In my last post, I looked at the history of movement rates in early D&D, covering the products produced in the 1970s. Moving into the 1980s, let's look at the "Basic D&D" line and, at the end of the decade, AD&D Second Edition.
B/X D&D (1981)
The 1981 Basic D&D rules edited by Tom Moldvay and its matching Expert rules edited by David Cook and Steve Marsh maintain the basic hierarchy of movement rates established by AD&D. However, the tracking of time within encounters returns to the 10-second rounds introduced in Holmes Basic D&D (exploration turns continue to be 10 minutes).
All PCs have a base movement rate of 120' per turn, matching AD&D. No distinction is made between any of the PC races. Encumbrance slows PCs as follows:
- Unarmored OR up to 400 coins: 120'
- Leather armor OR 401-600 coins: 90'
- Metal armor OR 601-800 coins: 60'
- Metal armor and carrying treasure OR 801-1600 coins: 30'
- Carrying treasure in addition to wearing armor: Use the movement speed one line lower than normal
This represents a simplified version of AD&D encumbrance system, effectively making detailed weight tracking optional in favor of setting speed by the armor type and a vaguely defined "carrying treasure". For those who wish to track detailed weights, coins continue to be rather enormous at 10 to the pound, as they have been from the very start. The weight thresholds of the different movement speeds differ somewhat from the ones in AD&D, but the same progression of movement rates continues here.
Wandering monsters now occur on a 1 in 6, checked every two turns in the dungeon. This has never been consistent from edition to edition, even though it has a significant impact on the average distance the party can explore between encounters. The fatigue rule (the party must rest 1 turn after 5 turns of exploration) appears yet again.
This exploration movement rate is extraordinarily slow (0.14 mph for an unarmored PC, and as slow as a mere 180' in an hour for a heavily burdened PC!). The Basic rulebook does offer "The DM may wish to allow characters to move faster when travelling through areas they are familiar with." (In AD&D, Gary Gygax explicitly states that a party can move 5 times faster than normal when following a known route.)
Movement in combat per round is the base movement speed divided by three (i.e., 40'/round for an unarmored PC). This turns out to be exactly twice as fast as the combat speed in Holmes Basic or in AD&D. When fleeing a combat, PCs may move at their base movement rate per round (i.e., 60 times faster than the normal dungeon exploration speed!).
This series is mostly concerned with exploration and combat speeds at the dungeon scale, but it's worth pointing out that the Expert rulebook established that in the wilderness, all movement rates are defined in yards rather than feet (i.e., tripled). Somewhat oddly, missile weapon and spell ranges are also tripled (though spell area of effect is not). I believe this rule was also present in AD&D, also not particularly explicitly.
BECMI D&D (1983)
Frank Mentzer's revision and expansion of the B/X rules makes no significant changes to the B/X movement rates, although it adds at speed of 15' for encumbrance of 1601-2400 coins (and therefore expands the maximum carrying capacity from 1600 to 2400 coins). Instead of setting movement rates by armor time, Mentzer suggests that unarmored or leather armored PCs have a base encumbrance of 300 coins, and those wearing metal armor have a base encumbrance of 700 coins. This improves the movement speed for those in leather armor who are otherwise unencumbered by treasure.
AD&D 2e
AD&D Second Edition retains the one minute combat round and ten minute exploration turn from AD&D 1e. However, some significant changes have been made to movement rates.
For the first time since Chainmail, different PC races have different base speeds. Humans, elves, and half-elves have a base speed of 12, while the smaller races of dwarves, halflings, and gnomes have a base speed of 6. These speeds are defined as tens of yards per round outdoors, or tens of feet per round in a dungeon. This essentially replaces the "per turn" exploration rate of previous editions, amounting to a tenfold increase in exploration speed! (An unarmored human walks at 1.36 mph in the dungeon, or 4 mph in clear terrain; these speeds seem much more reasonable than previous exploration rates.)
Encumbrance is explicitly declared an optional rule, which is probably for the best because it is more complicated than ever, with a table mapping Strength scores and weight carried (now in pounds, rather than coins) to an encumbrance level, which reduces movement as it increases. Alternately, another table maps Strength into a very granular scale of carrying capacities, giving a smooth movement rate from 1 to the racial base speed. Incidentally, coins have now shrunk to a much more realistic 50 coins to the pound!
Combat movement is the familiar tens of feet per round. However, the rules state that a PC may only move half their speed and still make a melee attack. This replaces a complex 1e rule in which PCs may not attack on the same round in which they close to melee range except by using a charge, which allows double their movement and an attack but can only be done once per turn, and encumbered PCs may not charge at all.
As far as I can tell, the feet/yards scaling of dungeon/wilderness movement and ranges has been entirely dropped for combat movement.
Wandering monsters (now called random encounters) have been severely reduced in emphasis. The Dungeon Master's Guide provides substantial advice on creating encounter tables and suggests frequencies and chances in different terrain types, and suggests that in a typical dungeon, random encounters happen on a 1 in 10, checked every hour. This is significantly less frequent than the 1 in 6 every 20 minutes of the Basic D&D line!
To Be Continued...
So, at the end of the '80s, where do we stand? AD&D 2e characters are now zipping around the dungeon at 10 times the speed of BECMI characters, but an unarmored and unencumbered human can only move 60' in a 1-minute combat round and still attack, while the equivalent BECMI PC can move twice as fast, covering 20' in 10 seconds. Did any of this minutia factor into the written adventures of the era, when many people freely interchanged AD&D and D&D modules? Very doubtful!
Next time, I will look at the 21st century evolution that occurred in PC movement rates after Wizards of the Coasts acquired D&D from TSR. And finally, we'll wrap up this series by looking at some of the retroclones and "D&D-likes" that have popped up over the years and see whether they diverge from their parent games in this regard.
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