d6 reasons the players can still see in the dark

... because otherwise they can't play the damn game

Rambly Intro

Skip ahead for my GLOG hack light procedures. Skip again for the table I promised in the title.

I am still thinking about Part 1 of my Lair of the Lamb game. The excellent new dungeon by Arnold K of Goblin Punch starts with the players in complete darkness -- they must navigate the first few rooms by smell until they find a torch.

At first I was thinking about the smelly rooms because it's a good example of intersection clues. The players get a hint of what is in each direction so they can make a meaningful choice about which way to go. That’s something I’ve been focusing on while making dungeons for my 5e game.

Further into the dungeon, the players find a torch and the smell key disappears. I started thinking, “what the hell am I gonna do if they run out of light.” I have some ideas; I can just run the game for them without describing what they see, for one… but I don’t expect it’ll be too fun.

Brief Aside. I am working from these premises:

• The game is fun when the players are forced to make meaningful choices. (If possible, I’d prefer to skip the minutiae of tracking things until we arrive at a meaningful choice.)
• The players need enough information (lots!) so they can understand what choices are being presented to them.

So the scarcity of torches is good! It demands the players make a meaningful choice every round:

“Do you linger to spend more time on <whatever>? Your torch is fading and you’ll have to check for random encounters next round.” 

This might be a no brainer to folks familiar with old school dungeon crawling. But it's a good meaningful choice. Consider another:

“You’re standing in the pitch black. You can’t see shit. Do you crawl blindly towards the barnyard smell or the vinegar smell? (Either way you’ll be fumbling in the dark and probably bump into anything you would rather not bump into.)”

This is still a good meaningful choice. But only because the dungeon is designed around it. Otherwise it would be:

“You’re standing in the pitch black. You can’t see shit. Do you crawl blindly north, east, south, or west?”

That choice sucks. I hope it's obvious why... if not, it's been discussed before, more than once. I was more scared of my players running out of torches than they were. Because if the players can't see, it's damn hard to give them enough information to play the game.

Designing A Thing

GLOG Hack Light Procedures

I want to come up with light procedures for my GLOG hack that reinforce the push-your-luck aspect of torch management. Requirement:

• I don’t want to have to narrate the players fumbling aimless in the pitch dark. (Except, sometimes, when I do.)
• I need it to be easy enough that I won’t forget to use it.

Another Aside:

I really like the Death & Dismemberment approach to running out of terminal resources. LINK again. I used it for a West Marches game last year. But it doesn’t work in every scenario… For example, it create a perverse incentive in The Lamb if running out of light forcefully ejects the players from the dungeon they’re trying to escape.

Okay so here it is. Using Necropraxis' overloaded encounter die and light-as-random-encounter-chance from Goblin Punch's encounter stew, simplified as much as possible.

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The fact that the players can't be surprised normally is a feature, IMO. It makes the difference between abusing the minimal light hand wave and actually carrying torches really stark. Plus, you can always make "chance of surprise" a feature of specific monsters. Finally, I like plugging light management into random encounters because they both sources of time-as-tension.

Enter: 5e Light Cantrip

Oh fuck that ruins the whole idea... uh, COMING SOON

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d6 Reasons the players can still see in the dark!
1-5 bioluminescent moss growing on the wall
6 ambient light from somewhere, idk