D&D 5E Expediting Exploration: keeping travel fun

[DMSage]

This article and more at DMsage.com



[h=3]Expediting Exploration[/h]Since I became a DM I have run far more of my home brewed campaign settings and adventures than published modules. Over the last few months however, I have been both playing and running a published module for 5e. I have enjoyed DMing these modules and think that the struggles of prepping for and running someone else’s material has improved my skills. That said, I have noticed that these pre-written modules have caused my DMing to become more boring.A while ago I was running a session that took place inside a castle. The book gave me a beautiful map so I drew the entire thing out.

​

The castle also had a network of caves underneath it which I drew on the other side of my battle mat to have both sections ready.

​

I was proud of my map and showed up to the session excited and well prepared. Surprisingly, this ended up being one of the slowest, least fun, and least engaging sessions I had run in a long time. “I can’t help others improve their DMing if I run games like this.” I thought.The session turned into the party sneaking down a hallway, checking a door for traps, checking it for locks, perceiving if anyone was coming, opening the door, looking around, perception checking everything, moving their minis one by one, and then searching the room. Despite considering myself adept at handling these actions and adjudications quickly, we spent the majority of the night exploring boring space and standing outside of doors whose rooms had nothing exciting in them anyways.One week after running one of the worst sessions of my life, I ran a home brewed one-shot at PAX. This turned out to be the most fun I have ever had playing D&D and my players said so as well. The difference? This setting took place inside of a mile wide cavern. This incidental fact led me to solve the problem in my previous session and write this article.Before I go into more detail explaining how a mile wide setting was so much more fun than the castle, let’s look at some of the structural aspects of D&D: Encounter and Exploration.An encounter is a string of events or actions that are tied together. Talking to an NPC, sneaking into a house, interrogating a prisoner, and fighting an ogre can all be encounters. See this article by The Angry GM (Four Things You’ve Never Heard of That Make Encounters Not Suck) on what exactly holds an encounter together and defines them. The important thing to note is that encounters are where the fun of the game usually lies. It is where the conflicts happen, the decisions are made, the PCs die, and the goals are achieved or failed. All of these things are what make encounters fo much fun.Exploration on the other hand is the stuff between encounters. It is where you search for the fun, wander without an exciting goal, and make very few exciting decisions. I am using an intentionally vague definition of exploration because the point is that regardless of how you define it, the slower, less exciting stuff in between encounters is exploration. Yes, explorations can be fun, yes they can include encounters or be made into encounters on their own, and yes some explorations have decisions involved in them that make them exciting. But in general, the only goal of the exploration phase of the game is to take you from one encounter to the next.When I sat down to analyze my two games, the exciting cavern and the boring castle, I realized there were several differences and all of them had to do with exploration. The first difference was that the cavern was one mile wide. This by itself meant nothing except that I could not map out the entire cavern, and that was the key. What I chose to do instead was to put all of the interesting encounters that might require combat, turn by turn interaction, or tense negotiations, onto the map and leave the exploration and lesser encounters to narrate through.
Here is the map of the castle, under the castle, and my cavern.Here they are again. This time I have mapped out the areas of exploration in green, Encounters in dark red, and possible encounters that were ignored (ie. the party opened the door and then shut it and walked away) in light red.If dark red = encounters = stuff to do!Light red = missed encounter = possible stuff to doGreen = exploration space = nothing to doWhich session would you like to play in? If you had to guess you might assume that the castle was the least fun, the cave under it was slightly more fun, and my cavern was the most fun.It’s pretty easy to tell why my cavern session was so much more fun than the castle. Let me also note that the issue here was not necessarily that the pre-written module had more exploration, it was that I chose to map it all out. My cavern had just as much if not more, but I didn’t put any of it on the map. My own cavern also had a lot more possible encounters than the pre-written module did. So let’s figure out what makes exploration often fall flat and then figure out how to avoid that. (note that I’m not using combat and encounter interchangeably. My cavern only had 2 combats happen in it. Don’t mistake this article for thinking I’m a combat junkie)[h=3]Player Perceived Encounter:[/h]When the players believe they are facing an encounter that is clearly not.DM: You walk into the shop and see no one around, a sign hung from a large bell says, “ring for service”.Ranger: I want to check for traps. (2) crap!DM: You don’t see anyRanger: umm, hey rogue, why don’t you come over and look.Rogue: Yeah I’ll check for traps. (5) dang!Rogue:….I don’t even want to type all of this out. There is no trap and there is no reason the shopkeeper would trap his customers. What happens for the next five minutes is the rogue and ranger try to figure out another reason to check for traps without metagaming too much. Don’t waist your time.[h=3]False Encounter:[/h]When the DM sets the players up to think there is an encounter when there isn’t, usually caused by the DM waiting for players to narrate themselves moving on but the players think they stopped for a reason.DM: After traveling 10 miles through the woods you come to a clearing with a beautiful lake and a cliff on one side. There is a statue of the god Zeeth carved into the face of the cliff overlooking this lake, probably put here several years ago before the fall of the empire and the gods.DM: …… (long pause waiting for players to say they move on)Players: (thinking the DM has specifically stopped them because an ambush or something is about to happen) What time is it? Let’s make perception checks for an ambush. Lets check out the statue.In this situation the DM wanted to add in a piece of lore during their exploration. Which is wonderful. But then he made the mistake of waiting for the players to make a decision. By stopping the players though, they assumed that the DM was foreshadowing an encounter and so they take steps to prepare or investigate even though there is nothing else to be done or found at the location.[h=3]Perceived Decision:[/h]This occurs when the DM thinks he has given the players a choice but in reality they have no options.DM: You walk down the 100 foot hallway and then it turns left…
Players: …..(10 seconds go by)
Players…. Umm, we go left.DM: Okay, you go left and then walk 20 feet to a right turn…
Players….. (10 seconds go by)
Players… We go right?DM: You go right and 50 feet ahead you come to a set of stairs that goes down.Players…. We go down.The DM in this case thinks he is giving his players choices and thus pauses to give them the opportunity to make the choice. He is not. There is only one way to go. Usually this happens as a result of the DM wanting to see if the players search for traps. But this is just an extension of the false encounter except it is done intentionally and usually has to do with poor trap design. See my article on designing quality traps to learn how to avoid needing to use this cheap technique to manage trap searching.[h=3]Dual non decision:[/h]This occurs when the DM gives the players a choice to make but the players have no background or clues to base their choice on. It is similar to the perceived decision but is often drawn out longer because both the DM and the players think that there is an important decision taking place.DM: The pathway splits into two, one leading left and one leading right.Player 1: ummm… well, we could go left.Player 2: I think we should go right!…..(ten minutes later)Players: we will go right.There is no difference between left or right and there is no reward for choosing the right one given that it is 100% luck. The players put in this exploration predicament will often suffer from indecision knowing that it is an important decision in the DM’s eyes but having no clues to base that decision off of. This leads to the least logical and most boring arguments ever about which way to go.Dual non decision only happens when the players don’t have any information to make the choice. Compare the previous example to this one:DM: you come to a pathway that splits into two. One curves up to the left and the hallways are covered in jagged scorch marks similar to the ones you saw earlier. The right pathway curves down and from it wafts up the smell of seaweed and salt water.Players can use this information to have an interesting debate about what the clues mean and make a partially informed decision about which way to go. It might take the same amount of time for them to make the decision but this argument will be far more interesting and the sense of accomplishment and joy the players will get from putting the clues together and predicting what is down each path will be much higher than in a random argument.[h=3]Infinite search space:[/h]This occurs when you have a massive amount of exploration space compared to encounter space. This is fine if you are skipping quickly through the exploration, but extremely boring when the players have to spend 20 minutes searching every kitchen, forest grove, and desert dune just to find something to do. Here’s another massive map with not much to do to illustrating this example.Remember on this map, green means there was pretty much nothing to do.[h=3]Mechanical search:[/h]The mechanics of D&D are great for combats and other encounters, but they take a long time. If we make people take turns that represent a few seconds, over the course of an exploration that lasts 1 minute in game… that can take an hour or two. When people are in the exploration phase, we want to avoid the nitty gritty rules that slow time down unless we have a great reason to use them. Mapping out the exploration space is a great way to get players bogged down in moving their minis one at a time and making checks every five seconds just to spend 20 minutes to move down a straight hallway with nothing in it. [h=3]Inserted encounter:[/h]When DMs want to add content to their exploration they will often throw in an encounter… the key word there is “throw”. Random encounters and seemingly pointless skill challenges are rarely fun. Think about how much time you put into a big fight. Hopefully you pick out the monsters, give them objectives, tactics, and personalities. Then you build the environment and make sure it tactically matches. It’s a lot of work and it pays off. How much effort do you put into random encounters… usually DMs don’t even have the stat blocks ready. Don’t use these unless you make them actual encounters that you plan out a bit. Same goes for skill challenges. DMs think, “oh I’ll throw in a slick, mossy bridge that they have to cross to get to the next room.” This is fine, except that in the last three sessions of D&D I have played, I have spent 2 full hours crossing bridges. It is absolutely too much time spent on something that wasn’t meant to be more than a 2 minute encounter and they are turning into 45 minute boredom fests.[h=3]Never Ending Narrative:[/h]This is when the DM spends far too much time describing details about the world. This one is very subjective but just know that it can be a problem and as a DM you should be aware of how your players are receiving your twenty minute narrative. I recently played a two hour encounters game at my local game store that came complete with a 45 minute opening narrative

Now that we have names for the problems that arise during exploration, let’s look at how to avoid them and how to get out of a boring situation that won’t let you move on to the next encounter.[h=3]Player perceived encounters:[/h]This one is pretty easy, just narrate the entirety of what they are trying to do and move on. In the example where they thought the bell was trapped just tell them, “you spend several minutes looking for traps and eventually realize it would be ridiculous for him to trap his customers.”-Narrate them past the perceived encounter[h=3]False encounters:[/h]These situations are completely avoidable because the problem lays completely with the DM. These most often show up when you slow the game down to narrate something or bring out a map of something. It ends up looking similar to what you’d do when you were suggesting to them that an encounter is about to take place. Your way around it is to simply not wait for the players to make decisions. If you stop them on their travels to give them some lore, then move them on their way the second you are done giving it to them with a “you continue on your way…”-don’t wait for players to tell you what to do unless you want them to set up for an encounter-If they do get stopped, narrate them out of it by moving time forward and telling them what they did.[h=3]Perceived decision:[/h]-don’t pause the narration to wait for players to tell you they do the thing they have to do[h=3]Dual non decision:[/h]-don’t have two identical choices-add clues and flavor to make decisions distinct-put a time constraint on the players to get them through dual non decisions quickly[h=3]Infinite search:[/h]-avoid large mapping large areas of exploration with no encounters-move through exploration space with narration and “theatre of the mind.” it goes much faster[h=3]Mechanical search:[/h]-Don’t map out exploration space– Move players through sections of exploration space at a time via narration. Don’t go square by square or room by room.– avoid game mechanics or turn taking as much as possible– if the players try to use too many game mechanics or turn taking, add them into your narration and skip the rolls[h=3]Inserted encounter:[/h]-use group checks to get through mechanics/skills more quickly– Put a time limit on the encounter and wrap it up after that amount of time has passed. (helps make sure you don’t stretch it out too long)– Narrate the party forward after a partial success or failure– Put effort into your random encounters to make sure they are as challenging and exciting as your regular encounters[h=3]Never Ending Narration:[/h]-Notice how long you talk for– Be brief when possible-Notice when your players stop being engaged and cut it short when they lose interestThe last part of this article will just look at a couple of examples and how I chose to use these tools to fix my next few sessions. But before I do that I want to put out a clarification. These tools are intended to help you make sure your players stay engaged and you get the most out of your time playing D&D. If my players set up a player perceived encounter and it’s really funny and everyone is having a blast, I don’t tell them they are dumb and to move on from it. I allow the situation to continue for as long as everyone is showing enjoyment. These tools are intended to be used to prevent you from getting stuck in boring situations and to get you to look more critically at how you spend the precious few hours you have to play D&D.So to continue my story, the week after I played my cave map at PAX, it was back home to run for my group again. The party had finished up the castle and moved on to the next chapter of the book… a hunting lodge. This map had more exploration space than any map I had seen before. My immediate reaction was to do what I had learned and map out the one or two encounters that could occur, which would mean only mapping out a couple rooms and a hallway, and delete the rest of the exploration stuff off of the map. However upon looking closer at the layout of this lodge, I realized that the exploration provided a lot of lore, clues, hidden equipment, and story to this chapter of the campaign. If I left it all out I would skip the boring parts but also miss a lot of the narrative of the game. So I used another solution.I knew that my biggest issues were going to be mechanical searching and infinite searching. To help prevent these I would do a few things.

• I only put one mini on the map to make the players less inclined to begin mechanical searching.
• I narrated them through things more quickly and gave them information without making them roll for it
• I divided the exploration area into several sections. One section would contain several rooms. This meant that once the party moved into a section, one roll would count for searching all 3 or 4 rooms and I would narrate what they found/learned in each room. This tactic effectively turned several hundred squares of exploration space into 11 big squares of exploration space, reducing rolls, movement, and time spent opening doors with nothing behind them.

This tactic worked out very well. The session was still a bit slower than I’d have liked due to the design of the module, but it was significantly more fun and got them through all the information, story and searching and to the exciting parts much more quickly.Two sessions after this one, another massive map. This one literally giant sized. I gave my players an overview map on a piece of paper that showed the locations of the towers, buildings and rooms, but blacked out what was inside. This prevented them from going mechanical at all. They would just point to the room they wanted to go to and I’d get to choose how that worked. For the boring rooms. I’d narrate what was inside. Rooms with encounters, I would have it drawn on the map or I’d narrate them being at the door and let them pick it up from there. Then of course there was the boss fight… which I drew out on the other side of the map.To summarize, this article should help you decide when you should be skipping the exploration part of the game to maximize the fun. Tools like narration, moving time forward, Zooming in or out on maps to prevent square by square searching, not waiting for your players to tell you what they do when they don’t have a meaningful choice, and grouping larger areas together if they don’t have encounters in them can all help you speed up your game, prevent awkward and boring situations, and get you to that epic dragon fight instead of stall you at a door.

 

[Coffinthrower]

Interesting observations. Makes me feel the need to get into my own game with the same eyes.

 

[pedro2112]

You are calling for WAY too many dice rolls. Only call for dice rolls when there is uncertainty.

 

[Quickleaf]

If dark red = encounters = stuff to do!
Light red = missed encounter = possible stuff to do
Green = exploration space = nothing to do

I can't help but feel like sitting in on some old school style play would do you good. I'm stunned that any DM would claim "exploration = nothing to do" or "exploration is the boring stuff between encounters."

Or maybe you've just limited exploration in your games to a very specific subset of what is usually considered exploration in a D&D game?

EDIT: Oh, those are fantastic maps btw!

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Well, as [MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] said...but in less words...

I read your post and came away with this: "The problem wasn't your DM'ing...the problem was your players".

Basically it seems to me that your players don't want to "role-play characters in a fantasy world", they want to "be told a fantasy story through the eyes of their characters".

First, you lament about spending 'all that time' on your maps...and then the players didn't explore or otherwise engage in it. Well, SURPRISE!, you drawing maps was FUN for you, wasn't it? It gave you a great sense of satisfaction, right? Your accomplishment made you WANT to run a game, correct? Great! That is the entire point of drawing your own maps. Well, that and you can have exactly what you want in them. You say, "Despite considering myself adept at handling these actions and adjudications quickly, we spent the majority of the night exploring boring space and standing outside of doors whose rooms had nothing exciting in them anyways". "Boring space" and "nothing exciting in them" are specifically there so that when the PC's do get to the so-called "exciting stuff", it actually seems exciting. It's like a horror movie. If it starts off with the killer smashing through a doorway, and then for the next hour and half the movie consists of nothing but variations of said killer smashing through things and the distraught teen screaming and running to the next room...well, that'd get awfully boring awfully fast...probably after the third of fourth "jump scare". All that time int he movie, like, the first hour of it? That's the "boring space" and "nothing exciting" part of the movie...so that when the killer does arrive on scene, it IS exciting!

Second,

The important thing to note is that encounters are where the fun of the game usually lies. It is where the conflicts happen, the decisions are made, the PCs die, and the goals are achieved or failed. All of these things are what make encounters fo much fun.Exploration on the other hand is the stuff between encounters. It is where you search for the fun, wander without an exciting goal, and make very few exciting decisions.

Dude, you and I have vastly different ideas of "fun" in D&D. I like "encounters" as much as the next guy, sure, but all that stuff in between? That's where the real cool stuff happens in a campaign. That's where characters bond, NPC's become hated, cities take on a life of their own, and wildernesses become spectacular visions in your imaginations. Rolling dice to kill a monster with the primary focus being on how much DPS you can bring to bare is..."less fun" for me, lets just say. Yes, those battles can have important/drastic effects on the campaign...but just saying "You head to the evil mages keep, fight some rats, walk down some halls and open some doors, and you find him in here [places battlemap on table]. Roll for initiative!"... um, no. Not fun in any form of the word, IMHO. But, according to you, it should be "fun" because, y'know, the players got to skip all that "boring stuff between encounters".

Third,

But in general, the only goal of the exploration phase of the game is to take you from one encounter to the next.

I could just as easily say "But in general, the only goal of the encounter phase of the game is to stop you from exploring one area to the next". Both statements would be misleading. You can't take one "aspect" of a story/game/adventure and just skip it without loosing much of the impact. The saying The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts? That applies to D&D adventuring as well. Without all the "boring stuff", as you put it, the game becomes nothing but a table top fantasy version of Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. One encounter after the next, with only a change of scenery to tie them together.

Lastly, all the stuff you tagged as Player Perceived Encounter, False Encounter, Perceived Decision, etc...? I'll have to refer you back to my initial " " comment. Reading your "fixes" for these supposed problems had me scratching my head even more. It seems that you don't want players, you want an audience...or, at best, a group of people willing to sit there and let you lead them by the nose from encounter to encounter. I'm not trying to sound harsh, really, but as I said, your experience and mine are VASTLY different! Any DM that effectively "shushed!" me if I tried to indicate what I want my character to do after just being narrated a bit of campaign lore about an old, huge statue in the forest, would find himself with one less player. IME, playing a PC in an RPG is basically a "what would you do if you were this character in this world in this situation?". If I think my dwarf character would be interested in spending a few hours making notes about the stonework and craftsmanship of the stone statue in the forest, I want to do that. Just because the DM has decided that this sort of thing is "boring" and nothing but a speed-bump on the way to the next "exciting encounter", doesn't mean that this sort of thing is "boring" to the player(s).

Anyway, I'm not really trying to come off poo-poo'ing your revelation about what you want out of a game of D&D. If encounter-focused campaigning is your thing, go for it! What I'm saying is that maybe you've come to this conculsion erroneously because of how your players are playing. Maybe the learned it from some other DM that had the unfair-killer-DM complex, so now anytime the DM describes anything they are instantly on high alert. Or maybe they played with a DM who would have a note saying "The second door that they come to that they don't check for traps on will have a falling block trap on it". Or who knows? The point is, a group of players who check for traps on a merchants front door to his shop has some serious hang-ups that they need to address...as well as players who panic and go into hyper-vigilant mode when the DM gives a description of an old stone statue in a forest, fully expecting some sort of ambush because of a meta-game habit they learned from a bad DM, etc.

Sorry, I pretty much disagree (in case I wasn't clear enough in my post... ), with just about everything you said. But, as long as you and your players are having fun, ignore me.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Imaculata]

Dungeon design is something I spend a whole list on in our "Dungeon Master don'ts" topic, which got ported over from the old WotC forum.

The dungeon is filled with empty space

This is clearly a problem your castle suffers from. There's a lot of areas where there is nothing to do. In a well designed space, such areas do not exist. If there's nothing there, you might as well remove it, or put something there. Too many DM's create these long corridors full of nothing, with dead ends that lead to nothing, and doors that lead to rooms with nothing in them. A waste of time for both the DM and the players. Fortunately, there are easy ways to fix this.

Dungeon loops back on itself

Rather than having a passage lead to a dead end, connect the passage to an area of interest. Multiple passages can lead to the same area, to increase the likely hood of the players visiting it.

Cut the empty rooms

Don't force yourself to fill up a castle template. Maybe that entire redundant section has collapsed? Maybe the tower that has nothing in it, lies in ruins? Maybe the empty corridor has a collapsed ceiling, thus blocking it off.

Fill the empty rooms with minor encounters

Not all encounters involve combat, or traps. The empty courtyard could have a skeleton next to the well, that the players could examine. There may be tracks on the ground from recent visitors. Or maybe there's some dung from an unknown animal, which foreshadows a monster encounter further on in the castle? The trick is to fill each room with interesting details that do not feel like a waste of time. Perhaps all the details form a collective story of the history of the castle?

If the players examine the corpse of some soldier in the courtyard, that is an encounter. The players may find some loot on his person, or perhaps the corpse is an undead? The body could also be trapped, or perhaps he carries a note? The wounds on the body could also foreshadow a threat further on in the castle.

It is not a lot of work to put something of interest in each room.

Symmetry is boring

Dungeons and castles are very boring if it feels like the designer just clone-stamped everything. If the castle has 4 towers, then they should not all look the same. One could have a large hole in it from a catapult hit. Another could be leaning slightly. Another might have crumbled into a pile of rubble. Break symmetry whenever you can, to make the environment look exciting. Maybe the castle has only 3 towers, and the shape of the castle defies what you'd expect. Rather than making it a perfect square, make it shaped like a triangle instead.

Real world castles do use symmetry of course. But we're designing an environment for a game, and so each area should have purpose, and should be exciting. If there are just 4 empty towers, then there is no reason to explore them, which makes them wasted space from a gaming point of view. It also makes the castle look very bland. This is a fantasy game, and so a castle is allowed to look fantastic. Design it in a way so that it defies symmetry, and is interesting to look at from every angle.

Play with height differences

Walls, towers and the gatehouse aren't the only height differences in a castle. It could have inner and outer walls, multiple levels, and bridges. Take a look at the lay out of Helm's Deep from Lord of the Rings, and you'll notice there are winding paths, and walkways.



Another example is the castle of Tyr Asleen from the movie Willow, which is an old dilapidated castle that has plenty of wooden walkways and bridges.





[video=youtube;Hrb4n-x7CJ4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrb4n-x7CJ4[/video]

Another great example is the castle Skyhold from Dragon Age 3, but I could not find a proper image that does justice to the design of it. Skyhold has multiple staircases, walkways and platforms, that all provide different ways to the same area. The main courtyard for example has a staircase up to the wall, but a bridge also connects the throne room to the main battlements as well.

By designing your castle this way, it is not only more interesting to explore, but also to defend or attack. In the case of Tyr Asleen, the walkways offer a clear height advantage against enemies in the courtyard, but the place is infested by trolls that can scale walls and ceilings to reach the walkways.

Your environment should have a story to tell

Try to think of each space as a separate "moment" or encounter. In level design, I often refer to this as "level moments". The players enter a new space, and there is something there. For example:

The players enter through the gatehouse, and notice the murder holes in the ceiling. A skeletal arm is dangling through one of the holes, encouraging the players to climb up there and explore.

The players enter the courtyard, and notice that the largest tower of the castle has a large gaping hole in it, and a signal fire at the top, which isn't lit. There are also two smaller towers, one of which has crumbled into a pile of rubble and covers part of the courtyard. There is a well with a corpse hanging over the edge. There's a stone bridge that crosses part of the courtyard, and connects the upper level of the gatehouse, with the main hall. The doors to the main hall look smashed open. Part of the stone bridge has collapsed, but the gap can be jumped across. It is the only way up to the upper level of the gatehouse.

Across the courtyard are some stables, and some barracks. The smell of death emanates from the stables, and the door to the barracks is ajar. There are several arrows lodged in the wood of the door to the barracks. The arrows look very old. Some footprints lead away from the courtyard towards the upper levels of the courtyard. The players could try to follow the trail if they want.

In conclusion

So that is just an example of filling each section of the castle with story and detail. Each area is of interest, and encourages further exploration. No space should be empty. What if one of the towers has a ballista on it? That immediately makes the tower a location of interest to the players.

If you as a DM do not take an interest in the rooms, then why should your players?

 

[BoldItalic]

Involve the players more in creating the environment they are exploring. Let them regulate the amount of detail that gets narrated and the spacing between encounters. Don't over-prep; encourage them to improvise too. Here's a completely fictitious episode:

DM: You are outside a ruined castle. There's a way in through a fallen archway. Some towers look intact from a distance but others look crumbling and delapidated.

Forgon: The drawbridge across the moat looks unsafe. I'm crossing it carefully. The planks are rotten and squeak when I tread on them but I get across to the gateway. There are three ravens watching me from the left tower. It's a bit spooky. I call the others to join me.

Abilae: There's a lighted window high up in the keep. Someone is moving about up there. This place is not as deserted at it looks.

Warlof: Why is there a giant stone ball in the middle of the courtyard? It's at least 20ft across and perfectly carved from some sort of sandstone. How on earth did it get there? I'm going across to look underneath it.

Belthander: I notice there's a wooden catwalk going from the outer walls across to Abilae's tower and there are no windows or arrow-slits on that side. If we clamber up onto the battlements, we might be able to sneak across it unobserved and surprise whoever is in there.

DM: There's a small wooden door leading from the catwalk into the tower. You can hear the sound of chanting from somewhere up above you. It sounds mournful and not very pleasant.

Everyone is contributing, no-one is bored and the DM is as much in the dark as the players! You just have to give the players permission to do it.

 

[Imaculata]

I'm not a fan of that style of running a campaign. The DM is after all the storyteller, and the only one who knows if the castle is abandoned or not. But I do agree that you shouldn't feed your players every detail at once. Start off by sketching the basic scene. Describe the castle. What state is it in? How many towers does it have? What does the entrance look like? Are there any fires lit? At this point we do not need to know what the banners look like, and what decoration we see. But we should know if the castle looks like it is in use, or is in ruins. And we should know about major features, such as a moat and a drawbridge.

Next, as they enter the castle, describe what they see inside. Give them enough information so that they can decide where to go next. But leave out the exact details. The players need to know locations, such as the armory, the barracks, the stables. The players should be able to choose where they could go next.

Then as they approach any location inside the castle, start giving them more details. What do they see on the outside of the stables? Are the stables open, or do they have doors? Do the doors look old and worn down, or brand new? Do the players smell anything peculiar?



Harrenhal in a Song of ice and fire (aka Game of Thrones) is also a great example of a castle with character. As you can see, there is no symmetry here. The castle itself tells a story purely through the way it looks. Its stones look molten by dragon fire, and many of its towers are in a bad state, or have even completely crumbled. The castle itself breaths story, and there is nothing symmetrical or boring about it. It is a haunting silhouette in the distance, and just as spooky from the inside.

 

[Imaculata]

Don't make your dungeon too big



No one is going to want to play your ginormous labyrinth full of pointless corridors and rooms. Drawing a huge maze is a lot of fun. Playing one however, isn't. If the only choice is taking a left or a right turn, then consider reducing the size of your dungeon to just a few meaningful rooms.

Instead, take this dungeon that I designed:



The Tomb of the Pirate Queens is a simple dungeon, but rich with detail. Every room has a purpose. I won't go into great detail about what each room contains, but I'll quickly go over the basic ideas behind it. The players were helping an npc seek out the tomb of one of her ancestors, to complete her arcane training.
Water is a crucial theme in my campaign, and so this dungeon was partially flooded. Arrows indicate the direction of the flow of water, and most of the water is waist-high. If the players want to move against the direction of the water, they move at half speed, and must roll a swim check. The main threats in this dungeon were of course undead, but also magical traps, pitfalls, water, puzzles, and structural hazards. Apart from the tomb, there were also other rooms of interest that were helpful to the players.
The Hall of Legends had magical murals, which showed an important piece of history. As the players gaze at it, the murals come to life, and move to tell the tale. The longer the players look at, the more alive it seems. They start hearing the sounds from the past as well.
The Hall of Dragons gave them valuable insight in the names and locations of known dragons in the region. Many of the corridors have collapsed. Strength checks, levers and explosives could be used to bypass various doors. A lever in the top left corner of the dungeon allowed the players to drain the water and open up the aqua duct, which gave access to the Hall of Legends.
The most important detail is perhaps the Map Room, which has two balconies overlooking it in the shape of ships, and a massive map of the underworld engraved in the ceiling. It also connects the two wings of the dungeon, and several doors link back to it. The height differences in this dungeon provide for a lot of strategy, so there are lots of staircases and overpasses everywhere.

I made a list of names for this dungeon of all the people buried there. So if the players inspected a tomb, I could tell them who was buried there. The dead also all had their own popular phrase, and the players were so amused by this, that they started reading them all. Later on in the dungeon however, is a puzzle where the players had to choose the founders of the island, and match up their phrase with the correct person. So this detail eventually was pretty important.

 

[Rhenny]

I liked the original poster's article, and I do agree with a lot of the other posters as well. Exploration should be viewed as time to roleplay, gather clues, accomplish out of combat objectives, develop the narrative and character development, etc.

For me, I like to make sure that I as DM and the players have clear objectives when they are in exploration mode. For example, navigate the Underdark to find a trading enclave, travel to he neighboring city without mishap, explore the abandoned castle for signs that the site is actually a vampire lair. That way there is a frame for their actions and roleplaying. The framing also helps me (DM) decide if I should narrate fast through the scene or linger on details.

I also like to think of the exploration space just like another encounter. Since there is a goal, the players just need to interact as their pcs in order to achieve the goal. Sometimes their interaction with the environment will be fruitful (finding an important clue or making it to a point without mishap or detection) and other times things will go wrong. This adds the same tension and conflict that combat holds yet it is derived in a different way. Of course, sometimes exploration turns into combat and that's another way to build the tension and raise the edrenalin level.