Seek and ye may find – UPDATED

“I’m sure that it’s in here somewhere…”
Image by Jerzy Gorecki from Pixabay
It’s happened to all of us – we receive some paperwork that is important, do whatever we have to do with it, and then put it away for the next time we need it. And then, when the time comes, can’t remember exactly where it is – or it isn’t where we thought it was.
It’s not just true of paperwork, either – my personal history is replete of examples of putting something away ‘somewhere safe’ and needing to search for it when it once again became needed.
There are analogous situations in other contexts, too. An office worker files a document somewhere. Someone else, at a later time, needs to find it – that might be a temp, a manager, a replacement, or a thief.
In The Hero System
In writing the Adventurer’s Club adventure currently in progress, an in-game situation of this type has been anticipated, and so we turned our attention to the rules to see how the game mechanics handled the situation.
And quickly ran into a brick wall.
There was no ‘search’ skill.
We agreed that if the object of the search was out in the open, a simple perception roll would suffice, perhaps with a negative modifier for haste or obscurity – we’re used to such situations and can handle them without batting eyelids.
In time, we discovered “Concealment”, which is described in the game mechanics as representing “a character’s ability to hide things and find things others have hidden – important papers, weapons, jewels, artifacts, drugs, and so forth”.
But this implies a deliberate act of concealment – which is not the case in those examples proffered earlier. Nevertheless, it’s the closest thing that we could find anywhere in the game system.
There is also a list of Sight Perception Modifiers in the rulebook, and the following notes:
- modifiers for Routine, Easy, Difficult, and so on;
- taking extra time; and
- excellent or poor conditions.
“Like Skill Rolls, PER Rolls are subject to modifiers. Some of these modifiers are the same as those for Skills, others are different or specific to PER rolls based on a given Sense.
Skill Modifiers
“As a general rule, GMs can apply the following types of Skill Modifiers to PER Rolls (see p45) for details:
“Other such modifiers apply as the GM sees fit.
Range Modifier
“Attempts to perceive things at a distance are subject to the Range Modifier. See page 373.”
All these seem reasonably relevant to the question.
The broader question, in context:
This sort of question comes up in RPGs all the time, regardless of the game system that you are using – usually as a result of a PC doing something that the game mechanics didn’t anticipate.
It’s relatively rare for such problems to come up when you can take your time to consider a solution. As such, this is an unusual opportunity to examine House Rules and the processes of crafting them.
While this specific question might not be relevant to the game system your campaign employs, it’s a near-certainty that, sooner or later, some other gap in the rules will open up beneath your GMing feet – so this is a chance to think about the processes involved and set some basic rules to make life just a little bit easier when it happens.
Past Examinations Of The Subject
As you would expect of such a broad topic, this is hardly the first time that it’s come up here at Campaign Mastery. The following articles seem especially pertinent (excerpts from the Blogdex Metagame page, plus some extras tagged as relating to “House Rules”):
- Ask The GMs: Going Beyond The Rules – How do you extrapolate from existing rules to cover new situations?
- The House Always Wins: Examining the Concept of House Rules – I look at the basics of House Rules – and in particular why campaigns have them. Along the way I introduce readers to some of the many controversies relating to the subject that have raged amongst gamers for as long as I’ve been involved in the hobby. I have some fun with some of my players in the comments.
- Precision Vs Holistic Skill Interpretation – Skills can either be interpreted as strictly and explicitly defined within the mechanics, or can be viewed as incorporating anything related to the skill’s application that isn’t explicitly covered by a separate skill, which I refer to as the Holistic approach. The examples offered make a strong case for the latter.
- The Personal Computer analogy and some Truths about House Rules – I realized that constructing a campaign was analogous to constructing a Personal Computer, that the analogy revealed some valuable insights into the relationships between different bodies of rules, and that there were some especially notable points to be made in this context about House Rules and importing rules from other game systems.
- The Blind Enforcer: The Reflex Application Of Rules – The speed of events in the computer world mandate that rules be codified and violations detected, and acted upon, automatically. Yet, human behavior does not readily boil down to neat straight lines, and that opens the door to rules being enforced when they shouldn’t, or not being applied when they should. Human Error is an inherent part of the system. I use these thoughts to re-examine the question of how much dominion the GM should have over the rules and update a previous article, Blat! Zot! Pow! The Rules Of Genre In RPGs, which examined these issues from a genre-and-campaign perspective.
- House Rules – For Pulp (and other RPGs) – This article lists (and offers as a freebie download) the house rules that my co-GM and I have developed for our Pulp campaign, the first in a series of four on the subject. I then discuss the meanings and implications of some of the rules, and the broader principle from which they were derived (which apply to every campaign.
- “I Can Do That” – Everyman Skills For Pulp – After (briefly) explaining the skills system within Hero Games’ Champions Fifth Edition, I look at the everyman skills that we give the PCs (and NPCs) in our Pulp Campaign, provide some additional rules relating to their use, then expand on the concept of Everyman Skills to adapt the principle to other game systems, like D&D/Pathfinder.
- Phase 1: Inspiration from the ‘New Beginnings’ series – I list and analyze 23 sources of inspiration, and discuss what to do with the ideas that they generate. Along the way, House Rules Theory and Campaign Ideas get discussed.
- Phase 4: Development from the ‘New Beginning’ series – Detailed examination of the process of Campaign Development is made, touching on Campaign Plotting, Research techniques, Societies and Cultures, Races, Rules Conflicts, House Rules Theory, Rule Importation, Plot Organization, Campaign Structure, and Plot Sequence. This constructs the major ‘bones’ of the campaign skeleton.
- Phase 6: Mindset & Underpinnings from the ‘New Beginnings’ series studies completing the structural elements of a new campaign. Specific attention is placed on the Campaign Philosophy, Campaign Themes, Magic, House Rules Theory, Races and Classes, with a key example from the Shards Of Divinity campaign.
- Phase 9: Completion from the ‘New Beginnings’ series – is mostly about dotting i’s and crossing t’s and a few other tasks that were put off, at least temporarily, earlier in the series. In particular, the categories of Campaign Structure, Adventure Format & Structure, House Rules Theory, PCs, Races, Archetypes & Classes, Campaign Background, and how Players will integrate with the campaign are considered.
- The Prohibition Disjunction: When Rules Go Bad looks at the integration of House Rules and Official Mechanics, amongst other aspects of Rules Failures.
- A Role To Play – this article is all about roleplaying and inhabiting a character. One section discusses how game mechanics can inhibit this and how that problem can be turned into a characterization asset with a little House Rules judo.
- Combining Abilities: Teamwork and Synergy between RPG Characters (updated) – most game systems try very hard to ignore the complicated question of multiple characters cooperating to solve a problem, even though they are the sort of problems that crop up in actual game-play all the time. I bite the bullet, posing 5 specific problems and multiple possible game mechanics solutions to uncover solutions that will work.
- A Wealth Of Stylistic Factors – giving each campaign its own style takes time and effort, and that’s what this article is all about. One of the contributing factors is House Rules, and in the relevant section, the article looks at that contribution and how to choose House Rules that will lend themselves to the style that you want to achieve.
- To Roll Or Not To Roll, pt 1 and To Roll Or Not To Roll, pt 2 – there are times when it can be more useful to the GM and his game to have a PC not roll for something. This two-part article (originally conceived as one big one) looks at the why, when, how, and the implications. If it looks familiar, it’s because it was only published a couple of months ago.
There are others, but they are more peripheral to the subject. In particular, some of the articles tagged “Philosophy” may be useful (there are only 150 of them – 151, counting this one.
A Reflection Of Expertise
First, I want to propose a way of handling the “searching an office” situation, so that I can exclude it from the more general question.
Proposed House Rule: If an object or document is filed or placed in a relevant location by someone who has a skill that is relevant to the placement of that object or document, a different character can use that same skill to locate the object or document. The skill of the original individual, divided by 5 and -2, is used as a modifier to the subsequent roll. This rule explicitly excludes anything deliberately hidden, including placement of sensitive documents into a safe.
If a secretary files a document in a filing cabinet, for example, their bureaucracy skill (or whatever the equivalent is in your game system) relates directly to the logic that defines the placement of that document. The better they are at their job, the more sensible and rational their filing system will be, and the more easily someone else will find it to locate the document using that same skill.
The same should also apply to someone with different lenses for a telescope (except that we’re talking about their Astronomy skill), and so on.
It’s up to the GM to decide whether or not a particular skill is relevant to the placement of the subject of the search.
I can’t help but remember passing exchanges from M*A*S*H about Radar’s filing system – I wish I could remember which episode so that I could quote from it more directly than simply name-dropping the series. It made perfect sense to Radar but no-one else could follow it. There was also a scene in which Frank Burns found out which cabinet contained Radar’s Bugle.
In such a case, bureaucracy would not help, in fact it would continually lead one astray. Radar clearly was not using that skill to place his files, he instead had a system of his own in which he had expertise.
If the character searching doesn’t have the right skill, this rule doesn’t apply, and this becomes a more general search.
Lost and (hopefully) Found
When something is not where we expect it to be, it’s a sure bet that the placement did not follow any replicable logic and did not utilize a skill to determine where such logic would place the item.
When this happens to me, there is a definite pattern to the resulting search.
- First, I search all the places that the item might reasonably have been put, in sequence of decreasing likelihood.
- Second, I search all the places that I put things the last time I remember having the item, even if unlikely.
- Third, I search all the places that I can think of that are plausible but unlikely.
- Fourth, I search all the places that contain similar items to the one that’s been misplaced.
- Fifth, I look at all the places where I routinely sit and do things.
- Sixth, I repeat search 1, but casting a wider net, and also searching nearby.
- Seventh, I start a systematic and thorough search by geographic area.
For example, let’s apply that sequence to searching for a set of keys:
- I check the peg where I keep my keys, and the floor underneath. I check the draws and bags in the vicinity where the keys might have landed had they fallen. I check the bags that I use when shopping. I check the pockets of everything that I’ve worn in the last few days. I’ll also walk the ground between the bus stop and my front door – just in case.
- The last time I went out shopping, what did I buy? Where did I put those purchases? Might I have put the keys down somewhere nearby – on top of the refrigerator, for example? Might I have dropped them without noticing when using them to unlock the gate or the front door?
- If I bought groceries, I would have organized the shopping in the game room (because it has a large clear area that I can sit down at). Might the keys be on that table, or on the floor nearby I usually keep my mobile phone in the same pocket as the keys when I go out – where is the phone now? Are the keys nearby? Are the keys in the bathroom somewhere? etc.
- I have a hook where I keep a spare set of keys. This takes most of the panic out of the loss (which is why I keep the spare set). Could I have put the original with the spares? Not likely, but I’ll check, anyway More to the point, there are a couple of places where I will hide other keys that I am looking after for someone else – could my keys have ended up there, somehow? There are places where I used to put my keys before I put up the hook – could muscle memory have put them there?
- Next I will search my work area – especially looking behind the laptop, under the bag I use to gather rubbish, and so on, on the premise that I have simply put them down somewhere.
- Back to search one – this time I’ll not only double check the pockets, I’ll double-check that I haven’t missed a pocket, and I’ll look to see if they could have been left in a pocket and then fallen out. I’ll look to see if they might have fallen out of one pocket and into another (it’s happened!) And I’ll look beneath the hook again, but this time I’ll get my eyes down to floor level, and so on.
- If I haven’t found them by now, the odds are that they are lost – at least for now. I’ll start a systematic search, though, starting at the front door and proceeding through the unit – after taking a break to calm myself and get my breath back.
In other words, likely places, then plausible places, then possible places, then everywhere..
The process is the same if I’m looking for a document (my lease? a power bill?), a book, a grocery item, a screwdriver, a CD or DVD…
Translating the Search Concept
In order to translate this process into game mechanics, the first principle is to use the existing mechanics as much as possible – don’t reinvent the wheel. That means that searching for a lost or misplaced object or document has to be based on “Concealment”, which needs to be expanded to cover items that are placed with no intention of concealment.
That means that there is no concealment roll to hide the object in question; that should be replaced with a modifier, or with a series of them, and the only roll will be a ‘concealment’ roll to find the search object.
It’s worth remembering that we have excluded from these rules anything that has been deliberately concealed, or that is in plain sight.
I have compiled a list of 8 modifiers that reflect different attributes of a search object within the context of the environment being searched. There may be others, but these will do for now.
0. Scope
Before listing the modifiers and assigning values to them, though, it’s a good idea to establish some scope. I have the notion that every 2 by which the roll fails ticks off another of the search location levels – so if you succeed, then what you are looking for is in the first place you look according to the logical schema described earlier.
If you fail by 1 or 2, then it’s not in the first group of places, but it is in the second. If you fail by 3 or 4, then it’s not in location groups 1 or 2, but it is in three, and so on. With six categories, that means that a result of failure by 10 is perfectly acceptable, and it will actually require failure by 12 (or the GM having determined that what the PCs are looking for is not there) for the search object not to be found – eventually.
The lowest actual roll you can make on 3d6 is a 3. The default value of the concealment skill is 9+(STAT/5), and the average value of INT – the stat in question – is 10. So that means 11/-, maybe 12 or 13 or less. Call it 12 or less on average. Rolling a three gives a fail by 10, which works.
But the average roll on 3d6 is 10.5 – a failure by 1.5. We want that to fall in the middle of the ‘failure’ range, about -5.
With 8 modifiers, most of them should have an average value of -1. But some of them will have positive modifiers – so a better choice would be +1 and -2 (giving the same average).
1. Size
This is a completely subjective assessment by the GM – an unusually thick folder might be large in comparison to everything else in a filing system, or it might be small in comparison to a building of large files. A flash drive is likely to be small.
Large enough to be relatively obvious: +1
Typical: +0
Small: -2
2. Obviousness vs Difficulty
How much does the object stand out? One particular baseball in a box of them doesn’t stand out very well. One particular piece of paper will be obvious if you can identify it as the target with a glance, and not if you have to read each of large stack of papers to find the one that you want.
Folded into this are all questions of environmental difficulty. Searching for an object buried in silt and underwater to a depth that you can’t see except with a torch, is obviously difficult. Trying to read something written in red ink when the illumination is also red is difficult. Trying to search calmly and efficiently while people are shooting at you is difficult.
Object is easy to find: +1
Object is not hard to find: +0
Object is hard to find: -2
3. Distinctiveness & Contrast
Again, let’s say we’re talking about a folder. If it has red stripes around the edges, and is the only folder that has this feature. Okay, maybe that’s covered under “Obviousness”. So let’s go with something slightly more subtle: this is the only folder stamped “top secret”. Or maybe the document inside is the only one signed in purple ink. It doesn’t matter what the point of distinctiveness is, what matters is that the object can be identified, at a glance, as the object of the search.
It might be the only set of blueprints. It might be the only papers with a green cover sheet, like my lease. If a book, it might be distinctively sized, or have a distinctive cover.
Let’s say that I’m looking in my DVD collection for a particular James Bond movie. Several of the movies in that series have matching covers in terms of color and font – that lets me go to the group right away. It might take a stranger a little longer, but you only have to see Thunderball and Dr No and Goldfinger all in a set and you’ve narrowed the scope of the search drastically.
Object is distinctive: +1
Object blends in: -2
Otherwise: +0
4. Luck
I’ve written about Luck in the Hero System before. See, for example,
Chances Are: Lessons in Probability.
Assuming that he has rolled some luck points, a character can use them to his advantage in conducting a search.
One level: +1
Two levels: +3
Three levels: +5
5. Logic & System vs Haste
I don’t quite know what it says about me that I have a defined system for searching for something that I have misplaced. But having such a system is clearly beneficial than blindly searching in random locations.
If the character can articulate a sensible search strategy, that should be worth a bonus – but such a search may well take longer, because you are taking more care. So it’s more thorough, but that comes at a cost.
The more time pressure the searcher is under, the more that should impact their chances of finding what they are looking for. There have been times when I’ve been searching for something in haste, and picked up and set aside the object of my search because in my haste, I didn’t recognize it as what I was looking for.
This is one of those rare modifiers in which both a positive and a negative can apply.
Articulated system or logic to the search: +2
Panicked Search (1/16th normal time): -5
Searching Frantically (1/8 normal time): -4
Searching in great haste (1/4 normal time): -3
Searching in haste (1/2 normal time): -2
Taking extra time: +1
Taking a lot of extra time: +2
Leisurely / Casual search: +3
Update#1 28 Feb 2023
My co-GM for the Adventurer’s Club campaign, for which all this work was done, spotted something that I missed.
Quiet Search (Enemies down the hall): up one rank on the time applicable
Silent Search (Enemies in the next room or closer): up two ranks on the time applicable
6. Mess vs Order (environment)
If you’re searching an area that is nice and neat (and assuming that you don’t make a mess in the process), it can make it a lot easier to find something. If you’re searching through a mess, there is going to be a loss of time from moving irrelevant stuff aside, if nothing else.
Size of the object being searched also makes a big difference here, for obvious reasons.
Large object, tidy environment: +1
Small object, tidy environment: +1
Large Object, messy environment: +0
Small Object, messy environment: -2
7. Numbers
Many hands make light work. But some searches are so large as to require many hands.
The GM is entitled to set a minimum number of searchers required to complete the search in a reasonable time frame (4 hours, say – but that is also up to the GM and the circumstances). If the searchers can’t reach that minimum number, the ‘reasonable time frame’ blows out proportionately, but there is no additional penalty.
For every 50% over the base requirement or part thereof, there is a +1 modifier.
8. Panic / Emotional Upset
Finally, the state of mind of the searcher is clearly a relevant factor. If you’re calm and controlled, there can be a lack urgency about the search, but being able to assess what you find rationally soon more than makes up for that. On the other hand, if you are emotionally overwrought, crying your eyes out or shouting at the heavens, or in a blind panic or state of extreme fear, that represents a significant hurdle to hinder success.
If you’re vulnerable to emotional distress, this will only get worse as you proceed with the search without finding your target. If that is likely to be the case, or there are hints that the player is growing frustrated at the lack of success, use the overall average to determine the modifier.
Calm state throughout search: +1
Emotional Upset: -2
These eight parameters cover most of the contingencies that I could imagine encountering. One of the things that gives me confidence in that statement is that there were originally only 5 entries on my list, and the others came to me as I wrote and thought more deeply about the subject.
To use the search metaphor, I found the obvious things and then the inobvious ones!
A small sidebar
What’s interesting is that most of these will also apply to attempts to use a Search Engine – the only difference is that the search engine has presented you with a number of places to look for what you want, probably within a long list of things that you don’t. If you’re lucky, or if your Google-fu is strong, it might be high up in the results; or, if your search term is not as good as your think, it might be buried a long way down, or missing altogether.
Other Game Systems
It doesn’t really matter which game system you are playing – it either has rules for searching, or it needs rules for searching!
If you need such a subsystem, the above can be adapted in various ways without great difficulty. So use what I’ve written here as a template, and create a set of rules that integrate into your existing game mechanics.
If your game system already has a system mechanic for this purpose, it might be that the modifiers offered cover something that your system didn’t anticipate, or simply offer a perspective that you had not previously considered.
Above all, I want to emphasize that the context of the search is all-important – the physical context (environment), the degree of resemblance between target and non-target, and the emotional context.
In conclusion, I hope that readers have found something they were looking for from this article!
Sorry – I couldn’t resist…
Update#2 28 Feb 2023
I also converted the article into a two-page set of House Rules for the campaign that may be of use to others.
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