No problem, I'll take care of that for you.
D&D General Hot Take: Dungeon Exploration Requires Light Rules To Be Fun
- Thread starter Reynard
- Start date
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
Given this response to your opener above, @Reynard :
Can we get some details about what you felt was a chore about PF2's complex rules in running Abomination Vaults? Any examples?
I'm not really a fan of PF2 but I have read some of its exploration rules and I'm aware there's a fair amount of structure there between exploration roles and explicit abilities oriented toward exploration. Is that what you mean by complex and making it a chore - in contrast to something a bit more freeform? Or was there something else about it?
My players bounced off exploration activities, and I did not take to tags/traits as well as I imagined I might. Overall, the quantity of moving parts in PF2E was just too much for me, and the exploration suffered more than the combat. I gave it an honest go, but couldn't last long enough to get proficient.
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
I’m the opposite. I play these games to get away from homework and taxes. I don’t want homework and taxes in the game or because of the game.
What I took from what they said is don't feel compelled to use every rule if it gets in the way of having fun. PF2e has a lot of rules and I'm glad they're there because they do a good job of giving me something to refer to when I want to figure out how something works, but I also ignore a lot of them when they feel like they're just going to get in the way. The players I run games for trust that I'm not just waiving rules to screw them over and most of the time me ignoring a rule is to better support the roleplaying they're trying to have fun with.
Insert gif of Barbossa saying they're more like guidelines than actual rules.
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Yes you can. There are other types of challenges.
Deep lighting mechanics.
No traps. No molds. No living plants. No quicksand. No living fire tornados.
Easy.
Essential is up to the group.
Then you can par down.
payn
Glory to Marik
I can't comment on PF or PF2, but I've been successfully running dungeon crawls in 5E with relative ease. I took the "travel activities" and made a few modifications for use in site based locations, rather than overland travel. I stole the idea of exploration turns from older editions, eventually deciding upon 1 minute exploration turns (yes, there are a lot of turns per dungeon, unlike the old 10 minute turns).
Most exploration turns are going to be used for travel, and at the start of the dungeon I have each character give me a default travel activity for this (they can change it if desired, but that's pretty rare). When something happens other than traveling or combat, each character gives me an activity they're doing during it. This is most commonly examining doors, searching rooms, and dealing with traps, but this encompasses anything outside of simply moving and combat. Combat is, of course, already covered by other rules, and takes up a minimum of 1 exploration turn (I usually add an equal number of turns afterwards to rest).
The exploration turns largely rely on passive checks, where I roll against the characters' passive score. This keeps things moving along quickly, with me occasionally needing to make a roll before giving a description of events. It's not particularly rules light or heavy, as I do require the players to track resources and I track time for random encounter checks (which I roll in advance of the session, making it hard to tell what's random and what's planned).
Most exploration turns are going to be used for travel, and at the start of the dungeon I have each character give me a default travel activity for this (they can change it if desired, but that's pretty rare). When something happens other than traveling or combat, each character gives me an activity they're doing during it. This is most commonly examining doors, searching rooms, and dealing with traps, but this encompasses anything outside of simply moving and combat. Combat is, of course, already covered by other rules, and takes up a minimum of 1 exploration turn (I usually add an equal number of turns afterwards to rest).
The exploration turns largely rely on passive checks, where I roll against the characters' passive score. This keeps things moving along quickly, with me occasionally needing to make a roll before giving a description of events. It's not particularly rules light or heavy, as I do require the players to track resources and I track time for random encounter checks (which I roll in advance of the session, making it hard to tell what's random and what's planned).
While you jest, based on the title I had assumed this was another thread about the vision rules.
I prefer rules light for everything outside of combat, so exploration and dungeon crawling in the rare case I do the latter is largely theater of the mind with a few checks here and there. I speed things up by asking people how careful they are proceeding and then use adjusted passive checks for most things. Then I sprinkle in special scenarios that frequently use a skill-challenge like structure with different people contributing in different ways.
But I'm sure it's very group dependent on what people enjoy.
But I'm sure it's very group dependent on what people enjoy.
