We’ve had a lot of dungeon-crawling in my AD&D campaign. This can be attributed to my love of the form, but also to it being the easiest way of entertaining a group of players whose membership changes from week to week. In the dungeon, you don’t need to be so worried about little details like “plot”, you can just enjoy each encounter as it comes.
Of course, there are times those encounters occur in a corridor. And during those times, the dreaded “marching order” comes up.
Actually, it’s not all that dreaded. It just gives me a chance to make things interesting for the party – although my definition of interesting and theirs might be quite a bit different.
One of the big differences between the game in 3rd edition and the game back in 1st edition relates to game scale. 3rd edition was the first edition of the game to, in the core rules, really integrate the use of miniatures into the game. Along the way, it made a few missteps (such as a 1″x2″ horse that is facing all directions at once…) but its major contribution to the game was cementing the idea that 1 scale inch = five feet in the game world, and that one PC would fill a 1″ round base. This was cemented by the release of D&D Miniatures at the same time that 3.5E was released. All of a sudden, we had easy access to cheap miniatures, all to one scale.
And it wasn’t exactly the same scale as AD&D. In fact, trying to work out what scale AD&D is written for is a bit tricky. AD&D is a descendant of the Chainmail wargame by Gygax and Perrin, and that game was original in a 1 figure = 20 figure scale (at least mostly). Heroes in its “Fantasy Supplement” were represented in a 1 to 1 fashion. By the time we get to AD&D, all of the measurements are in inches – and, for dungeons at least, 1″=10 feet. The DMG talks about HO scale, where 1″=6 feet, but because the bases are broad, we should take 1″=3-1/3 feet. So, a 10′ wide corridor is represented by 3″ on the table top, and three characters can march abreast. (And if you’re using this scale, you’ll have to multiply all ranges by 3 as given in the book…)
The standard size of the NPC party found in the DMG encounter tables is nine characters – with henchmen or men-at-arms rounding out the numbers from the 2-5 main NPCs suggested. I never understood that size when young (wasn’t adventuring done in groups of 4-6?), but when you’re actually running a weekly AD&D game with (often) nine players, and you’re looking to challenge them, you begin to see the point. The group marches around in a group of three rows of three. In the front are the fighters. In the back are more fighters. In the middle are the magic-users who have no business being in melee. And the DM can throw encounters at both the front and the back of the party and they can be protected.
(I’m pretty sure Mike Mornard, the Old Geezer of RPG.net and other places, has posted about this “military formation” wandering around dungeons, but I just can’t find the reference at the moment; if you know the post I’m talking about, I’d appreciate a link!)
Of course, where I say “Fighters” I generally mean “Fighters and Clerics”, the guys who have good armour. And by “Magic-Users” I mean “Magic-Users and Thieves” who have poor armour and hit points. There are days when Rich’s 10th level thief pulls Fighter duty, just because he can survive things much better than anyone else in the dungeon!
Where things get interesting – and by interesting, I mean complicated – is when battle is properly engaged. What does everyone do?
The front rank (or back rank, depending on how nasty I was) has it easy. They’re in melee combat.
The second rank is presumably casting spells.
What do the fighters in the back rank do?
My game has tried a few things. Often the solution is, “do nothing and keep an eye out for more monsters approaching.” This isn’t that great for the players, but – hey – it’s a plan!
Another tactic has been “swap with the second rank and use a long spear to attack”. I generally allow this, without penalties, just so people stay involved. It doesn’t work so well for clerics as they don’t have access to long enough weapons.
The tactic that is most fun is “I fire missiles at the enemy!” Because of the way AD&D (and I) deal with this, unless they’re facing a large opponent, many of their attacks will hit their friends instead. That’s a lot of fun.
The smart tactic is often to hold back, and move forward to reinforce when one of the front rank goes down or is so damaged they need to withdraw.
Running nine characters in the dungeon is a different thing than running only four. And, because I’m not running Paizo adventures, the group don’t have to put up with a lot of 5 foot wide corridors. Hooray!