How you personally play adventures

[Chris Rice]

For those of you who regularly play, a question. If you are playing a dungeon adventure (for instance) do you play the entire adventure using the strict turn sequence and movement rules or do you slot in and out as the action happens?

If the former, doesn’t this make play quite tedious as the players traverse the empty parts of the dungeon? Obviously Death Test did away with the intervening portions but most adventures won’t be like that.

If the latter, when do you decide to slot back in to the strict strict rules and how do you determine where the players are at the start of the action?

Looking forward to your ideas.

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

For those of you who regularly play, a question. If you are playing a dungeon adventure (for instance) do you play the entire adventure using the strict turn sequence and movement rules or do you slot in and out as the action happens?

If the former, doesn’t this make play quite tedious as the players traverse the empty parts of the dungeon? Obviously Death Test did away with the intervening portions but most adventures won’t be like that.

If the latter, when do you decide to slot back in to the strict strict rules and how do you determine where the players are at the start of the action?

Looking forward to your ideas.

I definitely use turns only when necessary.

When an encounter is imminent, I have the players place their pieces on the board. I direct them to place them with the lead figure in a particular megahex. Then I place the nasties (if they can be seen). I might have the player move one turn walking before the nasties attack if they haven't been seen immediately.

The biggest issue I have isn't when to go to turns, but when approaching figures should be seen (outdoors). That can be tricky. A flying figure can be seen quite far away in most circumstances, often too far for even my quite large maps. For the sake of game play, there's a pressure to make the sighting relatively close.

[Shostak]

My groups (not just TFT) use maps and combat-length rounds only when necessary. There are some sessions that run two or three hours without anything but role playing, and at other times, elaborate tactical action will run for a couple of sessions, and still other that bounce between the two a few times in the same duration.

When popping into tactical mode, I explain the features of the map, let the players place their characters within a designated zone, and tell them what their characters can see/hear/etc.

We exit tactical mode when there is no longer a compelling reason to stay in it—usually a threat has been removed or evaded.

[larsdangly]

I will approach this in the way described above (more or less) when characters are traversing extended areas (say, 10 turns of movement or more) that are truly uninteresting, which is also typical of all other fantasy games, at lest in my experience. But I don't particularly like it and think the alternative - continuous use of turn based play and explicit hex scale movement - is much more engrossing, exciting, and engenders better dungeon design and player decision making.

When I stay in 'continuous play' mode (which is surprisingly often - probably a block of 30-60+ minutes in most of our 1-3 hour sessions. Sometimes the whole of one or more continuous sessions), my approach is to begin by laying down MH tiles (or drawing on a battle mat if that is easier due to the scale and shape of the space), showing only those features within the line of sight and area of illumination of the players. Then turn based play begins, and at the end of every turn of movement I take up tiles (or erase areas) that are no longer visible and lay down new ones corresponding to spaces that can now be seen. Other features, foes, friends, etc. get placed and removed as they enter and leave line of sight.

This is not slow at all; actually, I'd say it feels like a faster mode of play then the default we all mostly do in other games, because you are not clumsily narrating all kinds of boring crap about this tunnel going off in that direction and that chair being in the SE corner of the room, etc. These things are just there. You do have to have a decent command of the rules, no one can suffer from a decision making disorder, and you need to have mastery of your physical components. But with a modest amount of practice it is surprisingly brisk and smooth to play like this.

And the benefits are huge. For starters, if you have a good map of your dungeon (or whatever), then the specific hex placements and orientations of players dictate when traps are triggered, whether a search for something does or doesn't yield results, etc. That means player decisions are meaningfully influencing the details of what happens, instead of the GM making ad hoc or random decisions all the time. And it is soooo much more engaging. Also, it drives the GM to design better dungeons, as you are motivated to introduce interesting features and spaces all over the place, so that moving through your labyrinth feels like the opening sequence of Indiana Jones instead of a blandly narrated walk down a series of empty hallways.

As an example, we recently played the Unself King microquest this way, with me substituting the recommended empty tiles with 'juicier' tiles filled with all kinds of fun features (rope bridges and drop offs and rubble and cob webs and so forth). it transformed the space into something so rich in features and encounters that the players felt excited and on edge every single turn, over hours of play.

[Skarg]

I only run combat turns when action is happening where it would matter. So, for combat, or expected combat, or other situations where combat might be about to erupt, or where there is other action that makes sense to use combat turns for, such as when people are rushing or competing to do something, like get or recover an item when others are also trying to get it, or people are rushing to get out of someplace before someone arrives, or whatever.

But that does not mean that I'm not keeping the rules in mind. (Either the labyrinth-scale rules or the combat-scale rules, noting that walking speed is usually slower than 1/2 MA, and that real people tend to take time to stop and look at things, particularly in a new place that might be dangerous.) I'll usually still be keeping track of time spent. And I tend to be tracking where the other nearby NPCs are, that the PCs haven't encountered yet, because they will be moving around and doing things too, making noises, and able to listen or see things and respond to them. So time matters, as does how much noise and light and bodies and other evidence the PCs may be creating.

Unless the PCs are trying to do things very quickly (with appropriate penalties to their abilities to pay attention to and notice things, or to be quiet, or to discuss plans with each other, etc), I assume they'll be taking more time than necessary to explore a place, and fiddle around, and I'll be noting how long they take discussing what to do or otherwise chatting, and how loud they're being (both because they might be heard, and because the PCs would have to hear any sounds over the sound of their own conversations and noises).

I often lay out situations on a map so that players can indicate where PCs are standing, without using turns unless/until it matters. But I will be translating their movements and what they say they do into time passed and noise made and so on.

And, if one player is moving their PC much farther/faster than the others (as particularly seems to happen with some players on VTTs, more than it seems to in-person), then I may interpret that as that their PC starts wandering off that direction by themselves, but depending on what's in that direction, and where the other PCs are, and what the other PCs are doing, I may not just advance time so fast, but tell other players they notice that PC starting to wander off, and/or move the wayward PC back to tell them something happens before they get that far (even if it's just another PC telling them to wait up).

[larsdangly]

Something I do, that others might find counter-intuitive, is to stay 'on map' when characters are navigating complex spaces, searching, possibly straying near traps or other hazards, etc. These are generally activity that happen off stage, through theater of the mind, in most roleplaying games, but that i find elevate to much more exciting style of play when you treat them as part of the tactical action. Basically, everything is a bit more exciting when it feels like your decisions about where you go, look, listen, etc. matter.

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

For those of you who regularly play, a question. If you are playing a dungeon adventure (for instance) do you play the entire adventure using the strict turn sequence and movement rules or do you slot in and out as the action happens?

If the former, doesn’t this make play quite tedious as the players traverse the empty parts of the dungeon? Obviously Death Test did away with the intervening portions but most adventures won’t be like that.

If the latter, when do you decide to slot back in to the strict strict rules and how do you determine where the players are at the start of the action?

Looking forward to your ideas.

In the past I had created and ran a 3d dungeon with walls and furniture and 25mm lead figures. It was a 2 floor dungeon laid out on 4 foot x 4 foot plywood boards. The dungeon had 'ceilings' which covered the entire board and when figure entered an area, I revealed a '30 foot' section of floor if it was dark. If they were at a door that they just opened, I would reveal the room. The rooms were furnished mostly with cast furniture, though I did craft some wood tables/beds. When they left a room or closed a door, the 'ceiling' would be put back.

I ran this game as a strict turn sequence. (Well sort-of. Most of the time I eliminated initiative rolls because there was no enemy about.). I might allow two or three movement or waiting turns to be combined if it didn't impact the story.

This particular dungeon was meant to be a linear dungeon that the players immersed themselves in. The players didn't mind going through it because along with the regular adventure, there was the mystery of the place itself. They never felt that doing this strictly by turn sequence was tedious for this particular game. They were hungry to have the next part revealed.

Most other games that I run are RPG until combat or risk is involved, then it goes to table.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

For those of you who regularly play, a question. If you are playing a dungeon adventure (for instance) do you play the entire adventure using the strict turn sequence and movement rules or do you slot in and out as the action happens?

If the former, doesn’t this make play quite tedious as the players traverse the empty parts of the dungeon? Obviously Death Test did away with the intervening portions but most adventures won’t be like that.

If the latter, when do you decide to slot back in to the strict strict rules and how do you determine where the players are at the start of the action?

Looking forward to your ideas.

Usually the dungeon is sketched out in megahex scale and characters are walking and mapping, which the rules says is 3 hexes (1 MH) per turn), or about 10 Megahexes a minute. With PCs stopping to plan and so on they're usually moving 5-10 megahexes/minute, or maybe twice as fast if they break into a jog.

For the most part, that sort of "exploration" part of the labyrinth adventure is generally narrated with the PCs drawing their own map as they explore based on my description, or if they aren't in a hurry and not mapping, with me just keeping general track of where they are on my labyrinth map with a finger and telling them when they hit a door or room, or need to make saves to spot something or avoid a trap. When they encounter combat we lay out the map and counters for the region they're in, expanding the map as needed should they flee or advance off the edge.

This is pretty much the exact same approach I took to tactical mapping when using GURPS for dungeon adventuring. (In D&D, I usually play OSR systems rather than 3e, PF, or 5e, and so don't bother with miniatures, but on those times when I did use a battleboard I would also follow the same procedure).

[Steve Plambeck]

Me and my former group's fellow GM's ran the show just as David mentions.

In our terminology there were "Game Turns" and "Combat (aka Melee) Turns".

Game Turns were variable in length, and totally up to the GM, with things like random encounters, weather rolls, and foraging results rolled for once per Game Turn. During a large outdoor quest like I used to run, a Game Turn was one day, and if the party spent it on all-day travel, then they moved one hex on the large scale regional map, or two hexes if the terrain was favorable. During shorter adventures, a Game Turn might be an hour or some other amount of time, representing walking from the inn to the dungeon, the other side of town, to the next hamlet, etc., with a chance of things happening along the way.

Virtually all role playing occurred during Game Turns. The players options during Game Turns were whatever the GM said they were.

But the moment anyone could get hurt or killed, we followed what I like to call "The Rule of Self-determination". In any dangerous situation, we dropped from Game Turns to Combat Turns, the GM would put down the hexgrid, counters would be positioned, and everything would follow the rules of Melee until the situation was resolved. When the danger was past the GM would declare Combat Turns over, and the current Game Turn would resume.

No one ever died outside of Combat Turns. It probably would have been more realistic if they had. Say the party was crossing the sea during Game Turns and a storm sank the ship, with one saving roll to drown or not. But such things are anathema to the spirit of the game, and all GMs should avoid them.

[David L Pulver]

Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck

No one ever died outside of Combat Turns. It probably would have been more realistic if they had. Say the party was crossing the sea during Game Turns and a storm sank the ship, with one saving roll to drown or not. But such things are anathema to the spirit of the game, and all GMs should avoid them.

That's an interesting approach. I remember INTERPLAY ran an article long ago where someone traced their TFT campaign's death stats, and "died from drowning" was fairly high up there...

Personally, I've never drowned any PCs in TFT, but water travel wasn't a significant part of the game. I do so soon, however, as I've been contemplating an aquatic adventure.