Adventure And Exploration

OSRIC is a game of adventure, and the primary activity in adventures is exploration. Even though the rules for combat take up more space in this rulebook, play tends to focus more on exploration than combat. Whether the party is investigating an old ruined shrine, delving into an abandoned dwarfish mine, traversing an unknown wilderness, sailing uncharted waters, or venturing beyond the physical world into the planes of existence, exploration is central to adventure and thus to the game.

While exploration tends to be resolved in a looser, more free-form manner than combat, where description and negotiation are central and pre-defined rules take a background role, there are nonetheless some standard procedures that will help the GM resolve these activities efficiently.

If you are new to OSRIC-compatible rule sets, please reread the section on "Time Measurement" at the beginning of Chapter 3 and ensure that you understand it fully before reading further. When exploring dungeons time is measured in turns. In the wilderness or at sea time is typically measured in days. The planes are a special case and can conform to either, or neither, of the above.

• Searching The Dungeon
• Exploring The Wilderness
• Aerial Agility
• Adventures In Town
• Exploring The Planes

Special Cases

Movement in sailing vessels depends crucially on the wind. A sailing ship can make progress into wind coming from nearly ahead of her (the process is called "tacking"), but for travel at any great speed, the wind must be from somewhere roughly behind. GMs expecting to run a campaign where lot of action takes place at sea should probably decide on prevailing trade winds, because a purely random way of deciding this will lead to ships making little headway over a statistical long term.

Movement underwater may become an option if the players discover the correct magic items. All missile weapons, many hand weapons and many spells are virtually useless in this environment—assume that magic invoking fire will fail, and if it involves lightning, will most often strike the caster.