I have a recurring niggle with the passage of time whenever my PCs go exploring that just feels off to me.
The group can wander around a fairly large site, a half mile wide, and frequently they will ask what the time is - and when I work out how far they can travel over what time - without running - , the answer should be something like - five minutes since the last time you asked. Which results in being able to completely explore a complex site in a very short space of time. Which always feels wrong.
By default I take their speed as the slowest member, which is 15' a round. For normal walking around and taking the time to look about as they travel I usually end up multiplying the distance they walk by half or double again, thus slowing their effective travel rate down to 10' or even 7.5' a round. Even so, they can cover huge amounts of ground with this, and end up completely exploring a place and coming back before lunch !
I end up ignoring such times so that the passage of a day instead whizzes around, and am often vague about the exact time, other than it being early, mid, late morning etc. I am playing PbP so the issue is heightened by the fact that it doubly feels like a lot of time should have passed when a couple of real time days have gone by, a location has been travelled to and explored, and yet its only been 20 game minutes !
Am I missing something with the time and motion ? I almost have to come up with my own guidelines for how long something should take to walk around and explore based on a feel rather than hard mechanics. If I did a strict interpretation, including combats, they could romp around a site in 20 minutes. It seems off... yet... the distances and times seem fine at a tactical level.
Does anyone else struggle with this ? Any suggestions ?
Agreed, time is an illusion. Make a Will save to disbelieve.
Imagine an office building. How long would it take you and three friends to "explore" it. By explore, I mean to move through all the cubicle areas, looking inside to see if there's anyone hiding under a desk, and beating the crap out of any management you happen to come across? I'd say "not long". If each fight lasts a minute or less, it's trivial. I'm sure you could manage a floor in ten minutes or less. Six floors an hour. A sixty floor office building in a day, no problem.
Now, I admit that assumes you're not stopping to check every desk to find out if you can get that hot redhead girl in Shipping's phone number. Never know who might have written it down some where. Better check every written item. Every post-it-note on every monitor. Heck, better fire up the PCs, hack their passwords, and read every e-mail. What I'm saying here is that taking 20 on searching every square... that takes time.
Looking for hidden stuff is time-consuming. Exploring is not.
Remember that once a dungeon is determined "safe", the PCs can spend as much casual time as they like searching for stuff.
Define "explore". If you mean "glance in each room once and move on", they'll be through in no time.
But that's usually not what exploring means. Even discounting time spent to interact with inhabitants (which often amounts to killing them before they kill you, and then taking everything of value), you'll find an "empty room" (i.e. one not containing something with a listed CR) and then take some time actually exploring it. Looking it over, taking a longer look at anything interesting (murals, tapestries, interesting room setup, the view, whatever), and maybe search everything for secret doors and compartments or, of course, valuables. Then may come making drawings of interesting stuff into your explorer's journal.
If we're talking about actual explorers, not just monster murderers slash dungeon robbers, the average party speed will not figure largely in the time it takes to explore a place. Everyone stands still at the same speed (though some have faster eyes than others).
...and beating the crap out of any management you happen to come across?
Now, I admit that assumes you're not stopping to check every desk to find out if you can get that hot redhead girl in Shipping's phone number.
Lol, I like the office exploration. Yes I agree you could breeze through the place quite quickly if you are not being super thorough. It makes sense, but it seems to jar with my idea of what it is to be a doer of derring do.
Maybe my problem then is expectation - when you have a nice place to encounter my expectation is that it will take time and effort to explore it, when in fact a dungeon could just be a morning outing. It seems not so heroic, and more of a what shall we do before lunch kinda dealio.
Define "explore". If you mean "glance in each room once and move on", they'll be through in no time.
Tricky. Explore as in... move around until you see something of interest. Or in the case of an open/outside area, move from interesting looking point to interesting looking point. What do you rate that as ? Standard movement speed to get between points ? Assume they are looking around as they go ? I don't want to get hung up on the nuts and bolts of asking them are you looking at the sky, the plants, your navel etc everytime they move, and likewise I don't really expect them to say 'obvious' things - they only state specific exceptions. But even in a less touchy feely narrative type style, you still have to make a decision about how much time it takes to get from A to B. Basic mechanics seem to me as if... you are just hustling around without smelling the flowers.
If we're talking about actual explorers, not just monster murderers slash dungeon robbers, the average party speed will not figure largely in the time it takes to explore a place. Everyone stands still at the same speed (though some have faster eyes than others).
So given say 500' of travel across an outside location that has plenty to look at - foliage, trees, yada, do you think you should factor in a spot check every so often to slow progress ? Move and spot at the same time ?
You basically need to abstract the journey out, rather than picking at it, and demanding they tell you whether they will throw a perception test every 10' / round.
I feel like there should be a third type of speed - a table or something - something in between tactical and overland speed, a generally mooch around and take an interest in your surroundings speed. Or perhaps several categories of that speed depending on how much interest you want to take.
If they want to know what is in each building, calculate something like 2 full-round search actions per small room of each building + movement time between buildings.
This for me is still quite quick. They still end up clearing a place and packing up for tea. Again maybe its my expectations that need to shift. I just like important larger places having to be a more than one day affair. I think maybe this also feeds into the, everybody burns all their abilities in 10 minutes, and then goes to sleep for the rest of the day. The 10 minute activity day. The pace seems amazingly fast.
Maybe this is relevant - I have 'explored' new office buildings, and sure, you can get the lay of the land pretty quickly - 10 minutes. But I have also wandered around small forests and abandoned pits in my former days of LARPing, and its taken me an entire day to begin to understand the location - even though you could probably walk from one end to the other in 10 minutes. Theres a difference between an intuitive, ordered layout like an office, and the chaotic looks different from a hundred different angles small woods. And its not just about a cluttered line of sight - its that it continues to look unfamiliar even though you might have visited an area already, because your perspective is different - where as in an office its very easy to order your perceptions even when approaching from a different angle.
Hmmm.
Unfamiliar vs Familiar territory. Territory Type Factor ? Perception Quality factor. Combine together = a distance travelled over time ?
Theres a difference between an intuitive, ordered layout like an office, and the chaotic looks different from a hundred different angles small woods. And its not just about a cluttered line of sight - its that it continues to look unfamiliar even though you might have visited an area already, because your perspective is different - where as in an office its very easy to order your perceptions even when approaching from a different angle.
I forgot to mention that also in my experience there is a world of difference between exploring somewhere safe or where you don't expect hostility, and somewhere where you get hit over the head. A combat, or even worse an ambush, has completely turned me around whilst LARPing, and you can kinda lose track of where you are as it all becomes about avoiding the sword in front of you, and nothing about which path you just skirmished down. Maybe I just have a bad sense of direction...
Its a combination of all these things that makes the basic rate of travel whilst exploring jar my sense of Correctness.
A while ago I was working on a house rule to streamline this kind of calculation. Basically, players had to declare the level or caution they were using to explore with, ranging from reckless to meticulous. This would set their "passive" perception checks, although they were still allowed to take move actions to inspect individual objects.
So basically, I had a different amount of time it would take "per room" for each level of caution. It worked pretty well actually. Maybe you want to do something like that?