Quite a few years ago I was running a D&D 3.0 game with a great group of gamers. I was running Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil by Monte Cook, and we were having a hoot with the adventure. Partway through the module, a Dragon article came out (I think it was Dragon…) that had a crazy idea in it: retreat forward. The concept goes like this:

If you are sure to win the current fight and most of the enemies are down, there’s no sense in the entire party dogging on the remaining 2-3 enemies. A fighter-type should take on the remainders and the rest of the party should go ahead and open up the next door to see what’s there and move into it to take on the next challenge.

Sounds crazy, right? Well, in a way it is because you really don’t know what’s through the next door. However, if the group is powerful enough to handle the next door (or two, or three) then it really speeds up the rate at which the group can move through a dungeon.

In this case, the party took the idea to heart. If memory serves there were a series of five rooms with #1 leading to #2 and #3, and #2 leading to #4 and #5. I’d draw you a map if I had time. The group blasted through room #1 and before the last of the undead fell, they opened the doors to room #2 and #3 and assaulted the undead and the evil clerics waiting for them. I gave them a full round of surprise since the Bad Guys didn’t have a chance to hear and react to the combat on the other side of the doors. Before room #2 was cleared, they opened the doors to #4 and #5 as well and “invited” the Bad Guys in those rooms to join the fray. About this time room #1 was totally cleared and the fighter was able to join the fight in room #3.

So now, I had two combats going on in the party. Room #3 was in full melee, and room #2 contained all of the Bad Guys from rooms #2, #4 and #5. Room #3 fell quickly, and the characters in that room raced around the corner to join the fun in room #2. The large battle in room #2 was pure chaos, but the party eventually prevailed. It seemed that the Bad Guys really were hog-tied by the mass of bodies. They couldn’t let loose with their area affect spells for fear of hitting their own people and the party had many targets of opportunity (not attacks of opportunity, mind you) because of the large crush of bodies arrayed before them.

This sounds like a major headache for any GM. I suppose it could be if the GM were not prepared for the actions and didn’t know what was behind the next doors. Shame on the GM if he’s not prepared and hasn’t read the next several sections of his adventure that he has in hand.

How did I handle this as GM? Quite easily it turned out. As new doors were opened and new Bad Guys entered the fray, I rolled their initiative and added them the to order in the right spot. We marched through the initiative order and everything went well. It really helped that I was prepared and knew the stat blocks of all of the Bad Guys well, and the players knew their character’s abilities inside and out. There was very little delay as new Bad Guys were added to the order, and the character’s were scattered through the initiative well enough that I didn’t have to do 3-4 Bad Guys in a row before it was another player’s turn. This allowed me a small breather as each player came up to plan for the next door to be opened and pull up the proper stat blocks in my photocopied notes.

Another thing that helped was that I had read the Dragon article as well, and had been warned via email by several of the players that they were going to do this. Had they sprung it on me without warning, I may have been in deeper water, but I think I would have handled it fairly well in the end.

One final note: We had a blast that night! Not only did the group clear out five rooms in the span of thirty minutes, they had a great haul of loot to go with it. Due to the speed at which they “retreated forward” we cleared Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in about six months of weekly game play. Not too bad.