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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 7652674" data-attributes="member: 150">Well, I think that's part of what makes this challenging.  There are lots of obvious pain points in most combat systems -- fiddly bits to track, etc.  But for the most part, exploration systems for our games are so abstract and high level they tend to not develop those sorts of pain points. An exception to that might be mapping. Striking the right balance between levels of detail, levels of scale, and dealing with our various skill levels -- nevermind the challenge of producing a map on the fly during a game -- those can all be tricky pain points worth solving.  High-end software like Campaign Cartographer may make possible to create detailed, interesting, attractive maps at many different scales, but there's a learning curve there, and a lot of work to be done.  Going back to a sheet of graph paper and a pencil is the other end of that spectrum.  But in some cases even that may be more than you need -- and it assumes that you have an idea of what you want to share with the players. What about those times when you're at a loss.  And then there's the challenge of "Random" encounters while you're in those exploration phases.  Earlier editions of the game used them a lot, but 4e dispensed with them almost entirely because encounters were elaborate affairs and combat took a long time.  Are there gadgets or hacks that can help add some of that random hazard flavor to the game word without having to dedicate half a session to getting somewhere so you can get back to your story? In my 4e games I used skill challenges -- and even a modified skill challenge system for minor combats so they could be resolved in a matter of minutes instead of an hour, but that makes them a lot less satisfying as encounters.  What sort of tricks have you found there? So.... things like that. -rg</blockquote>

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