Currently playing Ave Nox. Frequently, the module presents opportunities to discover additional information or treasure through repeated searches.
Stuff like, There are 3 things to find, each one takes 10 minutes.
Or even, finding x requires 30 minutes of searching.
How do you talk to your players in these situations? Do you simply present the total time needed to find everything and then ask your players if they’re willing to invest that time? That seems the most straight forward.
But, I wonder if some of you would have a different approach that emphasizes a different gameplay experience.
What resoning does it offer for why that time is important? If it doesn’t offer anything beyond random encounter checks that would happen anyway, I’d roll my eyes and scrap those times. I suspect the designer simply thought they’d have to search for three turns before finding anything, instead of actually putting any thought into how it’d play out. I douby many players would continue to search the same spot for 30 minutes in the hopes that something magically appears.
The stated intent for the time element is random encounter checks. Which, I feel is a totally valid cost for the party’s search actions.
However, I do think that the module could have been a little more inspired with the random encounter table. Which is one of the reasons that I wanted to ask if anyone else had different ideas on how to handle the situation.
I often see this when there’s some kind of “trash heap” situation, and thus it makes sense diegetically: You pick a section of the whole situation and spend a turn searching it. Do that three times, and you’ve got the whole Roc’s Nest or whatever covered. Now this doesn’t really consider group size – is someone solo’ing the dungeon (or a sole PI doing a mystery), or do we have 8 players and their 16 henchpersons? But I mean, that’s just rulings territory anyway…
I’m okay with that, if it’s telegraphed that way. There’s no decent way that search can go better by pure description, as you can have in other situations (“I smash the desk to see if there are any secret compartments” etc.), so it’s just a matter of wasting time or not. I wouldn’t apply this type of search to other situation and would hope that sifting through refuse isn’t a common theme of the dungeon.
Generally you can run into similar problems with systems where there’s a Perception/Search mechanic. If PCs think they rolled rather low for a long time, there might be something still hidden and they waste turn after turn after turn re-rolling.
Not sure how heretical this is, but sometimes I just tell the players that they’re done.
I’ve been known to put down a timer and say something’s going to happen in [/r d4] turns/rounds if you don’t get moving. I once pushed my luck and the GM gave me skull that, when I reached for it, levitated and exploded shrapnel all over the room. I don’t spend extended periods searching heaps anymore.
I guess that means I wouldn’t do the 30min /3 round thing.
I have been known to give challenges HP when there’s ticking timer. Like, unlock the door before the goblin horde reaches you.