout. After all TFT is a serious game!

Heh. All interesting suggestions. First aid is a definite keeper in my opinion. A healing priest/physicker would be a valuable commodity.

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by JLV

EXACTLY! Those are the same main themes I've noted after 43 years of playing RPGs, and your proposed solution would seem right in line with the problem, which really IS a "resource management" issue. And, I'd add, that dungeon crawling, especially in those gigantic dungeons that we all grew to love, is one of the great attractions of Fantasy roleplaying; ever since we all read about the Mines of Moria the first time, we've all looked for those megadungeon experiences.

Indeed. What’s amazing to me is that D&D hit those sweet spots from the very beginning.

Of note, games like Call of Cthulhu (another extremely highly lethal RPG) would have the same issues if they actually did Megadungeons, but since it's "modern" combat in time-sensitive situations which are designed to allow for a lot of downtime between confrontations (by requiring investigation/research and travel and those sorts of things), the lethality of CoC combat comes out in the wash -- you have time to recover, and that time can be spent actually roleplaying the scenario. Plus, if you confront anything truly hideous, odds are that you'll go insane, or faint, or something, and wake up hours later without any idea of what "actually" happened! ;-)

The biggest maze I ever saw in CoC was in the tunnels beneath the pyramids on the Giza plateau, and I think there were a total of *four* actual encounters (including the "Boss" encounter) in a mile or so of passages...

You KNOW the gods hate you if you wind up in a CoC megadungeon. Talk about bleak...

However, here's an interesting philosophical point for keeping things the way they are: If anyone can actually "clear" a megadungeon, how could it ever have gotten as bad as all the legends about that megadungeon make it? If the Dwarves could clear and reclaim Moria, it never would have been a spooky and horrifying as it was in the book. Maybe the mere fact that it sits there unconquered, beneath the mountain or the old ruined castle or whatever, is because it CAN'T be conquered. The best you can do is go in on a quick commando mission to kill a particular beast, or recover a particular article, or seal off a particular section so whatever lives there can't get out any more, and dreams of "clearing" it are just so much nonsense without a literal army going down there with you. Mind you, that still takes away one of the great adventure themes of other FRPGs, but maybe that's enough to overcome the problem anyway, at least thematically. You can still have a megadungeon, but it's an unattainable goal...

Yeah, I never bought into the notion of permanently clearing a dungeon level. However, my dungeons typically included shortcuts to deeper and more dangerous levels. This kept the PCs from having to hack their way through each level on each visit. As far as rationalizing, I finally got to the point that I simply told my players that although my game worlds were generally quite logical, “Dungeons can’t really be explained. Theologians blame them on volcanic eruptions of Chaos, but no one really knows if that’s really why they exist. Therefore, don’t worry about the rationale.” That seemed to satisfy them.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Anthony

This thread seems to have started from inaccurate premises -- that traditional dungeon crawling doesn't involved 'dungeon peristalsis'. Since first edition D&D, the standard for dungeon crawling was "continue through encounters until you run out of healing and/or major damage spells, then camp", and, absent time pressure, camping every fight makes sense. It's really just a question of how long you want people to camp, and even that only matters when there's time pressure.

Which is precisely why "wandering monsters" existed, of course...

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

I’ve heard that but no one EVER camped in my dungeons. If they had, they would almost certainly have been wiped out. And in the early campaigns I was a PC in, we never did that either. I was fortunate to have two excellent DMs in my early days. They particularly avoided the Monty Haul campaigns. Danger was very real in their games. Foolish acts usually resulted in serious consequences...

Precisely the same in every D&D/AD&D campaign I ever played in or ran too. "Camping out" was like inviting the local monsters to a buffet. Not a particularly bright thing to do unless you were in some place that could be literally fortified...and even then, there was no guarantee you'd be getting all that undisturbed rest you were looking for.