Pathfinder 2E Exploration mode discussion

[kenada]

I have done similar, though less nautical, things with my kingmaker game that have ran quite well. As long as the time pressure is localized and not fighting against the central theme of the adventure, time pressure isn’t a bad thing. It’s a bad thing when the goals of taking your time and using random encounters/elements to build narrative (the central premise of the hexcrawl) are in conflict to the time-pressure provided by the overarching narrative. If they are in direct conflict you will constantly hear the players say things like ‘why are we doing this, when the world ends in x days’ or ignoring the end of the world thing to systematically explore a swamp that is nowhere near the location they need to go to stop it. Hopefully, that makes sense.

I pretty much agree with this. You can do it, but make sure to include rumors about the evil event in the default rumor tables, so the PCs have an opportunity to learn about the problem and decide what to do about it (if anything). If they do decide to get involved, that will pivot the campaign away from a pure hexcrawl, but the hex map will still be useful for adjudicating travel. Additionally, in that case, you’ll want to make sure there are enough clues (rumors, etc) scattered about to keep them working towards the right goal.

 

[dave2008]

Exploration mode is one of the best features of PF2e for me: a turn based mode for exploring the environment! So I figured I would start a thread about it so people will talk about it (hopefully I get some discussion on this very niche topic ).

Some starter thoughts:

1. While listening to actual plays I noticed that people actually name the exploration activities that they are using (I.e. they are going to take the ‘scout’ action) while I don’t think my players even know the name of the activities at all: they describe to me their actions, I respond with any limitations or request for clarification, and I choose what action that they have taken (sometimes I have several options to choose between). Does anyone else do it that way?

2. For the OSR people/old timers. Did AD&D 2e have a similar mode? I know it had ten minute turns in combat (as opposed to its one minute rounds), but did it have them out of combat? Was this dropped from the line at some point or am I just misremembering things in my advanced age?

3. I find that exploration mode works well with explicit time pressure. For example the tide is rising and when the water gets too high the ship you are salvaging will be broken apart. Then I put an water rising tracker on the table and when it reaches certain levels I have bad things happen (I stole this from the forbidden island board game btw). Does anyone else have any scenarios/hacks like this where they think exploration mode really shines?

4. What games do you want to run that do interesting things or you think would highlight the mode? Personally I want to run a conversion of the warhammer adventure “Rough Night at Three Feathers” since I think that it would really help with both timed events and spotlight management. I also want to run a race to a lost city with mechanics roughly similar to those in the dungeon #176 Cross-City-Race adventure (except totally different - I just like the structure of the race). Speaking of Cross-City-Race adventure, I think it would be really fun to play in pathfinder 2e.

I haven't the chance to play PF2e yet, but as I DM the exploration mode options was on of the things I was think about porting to my 5e games. I would be interested in hearing how it works. Thank you for starting this thread.

 

[!DWolf]

I don’t call it out in my procedure (since that’s behind-the-scenes stuff, and this is part of the house rules document I provide to players), but random encounters are content generators. When I roll a lair encounter, I add that to the key for my hex map. This helps keep travel always interesting (because there’s always a chance you’ll discover something new). In theory, that’s in addition to having every hex keyed. In practice, keying my map is still a work in progress. I have most of the area around the NE peninsula keyed, but I got lazy due to the dungeoncrawl that broke out, so I lapsed on keying it regularly before getting back on it over the last few weeks.

My adventure is set on an island that I eventually want the pcs to leave so I need my random encounters to exhaust content. You of course are running a proper hexcrawl so you want to add content.

There are a couple of things here. On one hand, I want to have a travel procedure for settlements because I want to reinforce an immersive style of play. Instead of just “you go to town and sell 37000 longswords you looted”, it’s the players describing how they load up their cart, travel the road into town, down past the enclaves and the warehouses to the crafting district where Hammer Joe makes shop, and how he looks up from his anvil to greet them, but his expression turns to dismay at the damage the PCs want to do to the town’s sword economy.

This is extremely similar to what I want to do: specifically my players are going to stop briefly in a city on the way to somewhere else. There they will probably need to engage in local politics, gather supplies, do research, hire hirelings, and the rest of the usual stuff. But I want to make the city come alive both descriptively (which I can do) and mechanically (which I’m not so sure about). The later is not strictly necessary but I feel that the underlining exploration mechanics set the tone for a game. My current plan is to build an actual, if small, urban-crawl but only run it for a short time before the players have to head out into the wilderness again (probably leaving many hooks unexplored). Hopefully, if my plan works, switching from content reducing to content generating encounters combined with giving them more hooks than what they know what to do with, will result in a stark contrast between the two sections: giving my players a sense of the city simply through the change in mechanics.

And if we ever get that far; I want to switch up the mechanics again to basically a race through the wilderness with multiple competing factions. This one is still a long ways away so I haven’t thought about it throughly. It will probably involve victory points.

Then finally, I am going to finish with a mega dungeon. That’s my plan anyways. Sorry I sort of rambled on.

 

[kenada]

Then finally, I am going to finish with a mega dungeon. That’s my plan anyways. Sorry I sort of rambled on.

No worries. Always interesting to see what people are doing.

Good luck with the megadungeon! I’m having fun with mine, but I sometimes wonder I bit off a little too much. However, I totally don’t want to back down or cut corners just to make it easier to write everything up. Now if only my floors would stop getting larger every time I design the next one … (Part A of the 2nd floor has 45 keyed areas. Part C is looking like it’s going to have 60 or so).

 

[!DWolf]

I haven't the chance to play PF2e yet, but as I DM the exploration mode options was on of the things I was think about porting to my 5e games. I would be interested in hearing how it works. Thank you for starting this thread.

Your welcome:
There are many ways in which exploration mode is used. I use it for overland travel and local area exploration, switching between the two and encounter mode dynamically. Exploration mode has basically a mechanical interface for switching to encounter mode that works pretty well.

Let me give you an example of how it works in practice for me. The players are F, V, D, Sh, and Sc. They have recently reached safety from a strange skull headed monster in a hunting lodge. This is a horror themed game.
GM: okay next turn, you only have about 6 turns before sunset, you have secured the door, and the snow is still falling, what are you going to do? (I go around the table from me clockwise)
F: I am going to head upstairs and see if anyone is there and make sure all the windows are secure.
V: I’m going to use detect magic.
D: I’m going upstairs with F so he doesn’t get killed again.
Sh: I’m going to go to the kitchen and see what supplies there are, and try to get the fires going if there is any wood.
Sc: I’m going to look at the books in the library to see if they have any information on the snow monster.

I then go through and resolve the actions in the most interesting order for me. I might, for example, start with V who detects magic from the library, then transition to Sc and resolve his action in the library (interacting with a research subsystem most likely). If necessary I drop into encounter mode: lets say, for example, that F and D find a creepy doll upstairs that is actually a monster. When that happens I look at the exploration mode actions that hook into the encounter mode and choose the most appropriate one. They are probably Searching so they get free seek actions to seek, potentially spotting it before it attacks. If they call for help I will let the other characters enter the combat if I think they can hear them or if they retreat to them. Once combat is over I transition back to exploration mode.

Travel mode is basically the same, except turns are longer and the party tends to stick together more. Behind the scenes I have a hex based movement system setup so I can easily determine how far the party travels (they don’t know about the hexes) and if anything interesting happens. If something interesting does happen, they find a mangled and frozen corpse for instance, I switch down to local area exploration mode.

Note: I am omitting a lot of narration here, this is just the bare bones structure. I generally try to limit discussion based on turn length - overland I allow a lot, while area exploration I allow less.

Edit: added note and joke.

 

[kenada]

Today was the first time we got to do overland exploration in about ten sessions. Actually, looking at some old notes in roll20, it’s probably closer to twelve or more sessions. I’m posting because I wanted to follow up on the house rules I posted.

The wilderness exploration stuff went pretty well. I had a mistake in my notes, so I used old (too high) random encounter DCs, but it otherwise went fine. The party went northeast after spending some time in town, then they ended up wandering east before doubling back along the coast to the west (because they ran into a swap to the east and decided that was too scary). Framing it as a kind of (group) exploration activity was a little confusing at first, but the players caught on quickly.

We had one moment where we needed to zoom in a bit. I’d rolled a random encounter with a brontosaurus. It was in the middle of a badlands, and I failed my roll for it to be undead, so I decided just having a fight with it would be stupid. Instead, they found a wounded one. For that, we just switched right over to standard exploration activities. The transition went pretty naturally (with my rolling wandering monsters every two turns like normal).

One guy was scared something was going to happen, so he hid (Avoid Notice) before deciding to stay behind his shield (Defend) when he came out of hiding. The wizard had his familiar his familiar fly around (Scout). The champion tried to figure out what’d critically injured the dinosaur (Investigate). Eventually, the champion healed up the brontosaurus, and they got on their way, but not before the wizard’s familiar caught a glimpse of a creature with glowing eyes watching them from a tunnel a little ways off.

We also did a bit of urbancrawling. The party started out wanting to learn more about the area where they were going to explore, but I ended up just winging it. I think the timescale I have in my notes is too long. However, keeping things at the PCs level while they traveled the city (even if it’s just a montage as they know where they’re going) let me reveal little details as they went. That’s great for helping make it seem more real.

I was really down on it when I first heard about it, but exploration mode is easily one of my favorite parts of the game. It integrates so well with an old-school way of running the game, and it lets us still get all the benefits of the system for doing exploration stuff.

 

[!DWolf]

Thanks for the update! I too ran a game today (my jungle game) and it worked much better than last time which was dominated by a severe level fight made extremely difficult by very bad rolls and poor tactics. This time the party did much better with the wizard annihilating a severe encounter pretty much by himself in three turns (he did 46 combined damage with a widened burning hands and finished the job with a couple of produce flames, the rest of the party joked that he just needed them to carry his stuff) and another severe encounter saw the party use their lore skills (labor lore to shore up tunnel bracing and creating a winch system to act as a crude elevator) and player smarts (one of the fighters correctly deduced the entire structure of the mini dungeon from a single clue - which was actually erroneous as he had mistaken ghoul claw marks for giant rat claw marks) to greatly reduce the difficulty. Then the cleric just explode a ghoul with a critical disrupt undead while the fighters murderated another- I was actually worried about killing a character in this one because it took place in water and paralysis + drowning + cave ins could’ve nasty, but only one of the fighters actually took any damage and he aced every save.

Some things I noticed:

• I recently listened to a GREAT GM video about pacing where he advised switching gears every 20-30 minutes or so to keep things interesting. I found this worked very well with switching between travel mode (3 to 4 hour turns), 10 minute exploration mode (or rp mode when there was no danger), and encounter mode. The game never stagnated as the different modes kept things fresh (contrasted with the last session which was dominated by a very long fight).
• We didn’t play in our usual room which was being remodeled and I couldn’t see a clock in the other room (for fortune points and to know when to wrap up the session) so I had one player remind me periodically of the time. At the same time the most common question during travel mode was what time was it (so they could decide when to retreat to their base camp). I figure next time I will make a little freestanding dial with all the watches on it and charge a player with keeping it updated. For the night modes I can even put who’s on watch on it.
• 1 minute and 10 minute exploration mode are great for keeping up tension: the players see that there is something important because time is being tracked and they know that combat could be just around the corner. I have a ‘horror narration’ style I use when things get spooky, but I didn’t think to combine the two until after the session. I defiantly will next time.
• For feedback the players told me that they like all the decisions they get to make in exploration mode. Made my day
• I feel that I am not getting enough jungle flavor, for next time I am going to retool the random encounter system to add flavor encounters (screeching monkeys, insect clouds, strange bird songs, etc.) to try and bring out more of the environment.

We also did a bit of urbancrawling. The party started out wanting to learn more about the area where they were going to explore, but I ended up just winging it. I think the timescale I have in my notes is too long. However, keeping things at the PCs level while they traveled the city (even if it’s just a montage as they know where they’re going) let me reveal little details as they went. That’s great for helping make it seem more real.

What timescale are you using? I’m designing an urban crawl for the next part of the adventure and I was thinking of using two hour turns.

I was really down on it when I first heard about it, but exploration mode is easily one of my favorite parts of the game. It integrates so well with an old-school way of running the game, and it lets us still get all the benefits of the system for doing exploration stuff.

I am less old school than you but I totally agree with this. To me it feels like they really got what makes games fun to run for me and gave it some mechanical support.

 

[kenada]

I recently listened to a GREAT GM video about pacing where he advised switching gears every 20-30 minutes or so to keep things interesting. I found this worked very well with switching between travel mode (3 to 4 hour turns), 10 minute exploration mode (or rp mode when there was no danger), and encounter mode. The game never stagnated as the different modes kept things fresh (contrasted with the last session which was dominated by a very long fight).

Hmm, neat. I’m kind of curious how my sessions break down. There’s a good bit of back and forth, so it doesn’t feel like the pacing is too bad.

We didn’t play in our usual room which was being remodeled and I couldn’t see a clock in the other room (for fortune points and to know when to wrap up the session) so I had one player remind me periodically of the time.

In-person gaming? I’m envious. We’re stuck on roll20.

At the same time the most common question during travel mode was what time was it (so they could decide when to retreat to their base camp). I figure next time I will make a little freestanding dial with all the watches on it and charge a player with keeping it updated. For the night modes I can even put who’s on watch on it.

What’s your travel procedure like? You described using several different timescales, so do the PCs not have a good idea how long they’ve been traveling?

I feel that I am not getting enough jungle flavor, for next time I am going to retool the random encounter system to add flavor encounters (screeching monkeys, insect clouds, strange bird songs, etc.) to try and bring out more of the environment.

I’m a big fan of random encounters as content generators.

What timescale are you using? I’m designing an urban crawl for the next part of the adventure and I was thinking of using two hour turns.

I’d call it prototypical at this point, so there’s no formal timescale (just winging it). Based on how things went yesterday, somewhere between ten and twenty minutes would work. What I have in my posted procedure is way too long. I don’t think I’ve ever actually used it.

I am less old school than you but I totally agree with this. To me it feels like they really got what makes games fun to run for me and gave it some mechanical support.

Yup, though I feel I should add that I’ve never actually played a D&D prior to 3e (other than Baldur’s Gate).

I never got into the 3e balance culture stuff (just not really plugged into it at the time), so it’s just not a thing I really care about. I ended up being pretty heavily influenced by blogs like Grognardia and (of course) the Alexandrian. My current exploration procedure has some OSE influence, and Apocalypse World is the source of my agenda and principles.

 

[!DWolf]

What’s your travel procedure like? You described using several different timescales, so do the PCs not have a good idea how long they’ve been traveling?

Spoiler: “Travel Procedure”

Maps: I have two maps; the first is a keyed map with a hex grid on it and the other is a large map with an outline of the area.

Watches Each day is divided into eight watches of 3 hours each. The last three watches are night watches and the third watch is too hot for characters without heat resistance to do anything.

Random encounters: I roll these for five days prior to each session. 1d12 per watch. 1 = random encounter, roll 1d6:

1. Lair (trigger nearest monster lair, if lair already cleared then no encounter.
2. Lair
3. Clue (point to nearby location of interest)
4. Monster (uses chart in module)
5. Monster
6. Camp (DC 10 flat check, adjusted for camp concealment rating)

Travel speed: Travel speed is based on how people are traveling. Traveling on a trail is base speed (6 hexes per watch), through the jungle is half speed (3 hexes per watch). Traveling cautiously or trailblazing is also at half speed (cumulative to 1.5 hexes per watch, round up of necessary).

Expeditions Each day the PCs start at camp (usually base camp).

1. The PCs decide if they want to go on an expedition or stay at camp. The characters of absent players always stay at base camp.
2. The players tell me their travel plans and how they are traveling.
3. I look at the hexmap and determine how far they get until they find something interesting (Random encounter/Keyed hex). When that happens I downshift into encounter (10 min or 1 min depending on the proximity of danger) or rp mode.
4. when the encounter is over we go back to travel mode.
5. at the end of the day the characters either made it back to base camp or must camp in the jungle.

The issue that I am having is that when I move things on the big map, I only indicate the passage of time once (when something interesting occurs) and I am quite bad at indicating the time when I reset the scene in step 4. I figure using a wheel will visually indicate to the players the passage of time as they travel and also remind me to mention it when I reset the scene.

Yup, though I feel I should add that I’ve never actually played a D&D prior to 3e (other than Baldur’s Gate).

I never got into the 3e balance culture stuff (just not really plugged into it at the time), so it’s just not a thing I really care about. I ended up being pretty heavily influenced by blogs like Grognardia and (of course) the Alexandrian. My current exploration procedure has some OSE influence, and Apocalypse World is the source of my agenda and principles.

AD&D 2e was my first game (I actually bought the Monsterous Manual first because I liked the pictures - the invisible stalker picture is a classic btw) but I didn’t play that much of it. Picked up shadowrun 2e (on a trip to Seattle!) and that was the game I most played (also 3e), from there I transitioned to Eclipse Phase, Chronicles of Darkness, etc. I only got back into fantasy (and started really GMing) when I moved across the country and couldn’t find a game to play other than pathfinder 1e. My travel procedure is a result of me looking at the book and a lot of trial and error and listening to a lot of how to gm videos to pick up modifications and tips.

 

[kenada]

The issue that I am having is that when I move things on the big map, I only indicate the passage of time once (when something interesting occurs) and I am quite bad at indicating the time when I reset the scene in step 4. I figure using a wheel will visually indicate to the players the passage of time as they travel and also remind me to mention it when I reset the scene.

Thanks for sharing. It helps contextualize.

At first I wondered whether the (presumably) small hexes are enough of a bookkeeping hassle that they were distracting you from conveying e.g., how long they traveled, but if your travel speeds are already hex-based, then maybe not.

Visually depicting watches reminds me of the tension dice thing Angry GM does. You preroll your random encounter checks, so just dumping them in a dish or whatever for the players to see wouldn’t really work, but maybe there’s a way of tying it all together. That could just be what you’re proposing: having a visual flag of the current watch.

One thing that has helped me develop the habit of communicating how far the group has traveled is having a player who likes mapping. He keeps his own hex map, which is similar to mine but not exactly the same (since creating a 1:1 copy is a non-goal). If I don’t convey how they far they traveled, I’ll get asked. Of course, on roll20, we’ve presumably lost the physical mapping, but the habit remains.