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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
Chapter 1: Gamemastery Basics / Running Exploration

Scenes Within Exploration

Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 19
It can help you to think of exploration as a series of scenes, with encounters not just breaking up exploration, but functioning as subsections within it. Many of these are based on geography, for example, with exploring a series of dungeon corridors as one scene and entering the dungeon’s great hall another. Other times, you’ll break out of a scene at a point of interest. If the PCs decide to stop their travels and investigate a statue, think of that as a new scene.

This gives you a good point to describe the transition between scenes. Describe what was happening to reinforce where the group was, then describe what they now face to show the change. For example, “You’ve been making your way through this long hallway, but after a moment of debate, you stop, your footsteps and voices still echoing down the hall. The stone statue before you is seven feet high, adorned with rubies. It represents... maybe a god? Its face is damaged and broken. What do you do?”

When playing out a scene, your initial description should set the expectation of what level of detail the scene might go into, with you and the players adjusting as needed as you play. Also, it can be useful to go from PC to PC to avoid everybody talking at once. Start with someone who instigated the scene change, if possible, or perhaps the PC using the most relevant exploration activity, like a PC Investigating artwork or Searching for secrets in the example above.

Hazards

Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 20
The task of looking for and disarming hazards comes up frequently in exploration and is an example of a type of exploration scene. Hazards don’t usually appear out of nowhere. A trap might be on a door’s lock, at a specific bend in a corridor, or so on. You could have a pit trap in the middle of a large room, but a surprise that’s entirely unexpected can be pretty unsatisfying. The same pit trap appearing in the middle of a 10-foot-wide, suspiciously featureless hallway can make the players say, “Okay, we should have seen that coming,” with even that minimal amount of foreshadowing.

When a complex hazard triggers, move to encounter mode. Simple hazards are usually dealt with in exploration mode, but that doesn’t mean they should be glossed over. Give a clear picture of what action by a PC set off the hazard, what happens as the hazard activates, and any aftereffects. PCs have many ways to heal themselves, so keep in mind that a damaging hazard won’t always have a huge effect. They tend to work best if their activation might alert creatures in the area, lock the PCs out of an area, or cause a similar setback beyond just damage.

If a PC detects a hazard and wants to disable it, slow down a bit. Ask the player to describe what the PC is doing and give concrete details about how their efforts pan out to make it feel more real. It’s good if the player sweats a little bit! It’s supposed to be a tense situation, after all. If a hazard requires multiple checks to disable, it’s good to describe what happens with each success to show incremental progress.

Investigations

Source Gamemastery Guide pg. 20
The Investigate exploration activity is pretty broad and can lead into a more thorough investigation scene. Lead off with a definite clue that has details but clearly isn’t the whole picture: “These runes look like ones used for arcane magic but are some kind of variant form,” “As you assess the architecture of the room, you see the pillar caps are all made of granite, except for one that appears to be painted plaster,” or “Each of the stained glass shows scenes of one of the god Norgorber’s aspects, but there are only three windows, and Norgorber has four aspects.”

Then, if this piques a player’s interest, you can go into a more detailed investigation. They might look at the runes more closely, chip away at the plaster, or search around for a representation of Norgorber’s fourth aspect. Avoid calling for checks if it’s not necessary. In the last example, you’d likely tell them which of the deity’s aspects is missing without another Religion check, and if the aspect is represented as a statue in the room, asking for a Perception check to find it might short-circuit the investigation in an uninteresting way.

To make the investigation feel real, it helps to talk the player through their character’s thought processes by saying what clue inspired them to think of an important detail, explaining what the detail is, and possibly mentioning a further question that detail raises. Then let the player extrapolate rather than telling them their conclusion. Even if the investigation doesn’t lead to a an unambiguous conclusion, the players should feel they’re more informed than when they started.

Though one person starts the investigation, getting others involved can help them become more interested and bring different skills to bear to get other types of information. Reward collaboration and clever ideas.