Importance of torchlight

I had a session of T1 where the party was captured and locked in the (by that time vacant) zombie cells under the moathouse, without light. Getting out of the cells turned out not to be a problem (although I don't remember the solution), but they had a hell of a time finding the nearby stairway to the north, based only on descriptions of what they could feel, and to a limited extent, hear.

If they ran out of light deeper into a dungeon, I think I would just have to roll random encounters until they died, made allies, or salvaged some sort of light source. Maybe they would get lucky and encounter some fire beetles.
 
Malrex said:
I wrote a blog post about it a little bit half way down in my post

But I saw a short video and to me it shows the importance of torchlight ... Watch the short video here.
Thought Id share.
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Definitely. I don’t even like infra vision. I think races accustomed to living underground develop low light vision, but eyes do not see in pitch dark. If I were in a dungeon I would probably be more afraid of running out of light than monsters. Monsters can kill you but being lost in the dark underground WILL kill you
 
Most underground races live in at least low-light conditions though. As long as there's a lamp or a torch running somewhere in the complex, loose photons will be bouncing around. You'd be surprised what your eyes can adjust to. You're not going to be fighting any pitched battles or searching for secret doors, but you should be able to see the dimensions of your surroundings.
 
I think it depends on where the fun in your game is coming from.

If the fun is supposed to be in the tension of potentially mismanaging a logistical facet to dire consequence, then great. Tread that tightrope, push that luck. More power to you. Sure, torch management can inject a vector of fun for the very specific groups of people who find that sort of thing fun - but mandatory? No. Light sources are not mandatory to D&D enjoyment.

As someone whose been waiving torch tracking for years, we've always gotten along just fine without. And it's not because I've never done it "properly" or what have you - I've tried it the other way plenty, and I always go back to torchless play at my players' request (overwhelming consensus). Darkvision being so common just rationalizes it in a ludological way, and FYI it's just as easy to waive darkvision as it is to waive torches.

Contrary to echo-chamber narratives, D&D is not one game played one way - it's a nebulous Frankenstein's monster of a game, made up of rule modification and iterated six ways from Sunday. Claiming that micromanaged logistics are mandatory to D&D fun is like claiming that vehicle driving segments are mandatory to videogames, or romance subplots are mandatory to movies, or that paprika is mandatory to food. No, those are preference. They are important only to the people who hold those specific preferences.
 
Blakely said:
Definitely. I don’t even like infra vision. I think races accustomed to living underground develop low light vision, but eyes do not see in pitch dark. If I were in a dungeon I would probably be more afraid of running out of light than monsters. Monsters can kill you but being lost in the dark underground WILL kill you
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This is how 4e went, with most playable races changed to low-light vision, because it was more a a challenge in combat. Which they nerfed at the same time by handing out sunrods, with a very big radius of bright light and cheap like borscht, like candy.

Even with older rulesets, there was not a great deal of concern about running out, unless you got deep enough into a dungeon that you were sleeping there. Torches aren't that expensive or heavy. The real issue is that most light sources have a smaller radius than most creatures infra- or ultravision. Which in theory is even more of a problem for players, since in 4e there is no limiting radius for darkvision; but in reality it makes little difference in published modules since movement through tunnels in handwaived, and battlemaps usually aren't that big.

The thing that I see as being the biggest challenge, in every edition, is the action economy. Who can still fight while holding a torch? Fighters and clerics have a shield, and wizards need both hands to cast spells. A thief could fight with a torch, but it cramps their style when trying to move silently. That issue persists until fighters pick up magic swords (except they don't glow in 4e), or until the cleric hits 5th level and gets continual light.
 
DangerousPuhson said:
I think it depends on where the fun in your game is coming from.

If the fun is supposed to be in the tension of potentially mismanaging a logistical facet to dire consequence, then great. Tread that tightrope, push that luck. More power to you. Sure, torch management can inject a vector of fun for the very specific groups of people who find that sort of thing fun - but mandatory? No. Light sources are not mandatory to D&D enjoyment.

As someone whose been waiving torch tracking for years, we've always gotten along just fine without. And it's not because I've never done it "properly" or what have you - I've tried it the other way plenty, and I always go back to torchless play at my players' request (overwhelming consensus). Darkvision being so common just rationalizes it in a ludological way, and FYI it's just as easy to waive darkvision as it is to waive torches.

Contrary to echo-chamber narratives, D&D is not one game played one way - it's a nebulous Frankenstein's monster of a game, made up of rule modification and iterated six ways from Sunday. Claiming that micromanaged logistics are mandatory to D&D fun is like claiming that vehicle driving segments are mandatory to videogames, or romance subplots are mandatory to movies, or that paprika is mandatory to food. No, those are preference. They are important only to the people who hold those specific preferences.
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That’s a fair take and I don’t disagree that fun can come from a lot of different angles. But for me (and for some 2e players who cut their teeth on that tension), the point isn’t that torch-tracking must exist for a game to be fun. It’s when you include those little pressures, the type of fun changes (for some).

It shifts from cinematic power fantasy to something more vulnerable and uncertain, where in that video's case, a simple flame defines the edge between safety and the unknown. That’s the tone 2e thrives in. It’s not about enforcing logistics; it’s about embracing consequence.

The funny thing is, 2e already understood what you’re describing: it gave DMs permission to drop rules that didn’t serve the table, while still building a system where the smallest resource could shape tension or story.

So, totally agree: torches aren’t mandatory. But for those of us walking the For Gold & Glory path, they’re symbolic. They’re the heartbeat of danger and a reminder that light matters because the dark means something.
 
It's like food and water rations. A mechanic you break out for a special episode. Like when the trapdoor in Horror on the Hill dumps you into the lightless labyrinth of the 2nd level with no way back up. Boom. Time to start counting the torches and rations, and sweating bullets bitches. Choices need to be made. fun.

Other than that, pitch black places and their inhabitants should be noted and the effects should be made clear to the players. Torch/lamp/magic light have very small radii. Few races have full dark vision, and lowlight vision requires a light source and only goes a little further than that radius. Even dark/ultravision tends to have smaller radii than that of the monsters and it's unlikely the whole party will be made up of those races anyway. Thieves stumbling around in the dark with a light source are...not a thief at all, and natural inhabitants of the deep dark can see the players coming for MILES.
All of that is easy to apply without having to track the life of torches and lanterns, which can be arbitrarily consumed at whatever pace best fits the setting.
 
The1True said:
It's like food and water rations. A mechanic you break out for a special episode. Like when the trapdoor in Horror on the Hill dumps you into the lightless labyrinth of the 2nd level with no way back up. Boom. Time to start counting the torches and rations, and sweating bullets bitches. Choices need to be made. fun.

Other than that, pitch black places and their inhabitants should be noted and the effects should be made clear to the players. Torch/lamp/magic light have very small radii. Few races have full dark vision, and lowlight vision requires a light source and only goes a little further than that radius. Even dark/ultravision tends to have smaller radii than that of the monsters and it's unlikely the whole party will be made up of those races anyway. Thieves stumbling around in the dark with a light source are...not a thief at all, and natural inhabitants of the deep dark can see the players coming for MILES.
All of that is easy to apply without having to track the life of torches and lanterns, which can be arbitrarily consumed at whatever pace best fits the setting.
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As well as arrows, bolts...and my pet peeve--spell components.
I don't necessarily like writing down spell components, but once down--no biggie. It makes those wizard labs or hag's hut more exciting--when spell components are almost treated like treasure (and can serve as another gp resource suck when in town). Another reason why I like non-weapon proficiencies as alchemy recipes are suddenly more exciting to find if you are an alchemist, etc. I also enjoy the challenge of running out of spell components and trying to monster harvest and see if something else will work. More of a house rule but it can deliver interesting results sometimes. My DM is good like that.
 
The1True said:
All of that is easy to apply without having to track the life of torches and lanterns, which can be arbitrarily consumed at whatever pace best fits the setting.
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I find the hazard system is good for dealing with light sources.

If you don't do that, you could have any player with a light source roll a d6 every turn. On a "1", their torch goes out, or they use up a portion of oil (1/6 or 1/8 pint, depending on edition).

Malrex said:
As well as arrows, bolts...and my pet peeve--spell components.
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Ah, see, I have the VTT track ammo.
 
Malrex said:
It makes those wizard labs or hag's hut more exciting
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Yeah we've done away with components altogether except in the cases of extremely expensive spell components like gems etc. To flavour up wizard labs, monster hunting, and mushroom foraging, I've started adding small metamagic bonuses to weird components found in the field. I've been testing something out with the party sorceror recently that has him disecting monster corpses and attempting to stab rare monsters with an arcane dagger in order to take their liveblood before they die in order to gain free-action metamagic powers like maximize, enlarge, quicken, etc. It's given his character a bit of a sinister edge which has set him at interesting odds with other members of the party. fun.
 
The1True said:
Yeah we've done away with components altogether except in the cases of extremely expensive spell components like gems etc.
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I like resource attrition, but components are a step too far for me to deal with. I think the idea of components is one of those things that every version of DnD holds onto because of tradition maybe? I'm not entirely sure why it's still there. 5E mostly handwaves it with the component pouch that has an endless supply of everything valued under 1gp.

I do like the idea of harvesting monsters though. Not sure why. I guess I like mundane areas of expertise in which characters can figure out how to make things they understand out of monster parts. I like harvesting for meat, too. And maybe oil for lantern that is running low. Certain environments become a survival game if resources are scarce and the PCs can't find the way out. This also goes back to the quest for light when you are deep in a dungeon and lost, or maybe you've been teleported B1 style and your maps no longer make any sense.
 
A point of limited light is the same as why dungeons have doors (or walls!): it limits available information, making the amount of information the DM and players have to process (and deliver) much smaller. I discovered the importance of doors when I designed a semi-open cave system with a usual amount of monsters, long sight lines, and several dungeon factions who used light to navigate by. The result was during a running battle half of the encounters in the dungeon chained together into a great clusterfuck (multiple factions/animals hostile or non allied) which was fun but illustrated how unstable such an environment would be.
 
Two orcs said:
A point of limited light is the same as why dungeons have doors (or walls!): it limits available information, making the amount of information the DM and players have to process (and deliver) much smaller.
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Kinda, though the gripe against how modern editions handle darkvision essentially loses all water if weighed by this metric, as darkvision is likewise limited to a certain distance (generally the same as using a torch), meaning that any tension provided by relying on torch-based visibility is still present in games without torches as the distance of visibility remains comparable - the only actual danger being not having brought enough torches (which is always solved by that one player who spends like 5gp to buy enough torches to burn for a whole year, making torch logistics a virtual non-issue even in old-school play). For this reason, I tend to nix light management unless pertinent (for instance, yesterday my player's triggered the old "lit a torch in a gas pocket" trap, even though 4 of the 5 characters have darkvision).
 
Two orcs said:
A point of limited light is the same as why dungeons have doors (or walls!): it limits available information, making the amount of information the DM and players have to process (and deliver) much smaller.
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Thick, heavy doors also limit the information available to monsters, to justify why every single monster in the dungeon doesn't hear combat in the tunnels and immediately come to investigate.
 
Living with children has to be similar to living with a tribe of goblins, because I only investigate the most sustained/serious noises in my dungeon at this point...
 
The1True said:
Living with children has to be similar to living with a tribe of goblins, because I only investigate the most sustained/serious noises in my dungeon at this point...
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Yes, the "giants not investigating combat against giant kids" section in G1 seems a lot more plausible now. But also

Avi said:
Or the dreaded quite ;-)
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Not to be maudlin, but after the combat probably would be investigated. And things would get hella busy after that.
 
Beoric said:
Thick, heavy doors also limit the information available to monsters, to justify why every single monster in the dungeon doesn't hear combat in the tunnels and immediately come to investigate.
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Yes, dungeons by necessity have to compartmentalize, otherwise you don't have a dungeon - you have a scattered mob, or a really big lair.

Lots of tools for this: doors/walls/rooms, proximity, visibility range, lack of foreknowledge, dynamic faction developments, sentries/patrols/alarms, messengers, migrations, stairs/levels, dungeon restocking, access control, response times, visual or auditory obfuscations, etc.
 
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