Exploration based adventures/campaigns: how do you do it?

[Raven Crowking]

Isn't there a complete pre-made sandbox out there that I can just buy and use? Making your own seems like a lot of work.

Wilderlands of High Fantasy is, IMHO, the best commercial starting point.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Is there a forgotten temple to an ancient slumbering malevolent deity out there somewhere? If so, does anyone know about it ?

And, even if no one knows about it, does it have an influence on the environment? Something that people might note, that the players might clue into? "There's a cold valley up in the Black Hills. Local folk avoid it."

The best trick in your arsenal will be information. You will want to feed it to the players in abundance. Don't make finding out about the area in question a chore.

This.

But, I would also add, if the players decide to find out more than what you've fed them, reward them for undertaking that task. In an exploration game, more and better information are the most important "treasures" you can hand out!


RC

 

[Jack7]

Coincidentally, I just spotted this thread. Personally this is how I feel about Exploration Campaigns. And how I saw a really good one played out.

 

[Celebrim]

After you've got your content together, the most important thing is to find reasons to drag your players across the map. And the trick here is to drag them so that they don't necessarily take a straight line from point A to point B. Instead, the plot hooks have to just give them the general location of point B, and the PC's are expected to need to spend some time hex sweeping to actually find it.

So plot hooks tend to be of the sort:

"There is a lost city filled with wonders. Noone knows exactly where it is, but its supposed to be within 3 days journey of the head waters of this major river."
"Because of your appearance, the natives think you are from a civilization that is supposed to be on the other side of the moutains. They have no commerce with the civilization, but they heard from the Dandan who heard from the Mokeen who heard from the Botani that the Zulani sometimes trade with them so maybe if you could find the Zulani they'd be able to tell you how to get there."
"There is a secret magic healing pool deep in the forest, but no one has been able to go there for a long time because something terrible now gaurds it."
"One of the other exploration groups went to set up a base near a lake deep in the interior, but we haven't heard from them since. Could you go and find out what happened?"
"We've been hearing alot about the Brectans, who are said to rule a wide empire and have a mighty army, but we have no direct contact with them. We know that they live that a way, could you go establish relations with them?"
"We keep finding all these high tech artifacts, but the natives seem to think its taboo to talk about them. One of the other teams said that they saw what looked like a city on top of a plateau that looked like it might belong to the same culture. We want you to go explore it and see what you can learn."
"We need a source of copper. The natives from the interior have been trading us native copper ingots. We need you to head that away and see if you can locate where the copper comes from so we can set up a mining operation."
"Spies in the homeland have determined that a rival nation has established a military outpost. We only know its general location. We need you to go that away, find out where it is, and spy out the defences and strength of the garrison."

And so forth.

Hopefully, once the PC's have explored enough, they'll start having thier own questions that they want answered, find places they want to plunder, and begin to develop thier own independent motivations. Because this is an exploration game, and because you've got content, as the PC's move across the map on one mission, they are going to find different hooks and points of interest that may lead them in entirely unexpected directions. And likewise, once they get where they are going, they might not find what they expected to find. The lost city could still be inhabited. The rival military outpost could have been destroyed by some formidable and hitherto unknown danger. The copper mines might be owned by giants. The Brectan might represent such a formidable empire that the represent a direct threat, or they might prove to be entirely mythological, or they might prove to be fantastic beings like skulks, birdfolk, ghouls, or drow.

 

[Fanaelialae]

One of my DMs recently started an exploration style campaign set on a island of myth (where many of the mainland races legendarily hail from). Before it started he mentioned that, for the cost of a trained skill, players could start knowing a dead hieroglyphic language akin to Sanskrit (Ponegliff).

Thus far, it's been utterly useless for communicating with the natives (we've only had one game though). However, it's been quite useful nonetheless, as we've been finding Ponegliff symbols all about the island that have given us clues and insight. Even if I hadn't chosen for my character to learn it, there's an NPC back at the base camp who can read it as well (presumably we could have taken charcoal rubbings back to him for deciphering).

It's one approach, if you want the PCs to be unable to communicate with the natives but still able to gather setting information. Create an obscure dead language that was used by the last advanced civilization to inhabit your sandbox, and include an NPC who can read (and perhaps teach) it in case none of your players take the hint.

 

[howandwhy99]

I've been really jonsing to run a game with a heavy bent on exploration. But I am not sure exactly how to do it.

There are a lot of different opinions on how to do this. Truth be told, I don't think there has been one I agree with that I've ever seen in text. Exploration outside of one's self in RPGs usuallly means playing pattern finding games and they're a game category that has been stopped being designing for.

In general, what sort of tenants do you use in an exploration-focused game? What are your goals? Where is your plot? If it's purely "Let's go poking around", there's no pressure, so you get the 15-minute work day, right? What other aspects are emphasized or important when running an exploration game?

I think you mean tenets. Principally, it's going to be a game where the GM has a series of rules hidden behind a screen. A code un-abstracted about the topic to be explored. In other words, it is the thing the players are trying to figure out that is the objective of the game.

Goals are going to be determined by the players. These are whatever the players think will earn them points for performing a role, their class essentially. So the focuses in D&D, for instance, are in fighting, spellcasting, religion, and thievery.

Plot can be just about anything that fits in each of the boundaries above. Having all four addressed by a module's overall situation is ideal. It's also what the world does in response to the PCs' actions rather than an attempt to script players.

15-minute workdays are system specific, so they aren't necessarily going to happen.

In terms of "exploration-based" games it's better, if you clarify what kind of exploration you are referring to. Is this about exploring character /player desires? Or is it attempting to understand something outside the self?

How do you give meaningful choices? It's easy if "To the left, the path veers into an eerie swamp and the path to the right veers into a mist-shrouded forest". But if a large area consists of forest, for instance, how do you create meaningful choices about where to explore?

Well, I don't force emotive "meaning", but leave it to the structural pattern to put choices in context of consequences. Like in chess, every choice has a cascading effect on every other action possible. It's a systemic meaning rather than purely emotive one.

For specific example, every DM is going to do this differently. I use lines and volume for traveling and territorial resources. Randomly wandering through a forest is about being lost and randomly encountering elements within that territory. The choices are about how one learns to navigate and deal directly with the environment therein. During tactical encounters it's about those creatures or objects specifically. The interconnected relationships of all of these are what gives them meaning and numerous contextual leads to other things.

On the topic of Hexcrawling

How does it work? I picked up the Kingmaker adventure, and I was a little dissatisfied with the rules for hexcrawling. Is that it? Move through, or spend more time exploring the hex? Is that how it was used Back in the Day? Is there a better way to utilize the Hexmap for exploring?

I don't know how hexcrawling works, I don't really use it. I use hexed transparency overlays to measure distance ratios on spatial maps. Other than that, I don't see much real use for hexes or hexcrawling. But it is certainly a popular form to use. I can't really help with those though. :shrug:

 

[Mark]

Last January our group did a little experiment with a completely freeform hexcrawl sandbox. You can check it out here -

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