his has probably come up before, but I didn't see it in the search.

In the Rulebook it says, "When a player performs an explore action, the Keeper flips over all the cards in the room, one at a time, starting with the top card and working down." Does this mean that a single search action reveals ALL exploration cards (short of obstacles getting in the way), or is it one card at a time, as in, you explore, you reveal the top card, you explore again to get the next.

By the wording, it seems to be the former, but wouldn't that make "Nothing of interest" cards a pointless addition to the game, as you're just going to immediately move on to the next card?

NoI cards are there to meddle with card-counters, people who look at a stack thinking it must have some good stuff in it because there is more than one card in the stack, with possibly a Lock/Obstacle on top. You get everything in the room with a single Explore, though have to get past the Obstacle naturally.

Season of the Witch POD has the best screw you using the NoI cards, one of the rooms has a Lock and 2x NoI, so investigators probably think there is some good stuff in there, only the Lock outright kills the investigator attempting to open it .

Dam said:

Indeed! One of my favorite wins was when I had to kill half the investigators, and there were only two. I ran Keziah Mason to that room from the other end of the Witch House, and struck one did instantly because he attempted to enter the room, sealing my game. So humorous for me.

Tromdial said:

OOOH, I'm SO stealing that one!

Ideally, each room should be seeded some number of card, and that number should be independent of story choices. If 3A has you putting down Item, Clue, Obstacle, Lock, then 3B should have you putting into the same room (something), (something), (something), Lock. Ideally, that third "something" would be another Obstacle.

An example would be:

Master Bedroom
3A: Silver Key, Clue 3, Locked Cabinet, Dreadful Passage
3B: Nothing of Interest, Nothing of Interest, Sedative, Padlocked Door

At the onset, all the investigators would know is that there are three or four cards in the Master Bedroom (stack them neatly!), closed away by a lock card. If you happened to be playing with an investigator who has seen this scenario multiple times, any change in the stack size or topmost card might actually clue that investigator in on what story choice was made.

FFG has done a pretty good job of keeping to this outline, except I noticed a one card difference in the story choices for two room in Green Eyed Boy, but that's pretty negligible.