Today I would like to chat about travel through, and exploration of, wilderness. To start, let’s discuss the goal of this mode of engagement. I’ll move on to discuss some of the obstacles I’ve encountered with wilderness exploration in the past. Lastly, I’ll use the Tension Pool mechanic to see if any of the problems with travel and exploration can be solved.
My experience with travel through the wilderness began with my high school gaming group. The group had finished Keep on the Borderlands and needed to travel several hundred miles to their next destination, the Kingdom of Keoland. As we were using The World of Greyhawk as our campaign setting, we had access to the two beautiful poster-sized maps of the world, with a hex overlay (30 miles to the hex was the scale, IIRC). One of the best parts of that campaign was the travel between the Felreev Forest and the southern Dreadwood. Granted, we were 15-year-old kids who just wanted to kick ass and be awesome, but the excitement of learning what was in the next hex, the risk of encountering a wandering monster that was overwhelmingly more powerful than the PCs, all combined to make the journey an adventure in and of itself. The idea that a journey from point A to point B could be an adventure all by itself became a fundamental aspect of D&D for me.
When we talk about exploration as a fundamental mode of play in fantasy RPG’s, I believe that it is the sense of plunging into the unknown, of traveling paths untrodden by kindly feet that designers seek to capture. Travel through the wilderness should be scary. Think about all of the things that could go wrong during a journey:
· Really, really powerful monster tries to eat you.
· You run out of food
· Your mount runs out of food
· Your mount dies or runs away
· You can’t find fresh water
· You can’t find a safe place to sleep
· You run out of arrows/bolts/other ammunition
· You get lost
· The weather sucks
· The terrain sucks
There’s probably more, but you get the idea. Many of these risks feature lack of resources as the hazard: You run out of food/water/places to rest/ammo/mounts. The remainder feature risks posed by the environment: Monsters, weather, terrain, disorientation. My takeaway from this point would be that if you (or your players) don’t care for detailed resource management, then wilderness exploration and travel may not be enjoyable. If your group just assumes that you buy enough resources to cover the duration of the journey, that’s great. Briefly narrate the journey, maybe in a montage-style story, and get on with the adventure at your destination.
But if you feel that exploration and travel in Pathfinder is a missed opportunity, then take my hand and follow me down this hole…
Exploration is important, and here’s how to ruin it.
Last week, I grabbed a couple of excepts from the D&D Player’s Handbook and the Pathfinder Core Rulebook that discussed exploration. Both sources seemed to agree that exploration is one of the main ways that a player interacts with the game. This sentiment makes sense to me; after all, exploring a dense jungle, searching for a forgotten snake temple, scouring the desert for ancient pyramids to plunder, sailing the wine-dark sea in search of new lands to conquer, all of these are common adventure tropes in books, TV and cinema. It makes perfect sense that a fantasy roleplaying game should include themes of exploration and discovery.
And yet, when playing these kinds of scenarios in Pathfinder/D&D, the steak just doesn’t seem to live up to the sizzle. In my experience, exploration in roleplaying games falls short of my expectations. There’s something quintessential to the trope that is just not translating into Pathfinder. I want to know what that is, and how I can make exploration more dramatic. What is that missing element, and how can we hardwire it into the game?
When characters travel and explore, they are moving from a place of civilization to a place of wilderness. The wilderness may have some small outposts of civilization, such as a road, a guard post or a roadside inn, but for the most part, nature rules here. Here there be monsters. If you and I, as beings in a mundane world, endeavor to depart on a journey across the desert, what considerations should we make? Water, certainly. Lots of water. Food, enough to feed ourselves for however many days the journey will take. Shelter from the elements, in the form of tents, sleeping bags, sources of light. How much does all of this stuff weigh? Perhaps we should rent a camel to carry some of our gear. We need appropriate clothing, loose-fitting, lightweight fabric with a scarf to cover our faces from the blowing sand. Do we need to feed the camel? Probably. We better get some saddle bags to carry food for the camel. How will we stay on course towards our destination? Should we hire a guide?
In a mundane world, if any of these considerations are ignored, the likely outcome of our journey is our death. Resource management is vital in surviving an overland journey on foot or mount. One miscalculation or complication could be the end of us. Because we can’t just stop at Sheetz and grab more power bars and Aqua Fina. We have left civilization behind, and our only provender is what the terrain offers. I think that this, more than anything else, is what makes exploration dramatic. The ever-present tension of something going wrong that could doom the explorer to starvation, dehydration, exhaustion, disorientation and even death is what conveys the drama of exploration. The reward is the experience of discovery, of wonder, of finding something truly new or unique. Or maybe it’s just the reward of arriving at your destination alive.
If the designers of games like Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons really want to make exploration a key component of the game experience, their respective games should offer rules that create and support this kind of survival tension. The risks and dangers of exploration should be front and center in the character’s minds as they undertake each journey. “They do, you dummy”, you respond. “There ARE rules for starvation, dehydration, drowning, suffocating, environmental hazards, random encounters, getting lost, and all manner of other dangers involved in exploration.” You are correct. The rules are there, right in the respective core rulebooks. “So, what’s the problem?”
The problem, mon amis, is magic.
See, we have this daunting journey across the desert. If we don’t plan the journey perfectly, we could die. OR, we could just make sure we have some magic users in the group:
· Create water – Sor/Wiz 0. 1st level characters solve thirst.
· Know direction – Bard 0, Druid 0. 1st level characters solve getting lost
· Ant haul, create food and water, endure elements – Each removes some hazardous element of exploration.
There are other examples, but you get my point. Especially for 0-level spells, there is no chance for dehydration or getting lost to even be a concern, because 1st level wizard or cleric can spam create water and know direction.
So, here’s a radical idea that is sure to bring about revolution: Let’s get rid of 0-level spells.
Wait, wait! Put that guillotine away! Here’s a replacement feat instead:
Mundane Magic
Benefit: You can create a variety of small magical
effects. These effects are not powerful and are treated as spell-like abilities
in all ways. They require a standard action to use, have a range of
Close, and are either instantaneous or have a duration of 1 hour depending on
the effect created.
• You may clean, soil, or color up to 1 cubic ft of material per round.
• You may create floating lights the size of candle flames and move them up to
20 ft per round as a free action.
• You may create a spark such as with flint and steel, which may ignite
flammable, unattended Fine objects.
• You may open or close a door or container weighing no more than 30 lbs.
• You may chill, warm, or flavor 1 lbs. of nonliving material.
• You may create a small breeze from whichever direction you choose, strong
enough to rustle clothing and flicker candles.
• You may lift objects weighing up to 1 lbs. and move them up to 10 ft per
round.
• You may create small non-speech sounds, such as that of a mouse screeching,
soft simple harp music, or the hubbub of a whispered conversation.
• You may touch a creature or object and detect whether it possesses a magical
aura. You may use Spellcraft to identify its aura as if using the detect
magic spell.
Additionally, depending on your class, you may produce additional effects with
Mundane Magic:
Arcane casters:
• You can detect the presence of poison in a creature or object.
• You can grant a +1 resistance bonus on all saving throws for 1 round.
• You may make a ranged touch attack, dealing 1d3 acid, electricity, fire, or
cold damage to a target.
Divine casters
• You can detect the presence of poison in a creature or object.
• You can grant an ally a +1 bonus on their next attack roll, saving throw or
skill check.
• You can produce light equivalent to that of a torch. This effect
lasts for 1 hour.
• You can purify 1 pound of food or 1 gallon of water per caster level.
• You can cause a dying creature to stabilize.
Psychic casters
• You can detect the presence of psychic auras in a creature or object.
• You can cause a corpse to babble incoherently.
• You can telekinetically launch an object weighing 5 pounds or less as a
ranged touch attack, dealing 1d3 points of bludgeoning damage.
See what’s missing from the feat? Create water and know direction. If we make those two spells into 1st-level spells, many of the problems with exploration are solved. Who knew that such a simple collection of spells could cause so much damage? As a spellcaster, you can still choose to take know direction or create water, but now there is a limit to how much you can use them, and you will have to choose what 1st-level spell they will replace in your daily selection. Meaningful decisions make for interesting play.
Now that thirst and getting lost have become important considerations again, let’s take some time to discuss how the tension pool mechanic works in exploration mode. Setting a proper time frame for this mode of play is important: adding 1d6 to the pool every ten minutes is clearly not going to work. Conveniently, a 24-hour day nicely divides evenly by 6, making for 6 x 4-hour chunks of a day. At the start of the day (let’s say the day starts at 6:00 a.m.), the GM rolls a full tension pool of 6d6. Every time a 1 is rolled, a random encounter will occur. The day is split into morning (6:00-10:00 a.m.), mid-day (10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.), afternoon (2:00 – 6:00 p.m.), evening (6:00 – 10:00 p.m.), early night (10:00 p.m. - 2:00 a.m.) and late night (2:00 – 6:00 a.m.). If a 1 gets rolled, the random encounter happens during the specified time.
Random encounters in wilderness exploration are a lot more diverse than in a location-based exploration because weather and terrain hazards become much more prominent. When designing a random encounter table, take care to include weather events like torrential downpours, high winds, dust storms, thick fog, etc. Also design some terrain hazards like crevasses, quicksand, avalanches, tar pits, etc. This variety will help keep the challenges faced in wilderness varied and fresh.
Results
What have we accomplished with the suggested changes? First, by removing a couple of troublesome 0-level spells, we have made wilderness exploration something that must be planned carefully, allowing players to make important choices that will impact the success or failure of their expedition.
Second, the tension pool makes random encounters more likely. The possibility of more than 1 encounter per day exists, making players choose how many of their resources they should spend on any given encounter. The Kingmaker Syndrome of one encounter per hex is fixed; characters can no longer go nova on the one-encounter-per-day, because another encounter may be lurking just around the corner.
Lastly, we have divided the exploration day up into manageable chunks, which creates a design space. I don’t know exactly what will be designed, but just creating them has sparked a few ideas which I may develop in a future post.
Happy trails!
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