Also the exploration mode is meant to be in scenarios that might be less narratively-driven and more open-ended: when everyone is likely to do the same thing, simple checks work. But if you have a point where the party might want to do a variety of different things, then this helps out. For example, let's say your players are in an abandoned tomb complex and have cleared out a few rooms in quick succession and decided they wanted to stop for a minute, establish a base, and all the players decide to do different things.

Fighter: I'm going to stay on watch and keep an eye on the entrances. I suppose that means I'm Scouting for danger.
Ranger: Well, I'm going to Avoid Notice so I can move ahead and see what I find.
Rogue: Eh, I'm going to go back through the last few rooms and Search, see if I find anything interesting.
Wizard: There was some interesting writings a room back. I'm going to Investigate to see if I can decipher some of them.
Cleric: Well, I'm going to regain a Focus Point and then back up Fighter with Defend so I'm ready for a fight.

So now your party has multiple things to do and you have a general idea of how time is going to function. From there, you can add on stuff: your Ranger has successfully Avoided Notice, allowing them to stealth up on the sound you mention. Now they can make a Perception check to listen in as they talk and gather information. There's more advice from the GMG here on how to run things and create new activities. There's also Hexploration, which has advice on a hex crawl and more open-ended land travel. It's got some useful ideas: for example, I think the "Fortify Camp" thing could totally work in a dungeon and in 10-minute increments.

You could also modify some of their node-based subsystems to do exploration as well, or use cards. I know people on the board have basically done something like this, but I cannot specifically remember who (I think it was either @!DWolf and/or @kenada , but I'm not in the mood to look it up). But if you want to dispense with all that and do it more ad-hoc, feel free: it won't really break anything. The system is more there to provide guidance and structure, but you can modify it without much problem. What you're talking about can totally work if that's how you are comfortable running it.

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