Out of combat movement in dnd

[Funt]

New to dming and was curious how people do player movement out of combat on maps that are big enough for it. Like for example, in Cragmaw hideout in Lost Mines of Phandelver. Do you just have them move freely until they encouter something? Or is there other ways I could handle it?

[Wowie]

In games I run there's generally 3 modes myself and the players recognize:

Free move - no danger, no rules enforced for movement or number of actions
Loose - some danger (or time-sensitive intrigue!), loose turns are followed and players are expected to only perform a short series of actions before letting another player/group of players act, but initiative isn't rolled yet
Combat time - high danger, full combat rules enforced

Sometimes there will even be a stage between 2 and 3 where initiative is rolled, but things haven't *quite* broken into outright combat, but such a "guns drawn" occurrence is rare. What you should take away from this, is that it works well to treat player freedom as a slider rather than a switch, and then use the appropriate "level" of freedom for the situation at hand. I'm not familiar with the situation in question, but adopting some level of "exploration time" should help you keep things organized without completely restricting your players.

[Funt]

Thanks for the reply, I was meaning more of do I just let people move their figures where ever until someone comes in sight of an enemy? Or should I do turn orders still? Just not sure how to do it in a 3D environment. I'm used to a hand drawn map and saying 'we walk through the corridor' lol.

[Natheus]

It really depends on your style of Dming. Ive seen every number of ways to do it. Some DMs like to have very precise turn movements and will have initiatives rolled through the entire campaign. Others dont enforce any turn orders and just like to free form until a need for turns presents itself. While another DM might use a combination of the 2. It really all depends on how you want to run your campaign and what your players are expecting out of the campaign.

[Funt]

Oh cool, I'll give those a shot and see what works for us. My PC's are also new to TTS as well so we'll just experiment

[SaltyO]

You can just go light rules with longer movement where it will be some time before action takes place -- Take a system like 13th Age. Many DMs will just have "montages" or cut scenes, which can be dealt with in tons of different ways, since the idea is to move the story along. If you want to run a really tactical game where every hex must be crawled, there's solutions to that as well. There's really no reason to have figurine movement when tactical or spatial matters are not immediately necessary to know about, imo. If you're talking about lulls between action in say a dungeon environment, where there's 100 meters before the next thing, this could just be resolved with some imagination. Move them to the next point of interest but have a random roll on a table, a bump in the night or obstacle check, or introduce a Complication resulting from some other failure in the story or previous encounter. For instance, the carrion crawler tore open the party's packs, sending days of rations spilling into the ooze, now as you load up the next thing they are thinking of a new problem to deal with. Something like that.