On Light

I played a short game of D&D this weekend with some good friends (OD&D with OED interpretations). Played very well with 2 first-time players, my beginner-level girlfriend, and an almost 30-year veteran at the table (who gave me a great compliment about his suprise at how well the game worked sans clerics).

One thing that popped up is how far a torch illuminates, which isn't specified in OD&D. I started researching this, comparing across different rulesets, and the results were interesting. Partly this will be a critique about how games evolve towards greater abstraction over time, from realistic beginnings to nonsensical endings. It seems that the inertia, the infatuation with the game system itself takes over and late-version designers wind up working in an echo chamber. (And it's not just D&D: I've seen the exact same thing happen at games I worked on at a few video game companies. Perhaps it's true for other media as well, like books, TV, and movies.)

Question: How far does a torch let you see in reality? Consider this snippet from a Scientific American Supplement: "Torches consist of a bundle of loosely twisted threads which has been immersed in a mixture formed of two parts, by weight, of beeswax, eight of resin, and one of tallow. In warm, dry weather, these torches when lighted last for two hours when at rest, and for an hour and a quarter on a march. A good light is obtained by spacing them 20 or 30 yards apart." This indicates a bare minimum radius of visible illumination of 30 feet (half of 20 yards), maybe 45 feet (half 30 yards); possibly even 60 or 90 feet (20 or 30 yards itself) depending on how liberal the above usage of "good" is taken.

Question: How far does a torch let you see in D&D? In OD&D, the issue is seemingly not addressed; without directly comparing them to torches, the light spell is given a 3" radius, and the continual light spell a 12" radius (ostensibly 30 and 120 feet). In the AD&D 1E PHB a torch is given a 40-foot radius (p. 102, quite compatible with the research above), and the light spell is described this way: "The light thus caused is equal to torch light in brightness, but its sphere is limited to 4” in diameter." (Note that the second clause highlights the fact that while brightness is torch-like, the range of the magic spell is distinctly and intentionally shorter: just a 20-foot radius.) The continual light spell is reduced to a 6" radius, yet "its brightness is very great, being nearly as illuminating as full daylight".

Let's skip ahead to 3E D&D. Clearly some designer wanted to synchronize all of these effects and make them identical, a pretty reasonable motivation. If a light spell has been compared to a torch, why not make it equivalent to a torch in all ways, for brevity's sake? Well, the problem arises when this late-era designer doesn't do any research, and takes as his basis (looking solely from inside the rules) the effect of the magic light spell, and revises the effect of the mundane torch to match it. Thus in 3E you have both normal torches and the various light spells illuminating only a 20-foot radius.

Now, not only is the 20-foot radius torch unrealistic (whereas it formerly was), it's also extremely awkward from a gameplay perspective. The torch bearer only lights up 4 spaces (3E) away; routinely you'll have the front-line party member in darkness, or the front-most enemy in direct melee unsightable, or the extent of most rooms indeterminable during routine exploration, if you adjudicate this literally. (Now in 3.5E both light sources were given a new rules category of "shadowy illumination from 20 to 40 feet", but don't even get me started about trying to adjudicate that.)

The truth is that I'd recently been looking at the 3E SRD spells listing with its 20-foot radius torch, and so made a similar ruling in my game this weekend, and did get a look of disbelief from at least one of my players at the awkwardly short range of the party's light. And, I see now, he was right (in both realism and gameplay), my being led astray by late-era D&D rules-mechanic navel-gazing. At this point I have half a mind to say that torches give "good enough" light up to 60 feet away, illuminating most rooms in their entirety, and just using a whole 12" ruler (at 1"=5 feet) if we ever need to check it in play.

A rule-of-thumb I discovered over 10 years ago at one of my game programming jobs, and refreshed at times later on (even while building miniature models not long ago): If stumped by a particular design problem, ask yourself "What solution is used in the real-life situation?" In my experience, the answer is usually immediately applicable as a solution in your game rules. I'd guess that only a fetish for over-abstraction in a game would lead one away from this principle. I'll say again that we don't want realism-for-realism sake (see DMG p. 9), but for pre-existing gameplay problems, it often provides the most elegant fix.

There's other stuff about the interaction of light in published D&D that's bugged me over time (like the effect of the darkness spell, SKR's absurd-but-successful rant "infravision and why it should be destroyed" in 3E, etc.) That may have to wait for another posting.