The 10-Minute Exploration Turn

What a messy topic. I could deep-dive into this, but once you dig deeper, you realize that time and movement have always been D&D's fatal flaw. Early versions of the game had you moving 120 feet every 10 minutes while mapping and exploring, and when you figure out the actual rate of speed, you have people literally moving in slow-motion through a dungeon.

At 0.136 miles per hour, the three-toed sloth is faster than you at 0.17 miles per hour. But this is careful exploration and mapping, so you will explore at a sloth's pace. Of course, the 10-minute exploration turn was always an artificial game construct, and we never questioned it - it just worked.

This was "game time" and "game movement," and it aggregated a lot of activities into one clean turn of time, and a 10-minute window. This isn't GURPS with its one-second turns. Simulation games were a natural reaction to this aggregation back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the original Top Secret game in 1980 also had one-second combat turns.

And I know, if you are exploring that slowly and that carefully, how does anyone fall into a pit trap?  Every 12 feet you move, you take a minute checking the walls, ceiling, floor, and poking everything with a 10' pole. You poke the single foot of distance ahead of you for five seconds, then the next foot takes another five seconds, and so on, all the way down to 120 feet of hallway.

Then again, in real life, some things you would not expect to take an hour end up taking longer. When your life is on the line in a dungeon, I can see why many things all of a sudden take a lot longer to do.

AD&D had special multipliers for different types of movement. The game still used the 120' per 10 minutes for mapping and exploration, multiplied that speed by five for movement through known areas or using a map, and by ten if you were fleeing. Often, they kept the same movement on the map; they just reduced the time it took to move it, using fractions of a turn.

AD&D 2E tried reducing exploration rounds to a minute as cracks in the wall started to appear, and simulation games like GURPS and Champions started using real-world movement rates. The 10-minute turn was retained, but only for things like spell and torch durations.

D&D 3.0 and Wizards of the Coast removed the 10-minute exploration turn entirely. They used a system of "local movement" for 1 minute and "overland movement" per hour. "Tactical movement" was the combat per 6-second round.

D&D 5E is more of a freeform time tracking, whereas D&D 5.5E feels a little more structured and formalized. Dungeon movement is 200' per minute for slow, 300' for normal, and 400' for fast. All times are "as needed," so if searching a room takes 10 minutes, then it does. Movement is typically tracked per minute. Pulling in ToV and A5E: ToV tends to be like 2014 D&D, while A5E uses a journey system, but the movement rates are the same as in 5E.

Of all the 5E versions, D&D 5.5E has the cleanest exploration rules, with a dedicated section on the topic and suggestions for 1-minute and 10-minute blocks, depending on what is needed. D&D 2014 and ToV feel the softest on exploration structure, while A5E takes it on a more macro-scale and defines a journey for longer treks, while still keeping that softness at the lower scale.

All this to get to the point. What if you wanted to roll random wandering monster encounters every 2 BX-style dungeon exploration turns? In D&D 2024, this feels the easiest. Stick to one and ten-minute time blocks for movement and searching, keep an organized time record, and every 20 minutes roll for wandering monsters. The fact that D&D 5.5E has a dedicated section for exploration in the DMG helps a lot, and it allows me to easily slot this procedure in, along with a time tracker.

This can be easily extended to D&D 2014, ToV, and A5E. What makes D&D 2024 the winner among all other versions of 5E is that the game recognizes that structure is needed for running exploration and explicitly lays out a section to cover it. The earlier editions feel too soft on dungeon exploration (outside of A5E's structured journeys and the excellent rules for those), and that low-level, turn-by-turn, time-tracking, and torch-burning game just feels absent.

D&D 5.5E also adds more detail and structure to equipment, formalizing the in-game use of each item. This is likely the designers' experience with Pathfinder 2E coming up, with items needing discrete game uses and rules inside of them, rather than being more "loosey gooesy who cares" things you write on your character sheet to be used if the DM asks if you have something. D&D 5.5E also wins in terms of equipment rules, with a stronger set of rules to back them up.

Shadowdark, providing an excellent, tension-filled turn-based experience, likely influenced D&D 5.5E in tightening up the dungeon exploration rules and laying out the methods for those out in a section of the DMG. Competition here improved the game; the other 5E-based games were happy to stick with the very loose exploration system that felt more like narrative gaming.

What a messy, complicated subject!

So, in short, keep a tight time tracker for dungeon exploration, and track time in blocks rounded to the minute. If you rule, it takes 5 minutes to spike a door; mark 5 off the time tracker. One minute is the shortest measure of time tracked in the books outside of combat. Longer actions are best measured in 10-minute blocks.

Every 20 minutes, roll an old-school wandering monster check.

Every hour, another torch burns out.

Lanterns burn for 6 hours on one flask of oil.

It is easy to add detailed time-tracking to your game, along with old-school wandering monster encounters. What do you get for the effort? A ticking clock, forcing players to manage resources, spend time wisely, and it makes the environment come alive as wandering monsters creep about and hunt the characters in that maze of tight, twisting passages.

Alignment

 

Of all the modern 5E versions, in terms of alignment support? D&D 2014 and 2024 clearly win the alignment battle. Both systems preserve the classic AD&D-style 9-axis alignment system, so popularized in memes since the Internet was born. D&D 2024 reduces the mechanical aspects of alignment by removing it from monsters and by making spells such as "detect evil" detect only certain creature types. Also, where D&D 2014 has typical alignments for monsters, D&D 2024 does not.

So in a way, D&D 2014 is the strongest in terms of alignment and rules. I can see why the interactions with alignment rules were removed in 2024; they are an extra layer of rules used infrequently in special situations, and it is easier to leave them out, remove the special cases, simplify the game, and reduce the layered complexity of the system as a whole.

D&D 2024 is a more streamlined version of the concept, with alignment shifting toward a role-playing and personality-framing tool. It has very little to do with mechanical rules, and the game seems to be putting up a wall between roleplaying traits and traits that affect the rules. But they still kept the system and did not remove it entirely, unlike every other Open 5E clone.

Tales of the Valiant got rid of alignment entirely. Level Up Advanced 5E moved the entire system to "alignment traits," and it is removed from character creation. So, D&D 5.5E deserves praise for keeping alignment alive rather than throwing it all out. If we can point to bad choices, we have to point to the laudable ones.

The only game with the traditional alignment as we knew it in the old-school is still D&D. This is laid out best in the AD&D DMG:

BX only used three alignments: Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic. So, what does this do for us in an old-school game? Let's go back to the source material, again:

"Alignment describes the broad ethos of thinking, reasoning creatures — those unintelligent sorts being placed within the neutral area because they are totally uncaring. Note that alignment does not necessarily dictate religious persuasion, although many religious beliefs will dictate alignment.

The overall behavior of the character (or creature) is delineated by alignment, or, in the case of player characters, behavior determines actual alignment.

Thus, alignment describes the world view of creatures and helps to define what their actions, reactions, and purposes will be. It likewise causes a player character to choose an ethos which is appropriate to his or her profession, and alignment also aids players in the definition and role approach of their respective game personae."

-AD&D 1E, Dungeon Masters Guide, p23

From the master himself, Gary Gygax, on why alignment is important. Now, while AD&D 1E did have mechanical alignment rules (detection spells, etc.), the description of alignment feels more in line with the streamlining of D&D 5.5E. It is kept in the game because it is such a strong roleplaying tool, and given how complicated the rest of 5E is, something has gotta give, so alignment was shifted away from the mechanics and moved back to a pure roleplaying guide.

Alignment defines the reactions, actions, and purposes of intelligent beings.

That's it. Gygax hit the nail on the head there. If you need a guide on how to roleplay a creature, alignment shall be your guide. Do you roll a friendly reaction from a group of chaotic evil bugbears? That could happen. Just because they are friendly doesn't mean they are all just as noble and caring as you. Due to their evil nature, they may stab you in the back when they see a chance. Alignment tempers reaction rolls and acts as a buffer so that every friendly creature towards your party doesn't become a paladin who hangs out with you constantly as best friends. You still shouldn't trust those bugbears, even though they are acting all nice right now.

This is a huge failure for both ToV and A5E. We can always port it in, but we should not have to. This is a clear failure of the game design communities listening too much to social media, feeling that "alignment is outdated," overreacting, and removing it entirely, with nothing to take its place. Saying "the game should not make moral judgments" is weak, and really, it is removing a critical tool that the DM will use to do the same thing.

Games that want to focus on selling you prewritten stories will slowly remove the tools that you can use to make your own. Of course, alignment isn't necessary if you get everything from the adventure module. All the motivations are there! You don't need these "extra words telling you something twice."

Alignment is such a necessary rule; I find myself subconsciously importing it into ToV and A5E, since those games are harder to roleplay without this universal and useful tool. Not having alignment makes the game harder to play and also harder to DM. This group of orcs? They are lawful evil, and they will generally stick to a deal they made, even though they are still rotten to the core. They make deals, expect them to be honored, and have just enough belief in order and structure to stick to their word, too.

D&D does alignment the best, it always has, and I hope it will continue.

If you are running a story-based game, alignment fades in importance since the prewritten story tells you all you need to know.

If you are running a sandbox game? Alignment becomes one of the most important factors in reactions and trustworthiness, and gives you a broad brush to begin painting with before you settle on the fine details. Alignment is critical for sandbox games.

Morale

Morale is a solid rule. This kept most OSR combats from becoming the modern "to the death" affair we saw starting in D&D 3 to 4, and it continued into 5E (where morale was an optional rule in the DMG). People play 5E like Diablo, where every monster in a room must be killed, and that is not old-school play. The OSR games were not like that, and if characters beat a side down hard and fast, they would flee, fight a retreat, or surrender.

This is when alignment came into play. Lawful characters would not kill those who surrendered.

Morale in BX was rated on a 2-12 scale, with 2 meaning the creature will not fight, and 12 being the creature will fight to the death (and never check morale). This was checked on a 2d6 roll; if the roll exceeded the morale number, they failed. The number could be adjusted by a few points up or down, depending on the situation.

"In general, morale is checked in critical combat situations. Two recommended times for morale checks are:

1. After a side's first death in combat (either monsters or characters).
2. When half the monsters have been incapacitated (killed, asleep due to magic, and so forth).

Monsters that successfully check morale twice will fight to the death."

-Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules, Moldvay edition, 1980, page B27

In 5E, we do have morale rules, as follows:

• D&D 2024: Fight of Flight, DC 10 Wisdown saving throw
• D&D 2014: Morale, DC 10 Wisdown saving throw
• ToV: Morale, DC 10 Wisdom Save (TOV GMG, p75)
• LU A5E: No morale system, relies on the bloodied condition and mental stress.

This is the first time Level Up A5E fails at a category, interesting. It is not all that hard to standardize on the DC 10 Wisdom save for all games, since they are pretty much the same. Morale in any 5E version will work just like BX when it is checked, and what happens on failure.

This will most likely make fights easier, since if the players can take out a substantial number of creatures, they may break, organize a fighting retreat, or surrender. This is usually balanced by wandering monsters, so don't worry about challenge; let the dice fall where they may.

Morale introduces complications and moral quandaries into the adventure. What do you do with prisoners? Do you let them go, with them possibly running off to tell others? Do you use your only rope to tie them up? Is it even ethical to leave goblins tied up in a dungeon full of monsters that can eat them? Do you lock them in a room and spike the door shut, using a spike and time, and making noise that could attract wandering monsters? Do you cast a sleep spell on them all and hope for the best?

This is why we had alignment.

The lawful paladin would never allow a chaotic thief to kill helpless prisoners (or sleeping creatures), so the system built in a simulation of morality, mixing roleplaying with tactical decisions that could affect survival.

It is easy to treat monsters as video game enemies; you simply kill them all, and they "poof." When monsters act with self-preservation in mind, it introduces a double layer of decisions into the game. Is how you are going about "clearing this dungeon" ethical and moral? And how do you handle the inevitable surrenders when you lack the resources, time, or people to address them?

BX did a lot for us, even though by today's standard, it was a simple game. The depth of ethical and moral choices it forced upon us during a session surprised us all, and brought out the best and worst in people we thought we knew. You don't get the raw, visceral reactions when playing online of seeing people's faces and body language as they make these choices. You do when you are in person.

Nothing is stopping us from implementing these morale rules in our 5E games; most games already have them, though they're mostly forgotten. Well, in our old-school 5E game, we adopt the classic BX systems and let them work their magic.

A Blog for Everyone

Why did I start a 5E blog?

This came to me after realizing that many OSR YouTubers were treating BX as a "solve every problem" game, leading people to believe that a rule system was the answer to why they had fallen out of love with roleplaying. This is the classic "game hopping" cycle that even I go through constantly, and if you are a reader of my main blog, you know how the winds change in my mind.

But something told me "BX is not the answer," but people were getting this wrong, at least a part of it. I had to ask myself, "Can I have BX-style play in ANY game I play?"

And the answer is yes, I can.

I just need to go back to BX, pick out the classic methods and procedures of play from that game, identify them, and show people how to use them in any game. Any game can play "like" BX. Is it as lethal and deadly if I use 5E? No and yes, it depends on how we play the game. There are TPKs in 5E, but in general, it is less lethal than a BX game, which has a higher default tension level.

But lethality aside, my 5E game can be played using a BX turn structure and feels just like an old-school game.

And I went out and got D&D 2024, even though I feel I don't need it, and wasn't positive about the changes they made. I am supporting the game for this blog so I can speak to those players. The fact that most of the in-store play in this area is D&D 2024 means in-person play is very strong, and it may be a VTT thing where the D&D 2024 softness is seen as the lock-in of D&D 2014 content on VTTs, which means many are hesitant to break what they built online in their digital libraries.

And yes, I will try to play D&D 2024. If I want in on those local games at the hobby store, to finally become real again and play with real people, I will learn the new game. I am not so much of an ideologue that I will refuse to try new things, and I can gloss over parts of the game I dislike or disagree with (such as the missing humanoids from the Monster Manual and some of the art).

And I play Tales of the Valiant, so that gets supported here, too. All versions of 5E, even 2014, are supported here. This is a big-tent site, and all versions of 5E are loved and supported, as long as the character-building we love is there, and they can be modded to support an old-school style of play.

And since this is still 5E, moving between versions of the game is super easy. The differences are minor, and when you look at the entirety of 5E, they are so compatible that they are all house-ruled versions of each other, with D&D 2014 as the source document. Even if you are mixing rules in your head between versions, it won't really matter too much, and your game will be fine.

Even the excellent Level Up Advanced 5E, a niche version of 2014 that just amazes me with how well designed the game is, and it goes in a new direction, supporting all pillars of play. That is supported here, too. This has so many old-school nods, and D&D 2024's support for the exploration pillar of play was likely influenced by this game. Those wilderness adventure rules did not come out of nowhere, and the lack of decent wilderness exploration rules in 2014 is a sore spot, leading people to think D&D was solely a tactical, dramatic combat game.

Level Up A5E is excellent, and I am still a fan.

And, yes, we also support the classic D&D 2014 game. I have friends who are so broke they can't afford new books, so why should we exclude them? If this is what you have and love, why are we excluding you? Welcome, 2014 players, and your six core books with all those rules patches. I love this version, too, classic, unbalanced, broken, double-casting, broken combos, but very OG cool.

Plenty of people still play patched and fixed versions of D&D 2014, and they are just as viable and playable as any alternatives.

What unites us is old-school play. We don't want to change games, like all the YouTubers are begging us to play BX and other games, because it would fix every problem we have with roleplaying, and we still want to be able to walk into a hobby store and play with others. While I love a great, tension-filled, harsh game of BX, the 5E players do not have to be excluded from that experience because they don't change their game.

We can adopt BX's core principles and apply them in 5E. Will our game be as deadly and tension-filled? Will we be playing by BX rules to the letter? No. I don't expect that out of this. But we will have an experience that is much closer to the heart of the game, instead of the narrative story game that modern D&D has wandered off into the narrative story gaming of YouTube live-play, and we love the classic, tension-filled, resource-tracking, players-make-the-map, absolute blast of classic D&D.

We can get pretty close to classic D&D by combining BX procedures with 5E rules. The rest we can houserule, and we don't lose the games we love, nor do we have to change systems.

The dungeon turn? Players making the map? The wilderness turn? Monster reactions? Morale? Interactive play that does not rely on skill rolls? Light and torch-tracking? Wandering monsters? Time tracking? Clearing hexes and building domains?

None of those are magically dependent on the BX rules.

I can port all those structures and procedures directly into 5E and end up with an old-school 5E game that feels much more authentic than a FATE-like narrative story game that uses the 5E rules. Those procedures and methods are universal truths that we should not forget, nor write out of the game.

We can still play 5E and have an authentic, old-school experience.

Will it be exactly the same? No.

The real game here is in the methods, structures, and procedures. This is our Rosetta Stone, our source of truth for roleplaying. The way we play is much more important than what we play. If we can preserve the old-school style in our play structure, any game we play will be more fun for us.

Yes, BX is amazing and fun. The OSR YouTubers are often right; that simple, deadly game is a classic.

But the way BX was played can enrich and enhance any game we play.

And to the BX YouTubers, you need to go beyond procedure and structure, and explain why the BX rules and math are better than 5E. The procedure and structure can be easily ported to 5E. I know what I love about BX, but consider this a challenge to go beyond the obvious and get deeper into the why.

It is easy to be negative.

It is much harder to be positive and constructive.

If I can help you find a fun way to play 5E, take this old-school style into a gaming store, and show a table of players there "the way" while still playing the store-preferred D&D 2024 game, then my work here has value and is worth the effort. If I can make the game more fun for you and keep you from burning out, then that is one less person who leaves the hobby. If it helps you see 5E in a new light, not as a game where "skills solve everything" and "wilderness is just a cut scene," then I will have helped open the door to you for new adventures.

You will still be playing D&D 2024. But you will be playing it exactly how we used to play the original. You get the best of both worlds. Your table may see the game in a new light. You will bring the magic back to the table and not shortcut or shorthand the procedures of play for expediency. There is a magic in these old, dusty tomes of BX D&D. Let me help you find it.

The way we played is an absolute truth.

What we play can change.

Tales of the Valiant

Tales of the Valiant is a patched 2014 version of 5E. A lot of the class designs are clear improvements over the 2014 versions. I can own PDFs, and the rules are cleaned up and a lot clearer. Overall, versus the six core books of D&D 2014, this is a solid alternative that cleans up the rules, reduces the number of books to support, and makes the game easier for beginners.

The major replacement is the Luck system in place of Inspiration, which works well in play and is preferred by many. That said, using this to play a more old-school 5E game has all the same issues as D&D 2014. Most of the optional rules from 2014 are here, and in some areas, such as travel, the rules are better thought out and explained, with expanded systems offered.

This is like a "product improved" version of D&D 2014, with mostly the same rules, a few clarifications and expansions, many fixes to classes and abilities, but for the most part, it is what you are used to in D&D 2014. There are play improvements here over the 2014 D&D edition that make the game easier to play, but the design goal is to mirror 2014 and provide complete compatibility.

I would rather play ToV than D&D 2014; it's not even a comparison. Of all the games I cover on this blog, ToV is the best version of D&D 2014, and it is still supported incredibly well today. This also has the best compatibility with D&D 2014 subclasses and third-party rules.

If you like D&D 2014, this is an obvious side-grade for you and a quality-of-life improvement. We are back down to three core books again, not six, so like D&D 2024, this is a better option for new players, but it does not have the structural improvements and streamlining that D&D 2024 does.

Note: Some criticize D&D 2024 as too streamlined and simplified, such as removing the silvered weapons needed for werewolves and other lycanthropes, and the experience from the game. There is a "dumbing down" to D&D 2024 that some 2014 players do not like. While I may view the streamlining as generally positive, some feel it went too far, removing classic interactions (and monster spellcasting) in favor of speed of play.

But ToV does do a few things much better than D&D 2024. One is in ability score creation: D&D 2024's backgrounds force you into taking a narrow selection of ability score improvements, plus a feat, and they limit your choices of optimal backgrounds based on your build. In ToV, they just set your stats during stat creation, and that is the last time you fool with them, and you can get the stats you want.

This whole thing of "going backward and modifying stats" in character creation is clunky and needs to be done away with. You set them once, calculate your modifiers one time, and move on to the next section. ToV gets it right.

The D&D 2014 model of the three core books plus three "expansion books" as the core game just needs to go away. I get it, 2014 is the most popular version ever, and it is 10 years entrenched, but I have had a group that never even started since I chose 2014 D&D, and people just wanted to have a simple core experience.

ToV or D&D 2024 would have been far better choices, needing only three core books, and I would have had a game going.

As for old-school rules, you are still sort of on your own with making tone changes or adapting an old-school mod to the rules from a third party. Some play old-school in 5E by adopting a grim and gritty tone; it doesn't always work, but it is a choice. When you are forced to play an old school game, such as Shadowdark or BX, you begin to understand how less is more, and that tension of every step being possibly your character's final.

Since this is 2014 compatible, Hardmode 5e works just as well. Again, you may want to hold off on using this until you learn the system. Some of the rules in here aren't needed, such as the Injuries system, since ToV provides its own by retaining the best Variant rules from D&D 2014.

Also, ToV and D&D 2024 are similar enough but different enough that you should not assume they work the same way. A lot doesn't, especially around action types and what can and can't be done on different actions. Monsters are vastly different: ToV supports classic monster abilities, while D&D 2024 heavily streamlines them.

There is a speed-of-play optimization in D&D 2024 that removes much of the classic flavor (such as werewolves, silver weapons, and caster monsters), leading some people to see the game as a "5E Lite" version. The designers of 2024 try different ways to make up for it, but the monsters feel and play differently. ToV keeps things in the classic, 2014 style.

Playing a certain way is going to be a common problem with games that stick closer to the D&D standard. Adopting an old-school feel and style of play will be harder since the games are not designed for that style, and modifying the rules will introduce a whole bunch of new problems with pacing and balance.

This is why people give up and play Shadowdark or BX. It is just easier to play a game and let it do what it was designed to do. And you don't need to push a huge list of homebrew changes on a new group, which can cause people to walk away. The game was written that way, and we can all play by what is in the book, fine. You come in with six pages of homebrew, and I will quit and find an easier game that doesn't need a day-one patch that is mostly opinion.

Don't laugh, this happened to me.

We have all the 2014 D&D monsters, including the humanoids, in the Monster Vault. Also note that ToV's monsters are tuned to hit harder than D&D 2014, so the game feels like a CR+1 game overall, and not really tuned to the 2014 math. At this point, D&D 2024 is tuned CR+1, and it feels like the industry has moved on from the 2014 balance and opted for a harder-hitting, faster style of play.

Level Up A5E retains the old 2014, CR+0 balance. It can be argued that by the end, D&D 2014 was also a CR+1 game, with all the power-gaming and exploits occurring in the later books.

Also note that speed-of-play improvements and changes to fatigue are not in ToV, as they are unique to 2024 D&D. A lot of what was done in D&D 2024 was done to make the game play faster, at the expense of some of the traditional tropes and expectations that hardcore players love. D&D 2024 is more like a "BX version of 2014 D&D" if that makes sense.

Tales of the Valiant is a solid side-grade for those with a huge library of 2014 books for D&D, looking to step away from Wizards and adopt a clean, fresh start using a reimagined set of core rulebooks. I do not need to wade through six core books to play; it is just one player's book, a bestiary, and a referee book.

Is it appropriate for old-school-style 5E play? Really, it isn't much more than 2014 D&D in that regard, but it does have the advantage of only needing three core books instead of D&D 2014's six. Your life will be easier here, but you will still be in 2014 without the streamlining of 2024 D&D. Also, all your 2014 5E books will be supported, including subclass compatibility, which is ToV's biggest selling point.

If that is exactly what you want, then this is your game.

I like ToV, I run a blog dedicated to the game, and it is a solid, amazing game. The 2014 edition is more compatible than D&D 2024's, and it has its own cleanups and streamlining that make the game easier to play.