Time and movement factors

From the 1E PHB:
1 segment = 6 seconds
1 round = 10 segments = 1 minute (60 seconds)
1 turn = 100 segments = 10 rounds = 10 minutes (600 seconds)
thus
1 hour = 6 turns = 60 rounds = 600 segments or 3600 seconds

This is all important when tracking an adventure log hour-by-hour, and especially for calculating the distance potentially traveled in an hour. Let's look at how that math works out.*

The PHB lists distances traveled in a dungeon, and expects players to calculate distances for overland travel by hand. It also uses speeds modified by encumbrance, unlike 4E and 5E which have variable speeds. Still, the base assumption is 1 inch square = 10 feet, and in a dungeon distance is determined by movement rate, which is dependent on encumbrance

So under normal, unencumbered, combat conditions, characters can move:
12 feet : 1 segment (6 seconds)
120 feet :1 round (1 minute)
1200 feet : 1 turn (10 minutes)
7200 feet : 1 hour
which means that on a 1" tabletop grid, characters can move 12 grid squares per round, or 720 grid squares total per hour.

Exploration conditions are 1/10th the speed of combat

and then there's modifiers for exploration on a known path, the movement rate is 5x faster, so 1/2 the speed of combat

fleeing for your life is 10x faster than exploration, which means its the exact same as combat

the rest of the movement table on pg 102 breaks down movement rate in combat by encumbrance. Under normal gear of 35 lbs. or less, characters can move at the rate of 12 feet  : 1 segment.


According to the DMG, time in a dungeon should be kept in increments of turns, with 6 turns to the hour, and 1 turn per hour should be spent resting.  The importance of tracking time in dungeons is also due to the need for random encounter checks.

 Direction for random encounter checks is given for overworld adventures, in the DMG. The increments of time necessary for random checks are:
- 1 hour after the adventuring begins
- The midway point of the journey
- near the end when camp is being made
- and then 3 checks at night corresponding to 3 sleep shifts.

A d20, d12, or d10 is used for monster checks based on population density, with a d10 used for uninhabited or wilderness areas, and what time of day to check is detailed in a table.
Encounter distance over land is 6d4, but in a dungeon it is d6+4.
And then of course there's a wholly separate table for outdoor movement on pg 58 of the  DMG. Turns out a party actually moves 30 miles per day in normal conditions.

*It's really dumb that the rules for Movement, which is dependent on the rules for Time and Distance, is separated from those by the many pages of Spell descriptions.

The DMG still has the annoying split of Time, Distance and Movement separated by spell descriptions, but at least it gives information on encounter distance. Unfortunately, the encounter distance information is split into 3 sections, the Surprise section, which is separate from the Initiative section, and finally Combat section, subheading distance. To get the full information on the rules, these sections need to be cross-referenced with the corresponding sections in the Player's Handbook. That's a task for another time

The best breakdown I've seen on the internet of these rules: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7849/roleplaying-games/reactions-to-odd-turns-rounds-and-segments-oh-my
Its written for OD&D, but the rules are almost exactly what's presented in 1E with a little math conversion (a segment is 1/2 round instead of 1/10th round, etc.)

I guess I wasted my time, because all the rules are distilled into this PDF: http://knights-n-knaves.com/dmprata/ADDICT.pdf  (hat-tip to https://merricb.com/2014/03/28/add-initiative/)

**A little scale issue: I recently started using sheets of graph paper - the kind you would use in a science or math class in high school - to visualize dungeon maps. Unfortunately these maps cannot actually be used to play on, Since the miniatures and tokens I use are 1 inch in diameter, and the paper itself is only 8x11 inches in size. This means that in a single combat round, an unencumbered character could walk right off the page.

The AD&D rulebooks recommend using graph paper with 5-6 lines per in, I use paper with 1/4" lines, which I don't think makes much difference except that the calculations for movement in the DMG and PHB are done in multiples of 3.

*** Got this little gem from a discussion on Facebook:
"Page 102 of the PHB states "The number of inches moved is scaled to circumstances and time by modifying either the distance represented or the time period or both." The first sentence of the next paragraph states "The movement distance in the dungeon is 1" to 10' over a turn of 10 minutes duration while exploration and mapping are in progress." This means the ratio is 1" to 10' for each inch of movement rate. The next part and the table cover combat movement where essentially dungeon movement per 10-minute turn is the same as combat movement per 1-minute round (e.g., 6"=60', etc.)."

So I guess dungeon movement is 1/10th the speed of combat movement, or the chart above. 

**** https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=70041
"No grid. I use a 12" ruler to mark the distance that can be moved. The size of the table is fixed, so "the number of inches moved is scaled to circumstances and time by modifying either the distance represented or the time period, or both". So the movement rate is always 12" regardless of what scale it represents." 

That's basically how I ran it initially. Movement per grid square made little sense while movement in natural distance seemed to work better. I used grid paper as a way to create a quick shorthand instead of measuring each inch of movement, but that hasn't worked out as well as I had wanted. 

and a little bonus about how melee combat distance works: https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=442831#p442831 

Storm King's Thunder session 7: Eye of the All-Father

Read the whole chapter, but still want to push my characters through anyway.

Added a bunch more resources for this chapter:
4 character sheets - I will be using only one character as my POV character, but the rest are for combat and party balance, and for their own unique abilities.  Also some 'non-adventurer' characters have been added, its assumed these stay at the back of the camp and do not venture into any dungeons.

Mythic Fate chart - determine odds, random actions, extra information and details.

Mythic Adventure sheet - for recording the initial set up of a scene and the chaos factor. Also tracking NPCs and stuff for the Event Randomizer charts

All other rules are taken from the Dungeon Master's Guide and Player's Handbook. (I'm using as much direction from the 1st Edition DMG as I can fit into the 5E system, and once I'm done with STK and move on to a 1E module such as T1, the Village of Hommlet, the 5E manuals would hopefully become obsolete)

End results of the session:
Made a quick run of the first 3 areas of Eye of the All-Father. Using 5E's reckoning of 1 turn = 6 seconds, then 10 turns would = 1 minute and 600 turns = 1 hour, I figured it'd be easiest to just keep a tally of turns as I played, and calculate the time spent after it was all over.

Using the Fate chart with a Chaos factor of 5, I found it very easy to get "yes" answers. Since everything this session went favorably to my characters, I dropped the Chaos factor to 4. This system seems flawed to me, as its geared to snowball in one direction or another.

No combat this session but my characters are rapidly approaching the barbarians in area 4 so there might be something interesting then.

No skill challenges since there isn't an interesting trigger. The only thing that happened is a triggered trap, but it was too easy to avoid. I feel that the 5E adventures are written to be 'convenient' to the players, rather than as deadly as this module said it was in the introduction. Only the combat against Giants was deadly.

Rages, prepared spells, and other unclear mechanics

Rage doesn’t necessarily mean anger. Rage is animus, rage is overwhelming energy and emotion. When a barbarian rages, the primal forces of the world animating through him, turning him superhuman for a limited time. (A nod to 4th edition power sources).  5th edition provides lots of fluff in the Barbarian’s paths to describe where they get the animus for their rages from, such as animal spirits, or their ancestors, or the natural force of the storm itself (seriously what is with 5e and its obsession with storm power? Did the designers grow up in Florida?). Imagine that a literal spirit of an animal possesses and augments the barbarian during his rage, and after the spirit leaves him the strain of being the conduit for that power exhausts the barbarian deeply, in a way that impairs his normal functions. I actually really like the exhaustion mechanic and how well it ties in with the barbarian’s rages.

And the basic “Berserker” barbarian subclass just uses his anger as his rage source anyway, keeping an option open for players with limited imagination.

“Vancian” magic only makes sense for game balance, not as role play. Forgetting a spell after you cast it makes no sense, nothing else in the real world or game world works like that. Instead, visualize that magic preparation is like creating bullets to load in a revolver, and casting is the act of actually firing them by pulling the trigger. Thus when a wizard or cleric prepares a spell, they are actually reciting the words, spending the components and making the gestures to will that power into existence and have it available to use. In the heat of battle or during an adventuring day if they cast the spell it’s power is gone and they must then spend another long time to prepare it again.

The preparation time is much longer than a combat encounter so mages would not be able to do this on the fly, but must use their long rest time in order to prepare. If this explanation or fluff was more popular, then maybe there wouldn’t be so many Charisma based character classes in 5e. This also adds a fun little amount of resource management to the caster classes that I think better ties together what they were doing already anyway.

Storm King's Thunder: pre session 7

So I did something I don't normally do, and read the whole chapter before running it. My fear was that I would spoil the player experience for myself by knowing what would happen ahead, but chapter 4 is so much better than the previous chapters that it makes me more excited to play knowing what would come ahead. Sure the story is spoiled for me but I'm now interested in seeing if my party can actually make it through the challenges of this dungeon, and I intend to randomize some of the elements of this dungeon using my solo play resources.

One sticking point though: A Cult of the Dragon airship?!  Although there is no reason for my characters to refuse such a generous offer, I personally won't be playing with it since I just DM'ed a game in the Tyranny of Dragons campaign and I can't see the Cult as anything but the bad guys.

Plus, mechanically the airship only exists to avoid making the second round of travel through the North a repeat of the first, but I'll be making up my own random encounters from CR calculations and Monster Manual monsters, so I'm not bothered by it.

I've decided to incorporate a new tool into my solo system, 4th edition style skill challenges. A series of success or failures on skills will manage my party's social interactions, obstacles, and other non combat encounters. These along with random dungeon generation and the Mythic fate chart should create more robust encounters requiring more complicated actions leading to more engrossing play, because playing the encounters as written in the book is very bland and the situations presented are otherwise resolved too quickly.

I probably shouldn't have bought the PDF of the full Mythic system and paid too much for what was essentially just the Fate chart, but I plan to make the best of it and use some of its bundled tools like the Scene Setup worksheet and random Events table. The stripped-down GM Emulator PDF would have been a smarter purchase, but the difference in cost between the two was only $2.00 so I had figured that it wasn't that big of a deal.

STRICT TIME RECORDS MUST BE KEPT! This information is unfortunately spread out between the 1st Edition PHB and DMG, but it details how to track time in turns while playing by breaking it down into how long a turn takes in the overworld or in the dungeon and how far you can move in one turn, etc.  I toyed with the idea of breaking time up into 'phases' of a day, e.g. morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night, but I figure a stricter, more granular approach of hour-by-hour or turn by turn would be the more proper method, even though I imagine that it would be a total pain in the ass.  But I've noticed in live games that proper tracking of time adds to the enjoyment of the experience. And if I'm going to play solo, the only person feeling the pain of tracking time would be me, so I don't have to worry about any other player getting bored or distracted.