The Lost Dungeon Crawling Rules of DnD

I hated D&D so much just because my first experience 8 years ago was basically a gme with a 3 fucking hour combat and endless conversations about one obscure rule from acountless supplements. Never go back but in 2020 I discovered the OSE/DCC similar system and everything changed.
I still love to play some roleplay/simulacionist system like V5 but oldschool style is easier to work.

I am so buying a copy when I get paid again this is awesome!

Original modules were designed for competitive tournament play at conventions. Nothing past 2nd edition is worth playing. Stuff your back story and and your safe space.

It turns out 5e has dungeon turns. The playtest DM Guidelines had them consolidated in one place, under a heading called "The Dungeon Turn". The rules still exist, but now they decided to distribute them around the PHB at the last minute. You can find a consolidated version in the playtest or the ENWorld thread where there is also discussion: "B/X styled Dungeon Turn rules from the playtest are still in 5e but scattered"

As a 5e DM, I had to get interested in the OSR and how to run tense dungeons, find this video, and finally wonder if there are 5e adaptations of the B/X or OSE rules in order to realize they were there all along. 🙄

Late to the conversation, but I'd argue that today D&D (and Pathfinder) have bad rules for anything out of dungeon crawling, because how the rules works nowadays are an artifact from the dungeon crawling era. Nowadays it only works with hacking current rules.

Essentially OG D&D was “Darkest Dungeon” minus the Lovecraftian insanity system.

When I write dnd dungeons I prefer to stick to older methods. When in a cave full of swarming creatures like goblins or kobolds, I roll multiple chances to encounter on each turn beginning.

When mapping I kind of draw inspiration from the old Chocobo's Dungeon/Pokemon Mystery Dungeon layouts I used to love so much as a kid. Makes it easier for me to figure it all out while also explaining it to my group

this video came out at the perfect time you are doing me a service my good man!

This is very much like the kind of gameplay you get in oldschool traditional ascii-based roguelikes like Angband. These games were originally made back in the early days of D&D, and they continue to follow that old style of dungeon crawling.

These rules make certain class skills and features make a ton more sense now. Holy hell, some of the less "combat focused" classes would be God's in the old system.

Dungeon crawls are pretty easy to DM. The only mistake I often see DMs make is not taking sound into consideration. If the players are making a lot of noise creatures up to a certain distance away would hear. Areas with natural noise like a waterfall would mask this somewhat.

I'm trying to visualize using these for my 5e players. During the same 10-minute turn, can a player move somewhere AND do a perception check, or do they have to pick between move or something else?

Is there a guide for converting the 10-minute dungeon exploration system to 5th Edition D&D?

I feel like many of these rules could be very easily applied to an old-school text-adventure game, with a semi-linear structure and procedural encounter generation.

now I'm curious why I haven't heard of such a thing. Most of the narrative text adventures I know of are fixed in structure on a room-by-room basis and focused on puzzle solving, and most of the roguelikes are based on tiles and very small timeslices rather than long turns and narratives.

This is somewhere in between those.

There are no lost dungeon crawling D&D rules. Lol.

This explains a lot of the LitRPG novels I've noticed under the fantasy tags....

I’m writing a TTRPG based on Boktai, which was a very stealth focused game, so these dungeon crawl rules actually might be very helpful.

Lots of great advice in such a short time - thanks Ben!

Awesome!

Little late to the party on this video, clearly... New DM here, and I really appreciate this. As a new DM, I've elected to focus first on storytelling while managing what mechanics I am able. As I get better, adding more mechanics... I hope to get to this level of procedure (which I think adds FAR more strategy, which I want to see my PCs use) while being able to tell the story as well.

Yep. Dungeon crawls interspersed with our first NPC encounters, the thief/bandit npc waiting at the dungeon exit to rob you blind. And then haggling for every spike, arrow, or potion vendor in town. There may also have been a temple and a thief's guild too.

I'm not a fan of the required rest rule. Cool otherwise, though.

I feel like these rules maybe do need to be used together. This sort of detailed exploration isn't going to make sense without things like gold for XP (and therefore levels), encounter tables, and wandering monsters. It also presupposes a dungeon as dark, inhabited, and relatively stable. It all works well for a particular style of play, but may not be universally applicable.

These rules were never lost; you just had to know where to look. Good of you to clue in newer players, though.

"5e doesn't have rules for dungeon crawls, like random encounters, doors, torches and light sources, or surprise, for example."

5e: has random encounters, secret door, light sources, and surprise

I swear old school gamers try to dunk on 5e and never even read it. Literally the only thing in this video that 5e doesn't have is the exploration turn.

the "doors swinging shut" thing is interesting to me, because I could have sworn the door rules in early versions of d&d were "players can try all they like to keep doors open or closed but nothing will work".

So many of these elements I've seen in vague, diminished echo form, watered down and meaning lost in games I've seen for a few decades. Useless light spells, pointless keys and lockpicking, searching for free being a tedious matter of "move, search, move, search, move search" with no constraint or reason, traps that are ignorable, resource management of "just sit and refill to full and continue", moving faster just being a given and not doing it just meaning being slow for no reason. So many pale imitations, copied without understanding or purpose. I often got the idea that they must be coming from somewhere, but it's always been just vague echoes from the distance, barely noticed or actively thought about. It makes so much more sense now...

Although I use OSE at the table, I think the best for a starting GM is still Moldvay. OSE is the best as a reference and is wonderfully organised to fulfil that aim, but is a bit intimidating if you are completely new to the game.

This was so helpful, thank you very much!

A clarifying question: how do you keep engagement and momentum going in a "dungeon turn" when you're stopping so often to do a thing? and if the player's turn is to just "move down the corridor" that turns out to be empty, how do you prevent boredom of just "nothing happens" a whole bunch?

Need an RPG called "Dungeons and Dungeons" and it's all about being a political prisoner in a fantasy world.

I find it bizarre that people need "rules" to know how to run things. The appeal of D&D was always "The players can do anything." and the "DM can do anything.". They are only limited by their creativity, cunning, sense of wit and challenge. (And ability to get along with each other, given tastes can vary.) Rules can never handle that. Which is why NO role playing game should have nor concentrate on RULES. Rules do not ALLOW actions they RESTRICT actions. Use your imagination, your creativity, not RULES. And learn by playing to HAVE FUN not to FOLLOW RULES. And ignore all the fiddly, things that make the game MORE REALISTIC but MORE BORING.

A major fail of too many games is that there is too much REALITY TRACKING (such as time and light) and it is given to the players. This results in tedious bean counting; in the end they will know when to spark up another torch, lantern, spell. Early rules were generally vague and generic such that DM's (not players) could track time on a broad scale, by generally how things are going. As the PCs go lurking down a dark corridor they have fought their way into, with dripping water plopping down, the DM can mention, "The light begins to dim and waver. You aren't seeing as well." Not, "3:00 p.m. time to start another torch."

If you moving your movement rate per turn, so 30 feet per 10 minutes, why would a trap ever be triggered? Every one should be detected

I know this is picky, but... 2d6 does not generate a bell curve distribution. It generates a triangular distribution. 3d6 begins to look somewhat bell-shaped. The more dice you add, the more closely it approximates a normal distribution.

It was called "Dungeons and Dragons" not "Fields and Fairies" or "Cities and Townsfolk" for a reason. Modern D&D has left that mostly behind. (Cut my gamers teeth on "High Fantasy" and "1st Ed. AD&D" in 1980 while in HS. Been trying to go back there ever since.)

As far as wandering monsters and encounters go, I like having a possibility of more than one wandering monster being encountered at a time. So the party may turn the corner and find two wandering monsters of different kinds possibly fighting with each other. Or a larger predator of the wandering monster may appear while the party if fighting it and the larger just wants to eat the smaller and may be indifferent to the party. Makes the environment seem more dynamic and not so focused on monster always wants to kill party.

Seems lots of resource management, high stakes, and fiddly stuff went into videogames (depending on difficulty) while modern ttrpgs are more like movies where the details are ignored and generally everyone lives and shrugs off injuries.

Dungeons have mandatory breaks, which automatically makes them better than working at a warehouse.

Or a warehouse is also a dungeon.

I play a lot of D&D online with basically strangers. I think this format of play might be better for that situation. Trying to campaign and/or emphasize role play with strangers is always awkward and boring to me. This might make it fun again.

This is a fascinating video. I love it! I want to try to play this way. Id totally forgotten these rules or downplayed their importance.

I love the concept of the dungeon being a separate underworld, completely detached from ours. 5E is a lot of fun, but there's too many abilities that take the danger out of dungeon crawling, which is what makes dungeons fun in the first place!

DUDE WHY ISNT THIS IN THE 5E DM'S GUIDE!? THIS IS ALL FANTASTIC INFO!!!

I know this is an old video but I figured I’d weigh in regardless. I really like the idea behind these rules, but I don’t know how well they would mesh with 5e, 5e as a system is just a lot more heroic than early AD&D was, in AD&D fighting a monster was a big deal, damage was high, health was low, and starting gear just wasn’t that great. All of which goes into creating a very different play experience than the more fantasy-super hero experience of 5e, so layering those mechanics onto 5e won’t add drama it will just add extra steps.

First Edition AD&D had an entire rules supplement book dedicated to dungeons.

{:o:O:}