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| from the first Dungeons & Dragons movie |
This film (below) was shot by friend-of-HeroPress Chris Freeman, with some pals in the storm tunnels under Duluth back in 2007.
Shines a whole different light on underground illumination (pardon the pun) for adventuring parties.
Chris told me: "The thing that surprised me is how little you can see around the torches from far away. I would think that looking at them would light up the area around them, but really it screws your night vision so all you can see are little dots.
"That said, the 3.x D&D rules we found to be pretty spot on what you can see when you're holding a torch.
"Each of us built different torches, ranging [from] birch bark nailed to a piece of wood to oil soaked rags in a holder. None of them lasted..."
Brave of that guy to approach the monster with the flaming eyes.
ReplyDeleteBut as for torches, that video is very illuminating.
Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteKeep in mind that human eyes are a lot better in the dark then video cameras are.
ReplyDelete@ Saroe: Yeah, for a few seconds it looked like a giant skull with flaming eyes.
What's worse than torches is when people in contemporary set films use a lighter to see. It just me cringe.
ReplyDeleteThe human eyes do see a lot better in dark than video cameras, but when you look at a torch (or any light source) you're night-vision gets shot to hell. All you see is the glow of the flame. So, unless the flame is hid behind something, or behind you, forget it.
ReplyDeleteWe did try (not shown in the video) just a candle, to see how far we could get with it.
A little over 1 meter, maybe 1.5, was all you could see in shadows with that. But you could read by it, if you held it very close.
Which was a problem we didn't talk about with the torches in that short video. If you want to read anything book sized, you have to put the torch up near it, which means you're burning what you're reading, your face, or both.
So, if you want to read scrolls, maps, etc. A torch isn't going to cut it. You need a candle for the detail stuff.
If any body has any questions about what we did in there fire away. We spent over an hour in the storm tunnels (that's me on the left briefly at the end of the video).
Dark is sure dark. I've been underground by flashlight and it's a great way to not notice anything you aren't pointing the flashlight at. Torch and candlelight is less dependable.
ReplyDeleteIt's because of stuff like that, that makes underground places perfect for running horror games. http://shortymonster.co.uk/?p=163
DeleteWhich is why I'm always so envious of Labyrinthe - http://www.labyrinthe.co.uk/ - who larp in Chislehurst Caves (http://www.chislehurst-caves.co.uk/) in North Kent.
DeleteI've had some LUSAR (Light Urban Search and Rescue) training. The human eye is surprisingly good at working in low light if you let yourself adapt and aren't in a hurry. We had crappy (but durable! which is important) flashlights, and the instructor had a single LED light on his vest that worked better overall, but it was curious just how well we could see in such poor light.
ReplyDeleteWhen I say crappy flashlight, I mean one that you couldn't see shining on the wall in the training room... but it was totally adequate when actually in the dark house we had our exercises in.
It's not great light, but enough to get around and search for people. I wouldn't want to do detail work with it, such as trying to read anything or look for tiny objects, but for a lot of adventuring you might not really need a lot of light.