Dungeon crawl

Hey all. I am trying to find a fun way to handle a regular dungeon crawl. I have been trying a full map, set up dynamic lighting, add music and sounds, and plopped down the players with their light source. I think it looks great, but not real sure how to get it moving smoothly. All players move at random? Players move in turn like a combat round but in turns (10 secs). Abandon and go to scene based and just describe the dungeon crawl? How does everyone run dungeon crawl?

Depends on the GM and your style. I typically allow free movement until combat, especially exploratory. I ask them to stop moving if something they did initiated combat and everyone freezes as I set up the encounter (no moving after the fact etc). With fog-of-war, restrict movement as well as the various API goodies you have options. At the bare bones though, just treat the program like a battle mat as you would in-person. I have a one-shot group where I just draw the dungeon as I go with my wacom. My campaigns I put more effort into but generally you need to trust your players not to be idiots. If you get 'lol' cats or what not in your game (quite common actually, so vet your players) you'll be managing children and they'll move their tokens everywhere like children. Just imagine an actual table session, does everyone move their minis all over the battle mat for 'sh**s and giggles' ? Treat it the same way.. but you'll have added tools as well.

You can use fog of war if you don't want to reveal too much of the map to your players. Just use the reveal tool to uncover areas as they "crawl" through the dungeon. Dynamic lighting along with restrict movement can also be used with good effect. Movement specifically would depend on the rpg system you are using. You can go very "loose" with movement until the party has an encounter. At that point you can then require exact round by round movement and actions. When I use initiative it usually indicates something is about to happen. But not always. :-)

I just draw the dungeon as I go with my wacom I like that. Also Greg, I recommend using the "Only Update on Drop" when using dynamic lighting. This will help from players moving their tokens around the map and revealing too much if you aren't using fog of war. There are API scripts that can "lock-down" tokens until it's that players turn as well. I usually just trust that my players won't get too crazy moving their tokens. So far I've been fairly lucky. I can always threaten to remove the map entirely and make them look at a blank white grid. I think they prefer a cool map and all the other bells and whistles roll20 provides.

Do you think a complete map that can be crawled brings value to the game or would encounter locations have been just as good? My players are actually well behaved with not a bunch or goofing off. But i don't seem to have a cadence or order to what we are doing. When an encounter takes place, it makes sense that some of the party is distracted, looking at a map, checking gear, etc and not all bunched together when something goes down. However, I find that encounters that I stage when they are just moving their tokens around end up being very linear and funneled. Do you go around the table asking players to move? Do you think a party token being moved would be better than 4-6 figures?

Ken L. said: Just imagine an actual table session, does everyone move their minis all over the battle mat for 'sh**s and giggles' ? Treat it the same way.. but you'll have added tools as well. Ken, I like to do nice maps and do all the lighting. Its what makes Roll20 for us. At the table, I would describe everything verbally and only draw out rooms for combat. However, I don't want to miss out on all the cool lighting. Its what adds to the creepiness of the dungeon. Gotta be a way to enjoy both

I believe a complete crawlable map adds great value to a dungeon crawl. Here's my tactics: I use the GM layer to place 'halt lines' where I know things will be triggered. I sometimes place halt lines on the general layer and tell them 'Don't cross the red line until I say you can" It can help to ask the group to appoint a 'scout' whose job is to decide where they go next, if you have a larger group or passive members. I enforce a room by room traveling approach; they enter a room, I point out the visible exits (if their light reaches that far), they decide what they're doing in the room. I generally ask the group scout to move his move speed in any given segment (IE, no more than 6 squares at a time) so that I can uncover fog of war as they go, and the rest trail after him. When everything is working right with dynamic lighting, a full-on dungeon delve is *awesome* for the players. That moment when a new token shows up in the dim lighting, and they start to get closer and they're wondering if it's a friend or foe... priceless :>

I agree with the others, I often do full scale dungeons and let them crawl their way through. I think it also helps with giving the players a lost feeling when they're surrounded by narrow passageways and nothing but the light from their torches being visible. My players have learned over time that they need to stop when they see a creature or when I say so. It all leads to a very seamless experience usually.

You could just create a bunch of encounters(individual maps) and move the player ribbon to them as they occur. This is nice if you want a little more "freeform" approach to an adventure. You also don't have to rely on fog of war as much. I hate revealing an area with polygonal rectangles. I also like this patch-quilt method since it allows me to more easily "adjust" the ebb and flow of the game. Getting pushed for time and the party took a left instead of a right, no problem, they just walked right onto your supper cool map with the BBEG.

I occasionally run a dungeon crawl using Basic Fantasy RPG that's based on 1980's D&D style dungeons. Exploring dungeons is one of my favored modes of RPG gameplay. It is an open table game & anyone is welcome to join & play when you can, no obligation to show up when you can't -- so message me asking about Basic dungeon game if you are interested in joining or just checking it out. I'll PM the invite to whoever asks. I use black & white hand-drawn recursive geomorph tiles for the map. Say what? Yes. There are 1000 free black & white map dungeon tiles online. They fit together. They can recombined, rotated -- in Roll20 or using another graphics program or a website generator, with ease. It makes endless dungeons if you want. I've already created several large dungeons of different dimensions that are interesting. If needed I can always-always plop a new level ("You find a trapdoor in the floor!") and open a new black&white dungeon tile. Bang, boom. It takes 10 seconds to have a whole new dungeon pasted into Roll20 that's good enough for an entire game session of dungeon exploring gameplay. If you want a link to this map generator I'm talking about, just ask. Populating the dungeon with monsters is almost as fast. I've got access to massive wandering monster tables that can be tailored for the party level & number of players. So the process begins: Find out how many players tonight. Paste in a new dungeon map (1000 tiles mixed up in a new way, you'll never recognize it). Generate the monster tables based on the number of PC's. Go! Personally my style is to add some planned set-piece encounters in certain rooms, while generating random monsters & traps & treasures for the randomized rooms in between the set encounter spots. I use Fog Of War to blacken the entire map, save the starting room that has the character tokens. I don't use Dynamic Lighting and don't miss it at all, though I've tried it as a player and it's pretty but non-essential for this. I use very plain color tokens with the first letter of your name (Example, my token would be a "G" for Gold, Vince's token would be a "V"). Players can't go into an unexplored room without GM approval because it's pitch black with Fog Of War. They can't see if they move a token there. Whatever room they are in, I open the Fog enough that they can see the doors / exits / hallways. When they come to a door, if they open the door & go through, I open up the Fog Of War so they can see the next room completely. I leave all the past rooms open (lit up, and clear of Fog). They can see where they have been. They can retreat or backtrack freely. If they want to move to a new room, they should stand by the edge of the Fog and tell the GM they want to look or walk that way. Well, I've run this game for more than a year so far, and had more than 35 players explore parts of the dungeon. Some of them were new people introduced to D&D for the first time on my Roll20 dungeon maps. I've wrestled with many more ideas in this, for treasure, monsters, balancing, how to tolerate players who come & go at different times. Planning to keep the campaign going in 2015. The campaign is called "Explore dungeons inside a strange world!". Hit me up if you have any questions or want to try it sometime. Happy adventuring everybody.

Kevin B. said: I agree with the others, I often do full scale dungeons and let them crawl their way through. I think it also helps with giving the players a lost feeling when they're surrounded by narrow passageways and nothing but the light from their torches being visible. My players have learned over time that they need to stop when they see a creature or when I say so. It all leads to a very seamless experience usually. Kevin, Are your players just picking up thier tokens and moving them at random, but know when to stop or you having them take turns or something?

Vince said: You could just create a bunch of encounters(individual maps) and move the player ribbon to them as they occur. This is nice if you want a little more "freeform" approach to an adventure. You also don't have to rely on fog of war as much. I hate revealing an area with polygonal rectangles. I also like this patch-quilt method since it allows me to more easily "adjust" the ebb and flow of the game. Getting pushed for time and the party took a left instead of a right, no problem, they just walked right onto your supper cool map with the BBEG. yes, I have though of doing this. Seems kinda 4e to string along encounters. What I have been messing around with tonight is a load screen for the players to be on. Nice picture in background for dungeon mood. Tokens for players. And then an old school grid map laid out like an unrolled map. It has fog of war on it. Think of it as the players map, but instead of them drawing what I describe, i just reveal it as we talk about it. Then, ribbon over to the encounters and set rooms as they get there.

Gold said: I use black & white hand-drawn recursive geomorph tiles for the map. Say what? Yes. There are 1000 free black & white map dungeon tiles online. They fit together. They can recombined, rotated -- in Roll20 or using another graphics program or a website generator, with ease. This sounds very interesting. I like the idea of laying out tiles. I use to use dungeon tiles back in the day. What maps are you using? Where can I find them?

GenKitty said: I believe a complete crawlable map adds great value to a dungeon crawl. Here's my tactics: I use the GM layer to place 'halt lines' where I know things will be triggered. I sometimes place halt lines on the general layer and tell them 'Don't cross the red line until I say you can" It can help to ask the group to appoint a 'scout' whose job is to decide where they go next, if you have a larger group or passive members. I enforce a room by room traveling approach; they enter a room, I point out the visible exits (if their light reaches that far), they decide what they're doing in the room. I generally ask the group scout to move his move speed in any given segment (IE, no more than 6 squares at a time) so that I can uncover fog of war as they go, and the rest trail after him. When everything is working right with dynamic lighting, a full-on dungeon delve is *awesome* for the players. That moment when a new token shows up in the dim lighting, and they start to get closer and they're wondering if it's a friend or foe... priceless :> The restrict token movement, not to mention stopping vision using a dynamic boundary might be a good option for this "halt line".

Getting back to orginal post.... do anyone use a turn sequence or something or is it just a free for all via roleplaying?

I made my party move in initiative order the other night once they moved into the dungeon. Seemed to work fine.

Personally, I do a free-for-all approach because it speeds things up. To mitigate the resulting chaos, I have been using the "dynamic lighting walls block movement" feature, which keeps the party from moving on until I've removed the line for the door they say they're opening. If they're about to open a door into an area that I feel needs some more structure to the movement (e.g. a room with monsters or traps), then I'll drop them into initiative order and play it out round-by-round. For the actual map and dynamic lighting stuff, I've been using Stephen S's Dungeon Depth tiles (<a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1269348/dungeon-depth-tiles-100-plus-forced-perspective-tiles-dot" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1269348/dungeon-depth-tiles-100-plus-forced-perspective-tiles-dot</a>) and the DunGen script I wrote for him (<a href="https://github.com/manveti/dungen/blob/master/dungen.js" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/manveti/dungen/blob/master/dungen.js</a>). The one thing I'll probably change is to make the dynamic lighting lines a little less thick. In practice, players were sometimes getting their tokens stuck in the dynamic lighting lines because the snap-to-grid would sometimes move the token further than the restricted movement should let it go, locking them inside the dynamic lighting line (which is actually a rectangle, not a line).

I've tried it with a single party token and with individual characters. It's really nice to have independent characters when they have different vision ranges. The party scout gets a kick out of describing threats to the rest of the group. I let players move their own tokens at their own pace. If players start moving their tokens too fast, I just ask them who's looking out for traps. It's amazing how quickly all the tokens stop moving. Halt lines help a lot with controlling player chaos, but they mess with visual range, so it's best to put them at doors or corners. Dynamic lighting is really cool but, for me, it felt wrong with the default settings. Torchlight with 20/40' radius feels too short, so I've extended it out to 50'. Also, any light source should glint off reflective surfaces in the distance, so I'm starting to use some "eyes only" tokens which emit light at -5' or -7'. (The new problem becomes, you have to swap the eyes-only token for the full body token when the creature enters the light radius) It's too easy to let the map become the entirety of the players' worldview. Don't forget that they can smell and hear things further out. Leave notes to yourself on the GM layer especially to remind you about smells and sounds that the players should be aware of. Some lighting notes: Set the color of the dynamic light lines to make them easier to see: I use red for walls and yellow for doors. Keep your polygon-lines short. That makes them easy to delete. Draw a diagonal line or an X through doors, so players can sort of see the door from each side. As GM, you can select a character token and press ctrl-L to see how far they can see.

Cool maps. Very nice. (The new problem becomes, you have to swap the eyes-only token for the full body token when the creature enters the light radius) You could make a rollable table with images for your token. Then you just right-click your token, Multi-Sided&gt;Choose Side

That's a great idea, Vince! Thanks! (Maps are here if you want them.)

I did something very similar in a EotE run for some friends. I created a few maps that I intended to be an abandoned space station. It was pitch black except for their own person lights. I used various tricks and came up with a a sense of claustrophobia and my players loved it. There were a few places I didn't realyl want them going untill the time was right so I used the traps and such tactic to keep them in check. Hopefully I plan to use more if I can get my campaign going again. Dungeon crawls can be great if used well and the players respect the boundaries.