Libramarian
Adventurer
I was looking at the explanation of the "three pillars" of D&D (5e PHB, p.8), and I was disappointed to find that exploration is not well-defined at all.
This doesn't help very much to differentiate exploration from social interaction and combat. In particular, the bolded part is just the basic pattern of D&D play (p.6) that happens during any kind of interaction or encounter.
It looks like exploration is just a catch-all for everything that happens between social and combat encounters. And yet it seems like when people use the term here, they have something more specific in mind. I've even seen references to exploration pillar encounters (traps? navigational challenges?).
What does the exploration pillar mean to you?
"Exploration includes both the adventurers' movement through the world and their interactions with objects and situations that require their attention, Exploration is the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result. On a large scale, that might involve the characters spending a day crossing a rolling plain or an hour making their way through caverns underground. On the smallest scale, it could mean one character pulling a lever in a dungeon room to see what happens."
This doesn't help very much to differentiate exploration from social interaction and combat. In particular, the bolded part is just the basic pattern of D&D play (p.6) that happens during any kind of interaction or encounter.
It looks like exploration is just a catch-all for everything that happens between social and combat encounters. And yet it seems like when people use the term here, they have something more specific in mind. I've even seen references to exploration pillar encounters (traps? navigational challenges?).
What does the exploration pillar mean to you?