The Lore of Exploration in Luminaria

Journeys, Maps, and the Hidden Threads Between Places

What Exploration Is

Exploration is the living space between scenes: trekking wilds, searching halls, skirting obstacles, deciphering clues, solving puzzles, and slipping past traps. Not every mile needs a spotlight—unmarked roads can pass in a sentence—save the details for moments of risk, discovery, or wonder.

Maps and What They Reveal

Dungeon Maps: Any interior adventure site—castle, tower, manor, crypt—of rooms, doors, and corridors. Great for tactical choices and secrets.
Settlement Maps: Streets, bridges, terrain, and key buildings. Zooms from politics to back-alleys.
Wilderness Maps: Roads, rivers, mountains, hazards. Scale can be a glade or a continent.

Most maps begin as DM-only charts. Show players selective copies, handouts, or “fog of war” to preserve mystery. Player-facing miniature maps reveal only what the heroes can know.

Keeping Time (Only When It Matters)

Pick the scale that matches the fiction:

Rounds (6s): Combat and snap decisions.
Minutes: Dungeons and streets (sneaking a corridor, checking a door, room searches).
Hours: Short treks across a region.
Days: Long journeys on roads and rivers.

Track time precisely only when a timer or trigger matters—spell durations, doors that stay open for 1 minute, reinforcements arriving in 2d4 minutes, disguises that last 8 hours.

Core Exploration Actions

Most non-movement resolves to three pillars:

Search (find the hidden: doors, compartments, tracks).
Study (understand the unknown: inscriptions, mechanisms, clues).
Utilize (apply tools, thieves’ picks, rituals, lever-pulling).

A character can do one thing at a time. Help is common—just not simultaneously with other actions.

Taking Turns Without Battle

When the party fans out, resolve one character’s actions at a time—no initiative needed. Cut away at tense beats (hand over the chest latch, breath held before a roll) to keep the table leaning in.

Ability Checks: Perception vs. Investigation

Perception (Wis): Do they notice it? Sounds, seams, drafts, figures in the fog. Use Passive Perception when calling for rolls would tip your hand.
Investigation (Int): Do they reason it out? How the mechanism works, the statue that must be turned, the code that unlocks the panel.

Let puzzles mix player cleverness with character skill—checks reveal hints, not whole solutions.

On Hidden Things

Let secrets be optional delights, not single points of failure. Seed hints—a hollow rattle in a drawer, footprints to a blank wall—so discovery feels earned without grid-searches.

First Contact: Hearing and Sight

If neither side hides, they spot each other at normal sight or hearing. For stealth vs. senses, call for checks.

Audible Distance: Rough guide—trying to be quiet (2d6×5 ft), normal (2d6×10 ft), very loud (2d6×50 ft).
Visibility Outdoors: Clear day ~2 miles; from heights ~40 miles. Rain ≈ 1 mile; fog ≈ 100–300 ft.
Sea: From a crow’s nest ~10 miles (half under overcast).
Underwater: Clear/bright 60 ft; clear/dim 30 ft; murky/dark 10 ft.

Travel: Making Journeys Play

Break It into Stages

Think in stages (hours to ~10 days): river to forest edge → forest trail → ruin hunt. For each stage:

Set Pace (Slow/Normal/Fast) and duration.
Narrate Travel and resolve challenges.
Track Food & Water (or handwave per your table’s taste).
Mark Progress on the map and clock.

Hex Crawls

When the path isn’t known, the map’s grid defines stages. Stock hexes (sandbox) or roll from tables (random). Otherwise run as above.

Weather as Texture

Roll or choose temperature, wind, precipitation. Most weather is color, but extremes can impose effects. One vivid detail can define a stage: dragonets in the boughs, sap glowing green, webs like harp-strings across the path.

Travel Pace & Special Movement

Terrain caps pace; roads improve it. Past 8 hours/day invites Exhaustion (DC 10 + hours beyond 8). Special speeds (flight, wind walk, carpets) convert to miles/hour (Speed÷10) and often ignore terrain.

Narration that Moves

Use a montage voice to keep momentum. Paint one or two striking images, signal mood, and move on. Corruption, rot, or uncanny quiet can foreshadow the dungeon ahead.

Journey Stage Challenges

Encounters: Ambush; attack from above; distant sighting; found by chance; pursuit.
Foraging: Survival checks vs. region DC for food/water. Decide up front if your campaign tracks rations or treats survival as narrative competence.
Navigation: If off-path or horizon is obscured, call for Survival vs. terrain DC. On failure, the party strays—add 1d6×10% time or complicate the next stage.
Obstacles: Cliff, blizzard, fire, flood. Allow plans; on failure, impose delay, damage, Exhaustion, or conditions (poisoned, soaked gear, smoke-choked).
Searches: Last-mile locating of the site (island, ruin, hag’s hut). Use terrain Search DCs and contextual modifiers.
Tracking: Survival checks gated by surface, age of tracks, weather; grant Advantage for multiple trails, Disadvantage for crowds or rain. Failure loses the trail; time to refind it scales with environment.

Essentials for Smooth Play

Only track time, rations, and minutiae when they matter.
Cue danger with fiction first, dice second.
Seed clues; never lock progress behind a single secret.
Cut on tension, share the spotlight, keep the journey moving.

“Roads are the veins of story. Let them carry your table swiftly—until the pulse quickens.”