It is only natural that the thief, or it's equivalent, should be scouting ahead. In a perfect world the party will wait patiently for the scout to come back but that is not always exciting and what if the worst should happen to the scout while they are exploring and they don't come back before the candle burns down? They need to know about the things the scout encountered along the way but how could they do that without meta-gaming?
In the past, I've played games where I played my favorite class, the thief/rogue and taken on the role of scouting. I would take chalk or charcoal with my into any exploration and leave marks at a specific designated height, that they could look for and would explain the nature of anything I encountered. I got really granular about this. I would buy the party daggers, each of them identical in height, and tell them "If it is my mark, it will be found at the height of the cross guard when you place the tip of the blade on the floor. If it's not there, then it's not mine." additionally I would give the players out of game a collection of my symbols and what they meant, printing out the page and handing them a physical copy of the list for reference. They were supposed to know that there was no distinction of chalk vs charcoal and a few other rules about deliberate changes to things to warn of a danger that was able to track the symbols.
If you adopt this, I don't think anyone needs to get as granular as I did back in the day. Just having a system of symbols and telling your fellow players before hand that you do this, this is what they mean, here is the symbol key, is more than enough. when following your scouting, look for the symbols. I did all that stuff because I played with a lot of GMs growing up where had a very deep seated GM vs player mentality in how they ran. This made me a Paranoid little Toast. I would do things like leave candles with my group and say "when the candle burns down to this point and this nail falls out, if I haven't returned assume I'm dead and act accordingly." I was really big on dungeon exploration and keeping track of a lot of things. There might be future posts about that if there is interest.
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| The symbols I used when I played |
This whole symbol idea is not entirely my own. I saw this infographic on symbols that the homeless use to designate safe and dangerous places around a city. I cannot speak to the validity of this at all. I questioned who was out here studying the symbols and how they could be universal. It seemed a little dubious but it did give me a good idea for navigating a dungeon and make mapping just a little easier.
There was a long running game where this DM had us exploring a mega dungeon and realistically we would never see all 3500 rooms of this place. I decided that my character wasn't particularly interested in the treasure of the dungeon. He traveled in with this Paladin and his squire who he kept sending into death traps and a few other people. The guy playing the paladin straight up told the rest of the table it was his game and his story. He refused to elaborate on this and got very angry when we tried to help with anything plot related. So I mapped this dungeon as I explored, left my symbols behind, and eventually published an almanac of the first few floors with their dangers and my symbols marked on the map. This did not sit well with the guy who claimed this was his story as the dungeon was supposed to be a secret, which he never told us. It was a good time. I remember that game fondly.
This one got away from me a little and turned into a bit of a storytime! Thanks for coming out and reading! This might turn into a bit of a series about things I used to do to help with dungeon exploration.
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