Procedural D&D Dungeon Exploration 

The idea of Turns outside of combat make for a fantastic way of tracking time and keeping the game in equal participation and an orderly manner

Some of my best nights playing D&D involved nothing more than me and a buddy crawling a procedural dungeon, metal records playing in the background, and knocking back beers, Love this style of gaming.

I tried running DCC and The Black Hack and had the feeling that there were expectations of how to run dungeons that weren't explained. When I bought OSE the procedures were a huge eye opener and I imported them into those games. Really helpful video, thanks.

Since i've been watching your videos, I am struck by how much of these things I was doing without feeling the need to name them or even really thinking about it. Thank you for putting the effort into this and helping to teach an entirely new gneration how to be a DM/GM. Oh, and teaching an old dog how to teach. I think that is important as well.

Just want to say thank you! I have been trying to wrap my head around HOW to run an effective dungeon crawl for my DND game and this honestly was the missing link!

There’s something to your consistency in using B/X as your primary reference that’s very nice for consistency and understanding (As a new DM). Especially since you give a feel for context and understanding mechanics instead of just putting a bunch of eclectic rules out there.

Brilliant, I'm looking forward to the Hexploration one.

Extremely helpful. Old school D&D was much more detailed than I remembered. Much better for dungeon crawling and hex crawling.

Procedural play is something I've been doing more of in recent years. I love the sense of discovering what happens along with the players and being as surprised as they are. Also, keeping session notes turn by turn in the dungeon kind of has a simulationist vibe. I don't know, but it makes the game fresh and interesting again. Switching up your style of play helps keep ya playing. Great topic, great video!

I've adopted a procedural approach in the 80s and never looked back. Largely, I had to accommodate LARGE pick-up groups but it also translated well to the superhero genre and diceless Amber game where parties were fully capable of separating mid-battle and break off into isolated concurrent activities. By polling the table, you can create a mental checklist of what's going on at any given time and script the next sequence and the consequences of those activities. It's really the only way to keep order.

Procedure is very good for party that don't have a lot of initiative... it move the game forward in a steady way .. I love it

There is Wisdom in old school rules! Oh the horror! I haven’t moved to utilizing turns outside of combat as regularly as you suggest, so I’ll have to switch that up. I think your insistence on adhering to the procedure is encouraging for me. Adventurer Conqueror King System adds a “line of sight” and “foreknowledge” table to help adjudicate the effect of monsters hearing you, but not seeing you, or being capable of seeing you (but may still not notice) or neither! That table affects the surprise roll and the escape rolls for encounters. Works well! Thanks for the content sir, I love the channel!

Understanding and using procedures is one of the things that made me fall in love with older versions and is something missing from a lot of more modern games. It really alleviates a lot of the work and planning needed on the part of the DM. And it's fun to come up with personal additions and procedures.

This is a excellent demonstration of this, because I had trouble explaining in game to some new players

Fantastic video! This sort of procedural exploration stuff is a big part of the reason I started diving into the OSR space, so it's very helpful to see how it's done with actual examples. Thanks!

My favorite procedural references are the gardens of ynn and stygian library, basically d100 random dungeon generator tables, great for quick adventures with little to no prep

It took a few sessions to familiarize my group to OSE. But once they got the hang of it, they appreciate how it speeds up combat. Great video

recently started doing this in my OSE games and it's helped me feel more confident as a DM.

Awesome! I love these procedural walk-thrus. Could you please do a video where you do a solo dungeon crawl using the AD&D DM Guide's random dungeon generator?

Keep it going Dan!

Daniel. This has been one of the better explanations of the Dungeon turn that I have seen in years. I personally think modifying the initial initiative sequence for reactions with telegraphing is important and allows a winning party to get an idea of a general attitude. Great video Sir Keep.

Oh man I’ve been hanging out for videos on this subject! Yay!

Frankly I only know the B/X procedure, that was the only way I played all those years ago. A good delve!

Deep dive of B/X. With the same scenario ran with all the different options! This is what I vote for. One of the things that I feel is strange is rolling for wandering monsters every 2 turns seems way to often. I understand it is a 1 in 6 chance (is that rolling a 1 on the d6 or is it rolling a 6 on the d6?) so about 17% chance it happens but I have had it happen 3 times in a row and the players get frustrated. Feeling like every other turn is a combat. Perhaps I am running it wrong/overthinking. Can't wait till you do wilderness. My players hate that I roll for every hex they travel in. Perhaps I am doing that wrong as well. Either way they don't like when I "make things happen" especially in the wilderness. They really just want to be at the dungeon and at town/home with no events in between. It is not always monsters, sometimes it is a merchant traveling, or farmers/citizens etc. But they just want to get to the dungeon and only have battles with non-wandering monsters. Keep up the great video content, and thanks for all your hard work! Also, do you use a caller/mapper? And how do you track what is going on? Do you have a sheet? Or have you done it so long that you just have a default: I make this mark which means 10 minutes passed, I write down what they ran into, collected, killed, etc? I want (need) a detailed example with the map, minis, tracking sheet, etc. I am guessing after 49.5 years this has been distilled into the common denominator aka a best way to follow the procedure by using these tools to make it simple. I get that there is no "one/right" way to do it but I have a feeling there is a way that would make it easier for beginners. After gaining experience, then you have the knowledge to make changes. That is what I am looking for. I want to teach my niece to run games (she wants to learn) but I am all over the place because I have played every edition except OD&D. And we never have the same group for more than 6 months. All my DM's did most things differently, which just causes me more confusion & frustration. Sorry about the text wall. Just wanted to give you an idea of where I am coming from and to let you know I appreciate your videos, knowledge, and teaching of the game.

Because of this more gamey approach i like BX and BECMI a lot more than newer editions. Very good video.

I haven't used much procedurals over the years. Almost never in dungeons or set pieces, but sometimes I will for wilderness travel. The video does make me think about ways to try and track time more efficiently and I'll experiment with that in the grim game I recently started, since there's a major ticking clock element where the party only has so much time each day to affect change on a town besieged by unnatural horrors. I also like the Missile > Magic > Melee order, but it doesn't fit what I'm currently doing.

Ty Daniel! I just these rules playing a new adventure with my family tonight - worked great. Very good to have a routine. Looking forward to hex crawls! Ty again

Daniel this is super helpful!

Thank you for this video so much. I can't wait for my game on Thursday. The party is in a dwarven citadel ruin, now infested with undead. I will utilize everything you mentioned in this video. I bet it's gonna be hell of a fun. I usually follow the "logical" approach when dealing with dungeon encounters and exploration, but I feel like this approach gives a lot of great opportunities for improv as well. I see a lot of potential for storytelling too. Keep up the good work! I love your channel. PS This is why I love this hobby! I started playing tabletop RPGs 20 years ago, and I still learn stuff and broaden my TTRPG horizons.

On initiative: instead of throwing 2 dice, I divide a die in two halves (1-3 monsters/4-6 players) and maybe give a modifier to one side (1-4/5-6) for being naturally more sly (a tiger, for ex). It's faster and have no draws.

This is great! I'm currently trying to blend 5e with OSR in my group

Haven't done it this way for decades, but getting geared up to run Shadowdark, where it's a big part of the game. So this has been a helpful reminder.

In Rolemaster, they call the round/combat part the tactical environment and the turn/travel part, the strategic environment. Always kept that in every system I used.

Extremely helpful, thank you Daniel!

Hey Daniel, im having a hard time wrapping my head around hirelings and retainers, could you explain and expand on it? Especially the beginning, like how to go about generating their stats, how many should be available for the party to hire, maybe even tips for roleplaying that? Im playing with a group thats never used those NPCs and i want to make sure i do a good job of introducing the concept and procedures to them

Would love to see a B/X deep dive,maybe a solo B/X actual play!

I'm definitely interested in your take on the B/X specifics in regards to combat.

Very helpful!

Your videos are great and always thought provoking but you rolled a one here! You've omitted possibly the most important concept. Yes the turn is ten minutes and yes this is a wargamey abstraction but the key is how far you get to move in those ten minutes. Armour, encumbrance, pursuit,, time in the dungeon, resource usage. Means nothing without distance.

🎉 Awesome video. Thank you! I run my game very similar. 2 questions: 1) Do you always track number of fields during a turn? 2) How do you handle movement with minis during combat? Are allies allowed to move through allied or enemys fields ? Do allies block line of sight?

Could you do a video of open world lair clearing. A fighter must clear a hex of all monster lairs to establish a keep. The numbers of monsters in a lair is massive! How do you play that ?

I used to say 2 Turns to update the map to your current location. That gives me 20 minutes to justify a random monster :)

This is the type of thing that is sorely lacking in modern game design. People tend to forget you dont have to stab everything in the dungeon to death and there are other things you can do around too. This just helps break it down into simple language for the average person and im all for it.

The Angry DM's "tension dice" rules are a wonderful mutation of these systems for less B/X-ish games, IMO.

I think alot of people would benefit from picking up older editions from Drivethrurpg the ad&d editions give simole rules for all of this same as you said with B/X seems like people dont know how to move in dungeons, wilderness etc... great video for People 😁

I usually try to use the concept of “turns” where I say “ok here’s the situation. Player 1, what you doing? Player 2 what are you doing?” Playing out the events of all their actions at the end or one by one depending on what makes sense.

16:45 All these little tasks that the PCs are doing (moving aside the tapestry, looking at the statue, etc.) are all of these 10-minute activities?

I tried to run a more prodcedural crawl for an Underdark section of the game, felt a little less satisfying than I hoped but I think I wasn’t bringing my A game

I hope WotC reintroduces things like this back into D&D 2024. It seems that much of what we used to do has been lost in the 5e transition and the move to narrative play. I use variations of these "old ways" in my current D&D 5e campaign and my players are completely on-board with it. Some of them also DM and, they tell me, it's like scales have fallen from their eyes!

Thank you so much for this amazing video Daniel. Ive been waiting for you to go over the procedure steps in B/X, well worth the wait. One question: Does it matter if surprise is checked before encounter distance? Thats how its done in OSE and was curious as to why Gavin changed it from where in B/X it goes distance then surprise. Im curious as to what your thoughts are on this.

Do this but for wilderness exploration (hex crawling) please!!

This question may seem lame, but this is what I'm actually confused about: In the parts where the party comes down the stairs, and some are listneing while others are guarding the rear, and still two others split off and search the north and south rooms, how is all of THAT broken down into turns? If a party member steps away 60', is that the end of a turn? and then another turn is spent searching, and then finally a third turn is spent for everyone to move back to the closed door? What about once inside the north and south rooms - is their movement within the rooms part of their search, or do they spend 10 minutes to walk 10', then spend 10 minutes to search, another 10 minutes to walk 10'. All of THAT is what is not clear to me. Thanks!

Sorry to disagree, but I don’t see the point in having a wandering monster pop up on an unexplored empty room, because the party won’t know it was wandering and it misses the point of using such checks to build tension. I think the order of the page you are showing is right: let them move into the room, interact with it and THEN introduce the monster you rolled. But I enjoyed your clear explanation of these procedures.

what about backtracking? Is there just and endless source of monsters? I feel like the players would get frustrated or bored of farming random monsters in rooms they already cleared

I can’t find the link to the Dyson Logos map. Did I miss it?

When using a 10 foot pole to look and prod for traps, should it be: 1) Finds trap, trap goes off 2) Finds trap, trap needs to be disarmed 3) Finds trap, trap goes off, 10 foot pole is consumed 4) Finds trap, trap goes off, lose 1 foot of the 10 foot pole 5) Finds trap, outcome depends on the trap ?

The rules cyclopedia seems to indicate that you cant move and then melee. Bx seems to say you can. They are both considered compatable, but that is a huge difference. Do you have an opinion on that ?

5e players may be confused. Old-school D&D based movement on exploring the dungeon. You move 120 feet per 1-minute round while checking for traps & secret doors. Movement in combat is very free: you can move 60 feet & still attack with a melee weapon or 1 arrow (or 2, arrows if you don’t move). This is because most events in old-school dungeons are traps, secret doors, examination of clues, and talking to creatures instead of killing them.

The BX rules say that the DM rolls damage. Do you actually do this?

1st..1d6..roll...DECISIVENESS

Great content and ideas as always stealing this

As mostly a solo player this is very helpful. Takes away a lot of the guesswork

I almost forgot about turn procedure in dungeons. Started OD&D in 1984 with it. Started it recently with 3.5e rules in wildernis adventures on an hour base, but I consider it for dungeons, too. Lots of good but forgotten ideas are returning lately. Love it.

The reason why you can play this solo, is because it's a board game and not a role-playing game.

Another excellent video Daniel. Thanks for your insight and clarity as always.

Thanks for going over this, good job. What makes it confusing is how measurements apparentlybchanged from one edition to the next. By the way, where is the thumbnail from? It's awesome!

I don't think any additional rolls needed to allow the party (or the monsters) the first action. All action in my games are declared implicitly (without knowing what others will do), and essentially it's rock-paper-scissors. That is, they all go off simultanously regardless of initiative. The initiative result is only used for hit order, and other cases when it may be needed. It often isn't needed though.

13:47 interesting. You don’t declare spells before initiative? Is that an AD&D thing ?

Clearly a party ghost 👻