Running Exploration

Exploration mode is the connective tissue of your adventure or quest—everything that happens as the characters move between encounters. It could be trawling a junkyard for starship parts, trailblazing on a newly discovered planet, or canvassing Absalom Station for a missing person. Fundamentally, exploration is about rewarding the PCs for learning about their surroundings. To facilitate this, it's important to have and to convey a clear mental picture of the group's surroundings. Exploration mode is intentionally less regimented than encounters, so you'll be making a lot of judgment calls as you build the world and describe how it changes in response to the players' actions. Encourage the PCs to explore, and reward their curiosity. As you play, you'll get a feel for the aspects of exploration that intrigue certain players, and you can add more of those things to your adventures or emphasize these points in published adventures. Stakes: Low to moderate. Exploration mode is used when there's some amount of risk, but no immediate danger. The PCs usually stay in exploration mode until they enter a fight or engage in some other direct interaction. Time Scale: In exploration mode, time in the game world passes much faster than real-world time at the table, so it's rarely measured out to the second or the minute. You can speed up or slow down how quickly things are happening as needed.If it's important to know exactly how much time is passing, you can usually estimate time spent in exploration mode to 10-minute increments. Actions and Reactions : Though exploration isn't broken into rounds, exploration activities assume the PCs are spending part of their time using actions, such as Seeking or Interacting. If they have specific actions they want to use, they should ask; you decide whether the actions apply and whether to switch to encounter mode for greater detail. PCs can use any relevant reactions during exploration mode. GM Priorities The following points can help you create a fun and smooth experience as your players explore the galaxy. Evoke the setting with vivid sensory details. Shift the passage of time to emphasize tension and uncertainty, and speed past uneventful intervals. Get players to add details by asking for their reactions. Present small-scale mysteries to intrigue players and spur investigation. When rolls are needed, look for ways to move the action forward, or add interesting wrinkles on a failure. Plan effective transitions to encounters.