When kicking off the Fellmyr game using the BECMI Dungeons & Dragons rules back last year, I was once again perturbed by the rule that, “a single character moves up to 120′ per turn in a dungeon-like setting”. Even though the rules assume actions such as mapping and peeking around corners, it always seemed too slow. Until yesterday.

While on a trip to Wales, we visited the Great Orme Bronze Age Copper Mines and took the self-directed tour through a section 200 metres long in the ancient mines that delves 18 metres deep. It’s basically 2 levels of narrow mine tunnels made safe to walk through and lit with periodic electric lamps. It took us about 20 minutes moving with little caution.

What struck me was the experience of walking through narrow mines in shadowy light. These passages were about a couple of feet wide, narrow enough that you had to twist a little as you moved through. We were never at risk in these safe tourist tunnels but the sense of what it might be like in a dungeon was real.

We moved at about 300 feet in ten minutes (1 turn). But we weren’t mapping and we weren’t checking for traps. There were no monsters (unless you count other tourists) in those tunnels. The footing was safe and the route was essentially known. For me, that seemingly arbitrary 120′ movement rate was brought home as being perhaps not entirely arbitrary.

The best thing was experiencing for myself the sensations of being inside a narrow mine-working with a helmet on your head and having to crouch or bump it on more than one occasion. Where the condensate runs on the walls and you put your hands on damp cold stone. The air is around 5 to 8 degrees centigrade even in summer.

It was enough to give me an experience I will always cherish. It also had me thinking that moving at even 1 metre (3 feet) per second is perhaps an ask in an unknown subterranean location where monsters might be lurking. If I had to lug a torch or lantern in one hand and a sword or axe in the other then I would be going slow. And no shields in those tunnels.

Encumbrance, it seems to me, is more than just the weight.

Game on!