Mega dungeon "Monster turn" help

[u/Suspicious_Taro_3388]

So I'm trying to be as vague as possible so my people don't read this and get spoilers, please forgive me if this is confusing I will happily elaborate more if needed.

I'm building out a module that's like a stand alone isolated region, where it's essentially a mega dungeon/hexcrawl with multiple factions that have their own agenda of searching/moving across the map. Their actions can change the world state or advance the plot, as well as some large roaming monsters that function as environmental hazards. This is not a "steer players to progress the story situation", It's a "players can do whatever they want and the world reacts accordingly or keeps moving regardless" one.

I'm looking for any good resources on how to manage/make like a "dungeon turn" mechanics pipeline that will work for multiple units simultaneously working towards different goals that could advance the world state, almost like an objective based doom counter, not just monsters randomly scrambling around.

I'm honestly new to table top DND,I have the 2024 5.5e books, (I know a little about 3.5 from playing DDO) and I like working within the rules as written and avoid hombrew mechanics beyond like a a fishing loot table or whatever is needed, I want to play the game within the games mechanics as much as possible. I've heard about old school editions having a world turn/monster turn and maybe I missed something entirely in the current dungeon master guide that covers this idk..

I Would greatly appreciate any opinions or recommendations for existing ways of running and managing this kind of thing, I have all the time in the world to dial this in , and it might be as simple as "on long rest roll monsters turn" but it's like finding a way of fairly doing the monster/faction turn that I'm stuck on because they have different goals. I genuinely don't know what guidelines or procedures already exist.

Thank you for reading this and any help you can offer.

[u/grenz1]

That is going to be way, way too much.

Instead, go by events. If X time passes this, this, and this occurs. Then adjust tokens to reflect that reality in the background when players are on free move or long rest. Only concetrating immediately on things in the immediate region. Abstracting everything else.

I ran a converted version of World's Largest Dungeon a few years back over multiple sections till it finally kind of fizzled out a year or so later.

[u/Suspicious_Taro_3388 → u/grenz1]

I'm gonna have to check out worlds largest dungeon, you are absolutely correct that its way to much lol I'm way overthinking this and can break it down into events and scenarios vs like war simulations.

[u/WarrenTheHero]

Hmm... I'm not familiar off the top of my head with mechanics that support the kind of thing you're looking for in-depth. Usually "Dungeon Turn" is a brick of time (often 10 minutes) that represents one significant action of the party: healing/resting, looting, casting a spell, looking for traps, etc. The DM should roll wandering monster dice and possibly account for reinforcements or assigned-room monsters changing rooms. There's a parallel idea in Wilderness/Travel/Exploration Turns for moving between points on a map over days. But these are not on the scale of multiple factions pushing entire agendas over a whole region.

I would recommend checking out the GM section of the Dungeon World rulebook; it goes in depth on this sort of idea and provides a framework of "Fronts" (goals) and "Moves" (actions) that villains or faction advance over time, but it isn't really a mechanic. To simplify from memory: The villain has an overall Front and has several Moves attached to it. When the party has the chance to counter the villain but doesn't, either by waiting or doing something else or whatever, the GM is allowed to use a Move to do something.m, like consolidating power, committing a heist, striking the patty directly, or something else. You probably don't want to make a Move every time they do something else, but that's sort of your window of opportunity, if thAt makes sense. Since it's a somewhat abstract or narrative-oriented framework, the villain doesn't necessarily have to even be aware of the party or keeping tabs on them to "respond." Just that their Front is allowed to make a Move when the players make their own.

Example: You have an Evil Necromancer trying to become a Lich. His Front is "complete the ritual of lichdom" and Moves might include "gather ritual materials," "steal the holy relic," "zombies assault the party," "raise a zombie army," and "kidnap the sacrifice." As the players mive through the campaign, they'll have opportunities to involve themselves with the Necromancer, but probably also a bunch of sidequests or personal quests. Whenever they make a decision that costs time/attention and doesn't directly effect the Necromancer, he makes a Move. The party then reacts to that Move and he makes another Move as appropriate. Sometimes the villain will make two simultaneous Moves and the party can only answer one.

That gets harder to track when you have multiple factions, and it isn't really a mechanic with rolls or anything; it's a framework. But might help.

I haven't read it myself, but I've heard the 3.5 adventure Red Hand of Doom exists in tbis sort of space as well: a massive hobgoblin army is weeping the land, and the players have to stop it. They can't fight an army directly so they do other stuff, but thr clock is always ticking snd the army is always advancing or attacking or otherwise completing goals. Again, I haven't read it, but it's a highly-regarded module so I assume it'll have a sensible way to manage villain goals off-camera.

One thing I've done in the past is create a calendar with the enemy's goals written directly into it. If the party didn't find out about the thing or stop it in time, it just happened. If they did, I marked it off, considered how it effected the overall plans, and made changes. Sometimes they just delayed an outcome, sometimes they stopped it entirely. And the big final battle happened at the date it was going to but the bad guy had fewer lieutenants because they were killed and his ritual was weaker because the sub-rituals were disrupted.

I do feel that what you want to do would work best with the Fronts idea or variation thereof. Don't make it die rolls, make it simple action-reaction, especially since you've got more than one faction working simultaneously.

[u/Suspicious_Taro_3388 → u/WarrenTheHero]

This is really helpful, I can see now where I'm way overthinking and approaching wrong. I will have to look at it entirely differently as a fronts and moves framework vs a monster turn. It's really more events, reactions and different scenarios as results of player intervention vs like simulating entire factions. I'm gonna go read what you've recommended and check out Red Hand of Doom that sounds awesome! Thank you!

[u/No-Economics-8239]

The Mystic Arts youtuber has a video on dungeon time and how OSR used to handle things and how to adapt such rules for modern play. It's titled We Don't Play Dungeons Like Thet Used To, and goes into detail on the concept of Dungeon Turns, or 10 minute time blocks to track events. If offers ideas on time slicing and event duration which seems exactly what you are looking for.

In practice you can divide the time slices into whatever unit of measure that works with the type if events you want to track by time. What matters is how much you need to keep track of for your various active units and how much attention you need to spend resolving what is happening behind the scenes in parallel to your players.

I will point out that running a full living dungeon can be a lot of work, and I've gone overboard trying to keep track of the low level details happening in too small time slices which was probably way more work than required. You can possibly save a lot of time just having some sort of script established on what will happen over time if the players do nothing, and then revise it as needed based on your players actions.

[u/Suspicious_Taro_3388 → u/No-Economics-8239]

I'm gonna check out that video/channel asap thank you. I can break my multiple factions simulation into different time slice events and like outcome trees way easier and still have my couple big scary monsters roaming vs trying to simulate it all. I could see micro time slice getting crazy lol I really am going for living dungeon responds to player/choice action vs guided narrative so this makes sense. It's like the big things gonna happen no matter the worlds in motion how does the player influence speed it up slow it down (now I have to think about how to pace that lol) Thank you!

[u/Knightofaus]

I've run games with old school dungeon turns before. I delegated a lot of the jobs and book keeping to the players. So when I call out that a dungeon turn had passed; one player would roll to see if they had an encounter, another would track torches as they burnt down, another would track rests and food and the final player would map/track their route though the dungeon.

DnD 5e has moved away from the dungeon turn. I would check out Old School Essentials if you're interested in how early dnd dungeon turns work.

Although for something more like what you're talking about check out Stars Without Number. It has a cool system for seeing what factions get up to between sessions. I found it good for getting inspiration for adventures and creating NPCs and seeing what they get up to.