I see a lot of "classic" or "osr" dungeons with a dearth of doors, or much in the way of distances between encounters, and yet no explanation as to why the encounters stay in their boxes. Designing exclusively for theater of the mind can make for sloppy maps.
The explanation is simple: awthor dun fukked up.
Though a lot about light and vision since we left off this topic. Lights matters only if you remove darkvision.
You're probably onto something there about light being an old-school way to restrict vision because the game's "technology" of the time was graph paper. It does make it easier for the DM (who needs to describe everything verbally) to narrow their field of focus and limit the party's considerations/actions to only the immediate surroundings. Whereas with something like a VTT you see the whole room, right upfront, usually in good detail. It's because of this that I consider light source radii to be a mostly vestigial thing, albeit good for creating tension in *very* specific situations. I balk at the idea that presence or absence of light sources in general makes the adventure any better or worse though, unless the adventure is tailored specifically to fuck around with light in a meaningful way.
Thanks DP! Is your dog a greyhound? She passed years ago. She was a retired race dog. The best dog ever.
A whippet. Also a retired sport dog (flyball and disc), though we were the ones doing the sporting with him.
i read but did not watch. i'm in favor of using resource management as a way of adding tension and gravity to the game--i always think of the scene in indiana jones where the torches dwindle and the snakes press toward indy and Marion.
Tough to translate to TTRPG play though. That scene works because we can watch it - if you describe the scene in a game, it basically loses the tension because of the format of tabletop play.
I don't know about Indy and some snakes, however, if you have 1) no infravision 2) light using a spell slot like it used to 3) someone having to hold the torch in one hand in place of weapon/shield/focus 4) chance to drop torch if you take damage 5) some water pooled on the ground 6) character holding the light (or linkboy) being a prime target 7) no way to remove a torch from a container during combat... now you have some strategy and tactical combat. I realize many people don't care about that when they play d&d, which is fine. But if you care about it, tracking light makes exploring more challenging and interesting.
Use a VTT and shrink the radius of their torchlight and they will be feeling tension in a hurry.
If your scenario only becomes tense after having to add 7 different caveats to make it tense, then maybe it's not the ideal route for generating tension. I'm not saying that threatening the party with dwindling torches can't generate tension - I'm just saying it shouldn't be the primary way to generate tension in your game. Logistic shortfalls are not a long-term way to keep your game tense, since they can be immediately neutralized as a threat by simply bringing more shit with you (or even mitigating just one one of the seven conditions you've listed above).
You are right that patching and house ruling a system 7 ways that doesn't support the type of game or the mood you want is not very effective. At least in my experience. You have to find a system that supports it or write one.
I've never tried a timer, but I think I like it.
I mean, if I was on team monster and had infravision/darkvision, I would attack the torch.
Still not a well. An actual well would be very confining, a much bigger problem.
You mean solved because the snakes recoil from the exposed fire and heat of a torch, which is also on a stick so you can waive it at them without getting too close, so if you had a lamp instead you would already be dead?
Have you ever tried to pour kerosene out of a burning lamp? I haven't, even though I used them a lot as a kid (rural area, lots of power outages), because that would be incredibly stupid and dangerous. And if you manage to pour it without immolating yourself, are you going to use the lamp to light it? How does that work?
I mean. He's got a point
