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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 8051836" data-attributes="member: 22779">@[USER=6859536]Monayuris[/USER] makes some excellent points.  I'd add a couple:1.  While exploration is very cool and all, guided exploration is far more interesting.  Take a random dungeon map.  Without information, turning left or right doesn't really matter - it's a flip of the coin.  But, imagine that you have a hand out map of the dungeon, withe convenient tears/waterstains/scorches that blot out, say, 40% of the map.  Now, we have a guided exploration.  We know some of the information, but, now we're filling in the blanks.  It allows the players to think ahead - If we go down this corridor, it should connect to this bit here.  Maybe.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  IOW, blind exploration is fun for about ten minutes then it's just tedious, and, frankly, random.  Guided exploration is FAR more interesting.  Note, guided could a map, or verbal clues from a NPC (prisoners are GREAT for this) or even something as simple as following the tracks of something.  2.  Don't drag things out unnecessarily.  If the players think of a way around your exploration bit, then, well, let them have it and move on.  You wanted them to explore that location, but, they pulled out a scroll of Find the Path that they've been holding onto for a while and blitz through things?  Ah well, c'est la vie.  Recycle some of those encounters into another adventure and move on.  3.  LET THE PLAYER'S SUCCEED.  This is one that I see a lot.  The players try to explore - they are scouting for more information so they can better plan their way forward.  Yup, that character failed a stealth check.  Did you really have to immediately alert the entire area and have every monster converge on the party so that the players spend the next three hours in a combat they were trying to avoid?  Not every failure has to be a catastrophic one.  If the players are trying to scout their way forward, don't force umpteen die rolls until someone fails and then make that failure a total failure.  All you are doing is teaching your players that there's no point in exploration, it will almost assuredly fail and you will be in a worse position than you started from.Just some thoughts.</blockquote>

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