Movement Speeds and Dungeoneering

    Unfortunately, OSR has a bit of a problem in its dungeoneering rules. As Delta points out in this blog post, the source material for OD&D (Chainmail) used 1 minute turns in 1:1 combat, but a mistake was made moving things over to the new game giving us the 10 minute turn. The two most notable issues this causes is that spells last significantly longer than they were balanced for and that adventurers explore dungeons incredibly slowly (120 ft per 10 minutes is about 0.14 mph).

    The naive solution to this is to simply revert back to using 1 minute turns as should have been done originally. While this does solve both of the main problems of the 10 minute turn, it also has the unfortunate side effect of entirely breaking the dungeoneering rules which heavily rely on a 10 minute turn. After all, it would be a little strange to be checking for encounters every 3 minutes and resting for 1 minute out of every 6. Never mind the horrors that result if you were attempting to overload the encounter die and have it track light usage or anything else.

    The next best solution is two part: put spell durations in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, etc. and increase the movement speed of adventurers. The first handily removes the duration of spells from any unintentional monkeying around with round or turn times or terminology confusion. The second, however, requires a bit more thought. 

    Charitably, adventurers could be considered to move at 0.5 mph when creeping around cautiously. In a 10 minute turn, this would equate to 440 ft. This is several times faster than what was originally listed, but it is still within the realm of usability. Counting out 40 squares as the party crosses them, however, is definitely pushing that boundary. Any faster than that (such as a walking pace of 2.5 mph) and it quickly becomes pointless. In many dungeons, travelling 40 squares will cross almost the entire map. The odds that the players do all that without being interrupted by anything are slim to none.

    Thus, we get to a nuclear option: stop tracking movement speed. It certainly sounds worse than it is, but remember that in a non-empty dungeon with players who are interacting with the environment most of the time spent adventuring will come from searching the environment, combat, and resting. With slower (and more ridiculous) movement rates you will lose several turns in the time tracking, but with a larger movement speed you might lose a few which might translate to a single random encounter check.

    Of ignoring the problem, switching to a 1 minute turn, and increasing movement speeds past the point of being worth tracking, there aren't any solutions I would call "the obvious answer". Many people are perfectly content ignoring the ludicrously slow movement speed in dungeons and some people are fine with ditching most of the dungeoneering rules. I personally think that ditching those rules did a disservice to later editions of D&D, which makes me lean toward the third option. Still, it isn't winning my heart and I would be interested in hearing other people's thoughts on the matter.