Dungeon Turns are Cool

I can’t remember where I was re-introduced to dungeon turns but I’m so glad I was. (I’d cite the source if I could find it.)

They were originally used in 1e and BX but disappeared later. I’m not sure when they disappeared. It happened during my 30-year break, during which I completely forgot about them. So when I came into 5e, I was running games without them.

Let me describe what they are. Unlike a combat turn, in which a character moves and/or takes actions within a 6-second round, a dungeon turn is roughly 10 minutes of game time. They’re very handy for keeping track of time for when PCs are doing almost anything other than combat. Need to know what time it is? How many dungeon turns went by? Yeah, it’s been enough time and the characters can take a short rest. Or maybe it’s time to roll for a random encounter!

But how do you know 10 minutes have passed in game time? It’s a generalized guess at how long any number of activities take, assuming that, over the long term, they average out to 10 minutes. The DM can decide any number of activities will take roughly a dungeon turn to do. Common ones are:

• Searching a small room for traps or secret doors
• Searching a short length of corridor for the same
• Picking a lock
• Casting certain spells
• Real-time RP discussion that lasts 10-ish minutes
• Set traps
• etc.

Really, though, almost anything PCs can do to fill up that time.

You can even establish initiative for dungeon turns! Mind you, everything happens simultaneously during a dungeon turn. I just find initiative handy for providing an organized order for me to check in with the players about what their characters are doing. Initiative isn’t useful or efficient for PCs just walking down corridors but it IS handy when they’ve stopped to do something as it’s reasonable that they won’t all be doing the same thing for roughly 10 minutes.

But that PC movement in corridors is still useful for establishing how many dungeon turns may have happened during that movement! In the PHB, on pg. 182, there’s a handy table showing general movement distances over minutes, hours, days… but we’re only interested in minutes here. A PC can move:

• Fast: 400’/minute (-5 to passive perception checks)
• Normal: 300’/minute
• Slow: 200’/min (can use stealth)

Have the characters, just walking around and not using ACTIVE perception or investigation and not tapping every brick with a 10′ pole, walked 10x the above speeds? That’s a dungeon turn. Obviously, you’d just kinda’ make reasonable guesses at how far they’ve gone. It definitely wouldn’t be good for you or game flow to bother actually counting out all the squares to figure this out. You’d just look at how far they’ve gone and guess, “Yeah, that looks like a turn would’ve gone by,” and then rolled for a random encounter. It’s to help you keep track of time.

By the way, if the characters are being really careful and searching for traps and secret doors and there are seams in the floor and misshapen bricks on the walls and ceiling where trap triggers could hide and spots for little darts to come flying out… this goes back to how thoroughly searching a small room can take 10 minutes…so can searching a short-ish length of corridor. The characters are not just moving “slow”…they’re barely moving within that timeframe. As a DM, I think of this movement in terms of 20′ to 30′ per dungeon turn. But don’t play that out. They make their perception checks and all is good for maybe 50′ or 100′. You might mark down 3 dungeon turns, but don’t slow down the game to play out all those “searching the corridor” turns.

Anyway, I really, really like using them. I’ve found them very handy for being able to tell the players they’re getting hungry, that they can take a short or long rest, that it’s still morning, etc. I’d love to tell them their torches are burning out but they all have darkvision these days…

I hope you find the dungeon turn handy, too!

If you can think of more ways to use a dungeon turn, please put it in the comments.