In my last post, I dropped a DM Cheat Sheet in Appendix D but I never actually explained how to use it.
You are of course free to use it however you wish, but here's how it looks when I've had a chance to fill it out. The format is [room]-[Underclock].
S Searching a room for 10 minutes.
L Eating lunch for 30 minutes.
X Random encounter triggered.
"1-0" means that they were in room 1 and the Underclock was equal to 0.
"2-0" means that they were in room 2 and the Underclock was still equal to 0.
They didn't light a torch until they returned to room 2 at 0:30. Since torches last for 1 hour, you can see them relighting a new torch at 1:30 and and 2:30. (Most buffs also default to 1 hour.)
At 1:40, the Underclock finally triggered a random encounter.
From 1:50 to 2:20, they ate lunch.
The nice thing about tracking time like this is that it makes it easy to draw a wander map that shows where the party wandered through the dungeon, which is nice for DM notes and write-ups.
I even added an "X" and an "L" to the map for the random encounter and the lunch. You could probably add timestamps if you wanted a more comprehensive wander map. (I sometimes make these after sessions. I just think they're neat little artifacts.)
Hi Arnold! I’d love to know why you changed your the mechanic of the underclock from 20-d6 with encounters at 0 to adding 6s on 6d6 with encounters at 12. I’m fairly new to this and I’m trying to figure out what to implement in my home game to spice up random encounters. Thanks!
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