As I'm going to be talking about and mentioning my own game, I want to note Im splitting this off from my mind dump thread as I think this topic, and what I want to say, is much more broadly applicable than just to my own game's design, but I am going to use it to illustrate my thoughts in practice.
And as I ended up writing a possibly obnoxious introductury spiel Im going to put it in a quote block so those who don't care about that part can more easily skip to the point.
I also won't be providing a TL;DR as its really important to understand my thought process and how I came to these conclusions. You can skip the Golly Gee heading if you want to just read the actual idea rather than its full context.
Developing a "Theory" of Exploration
So the first question here that has to be answered is what is Exploration. It sounds like it should be obvious, but it isn't for the most part, especially in the context of exploration as a dynamic within a game.
My answer is that the question is a red herring. What Exploration is is a relatively minor aspect of a much greater whole, and as such, the question that should be asked is what is Exploration actually a part of?
My answer to that new question, is that Exploration is just one aspect of Adventure, and that when one wants to make exploration a robust part of a game, it needs to be in the context of supporting and reinforcing Adventuring. Adventuring is much more straightforward to understand and explain in a pinch; to see the new and exciting, seek thrills, face mighty challenges, and, in fantasy and scifi at least, claim fame, fortune, glory and all that hullabaloo.
Supporting Adventure through Game Design
So with that in mind, supporting Adventuring becomes a prominent focus. So what makes up and guides an adventure? By my estimation, its the following, in order of importance:
The Senses
Traversal
Encounters and Complications
Exploration and Discovery
Survival
Questing
The Senses covers, as the name implies, the literal senses one uses to percieve the world around them. I define these mechanically, again in order of importance, as Time, Touch, Vision, Hearing, Smell, and Taste.
These Senses not only cover, more or less, the full range of physical interaction with a gameworld, but also serve as a rather handy organizational tool for rules and mechanics that will form the basis of how characters will interact with the world. Ie, Touch covers stuff like Range, Size and Weight mechanics, while Vision covers sight distances and light, and so on. The time rules in fact are the single critical core mechanic in the game, hence their prominence as essentially step one in the Adventuring system.
Now, I've said that a true exploration system, or as we should call it now an Adventure system, isn't and shouldn't be just travel rules. And that is still true. But what is also true is that Adventuring isn't not travel either, and when we propose to have explorable gameworlds, we are essentially saying that travel itself is at least one of the principle gameplay loops.
Ergo, Traversal becomes important, and it is vital that getting around the gameworld is fun unto itself, which of course is just basic game design. If you expect people to be constantly doing such and such thing, it needs to be really fun and satisfying.
We see this play out, for good and bad, in video games like Skyrim versus games like Breath of the Wild, or even its predecessor Morrowind.
In Skyrim, world traversal is usually pretty boring, especially once you've settled into familiarity with the gameworld (this concept becomes important later), and its no surprise that the presence of fast travel becomes a crutch even for those whod rather not have it, because the game simply isn't designed to make getting around its large world fun.
Whereas in Breath of the Wild, you have a number of really satisfying ways of getting around, with the two core ones being the Paraglider and Climbing, which are practically as perfect as it gets. They don't make traversal tedious, but they also don't make it an afterthought either, and in terms of gamefeel they just feel good to engage with.
And even Morrowind, which doesn't have those kinds of cool mechanics, still has a fun to engage with system of diegetic fast travel, one that is so prominent in the game its actually the first thing that makes you go "What the hell is that?" and prompts you to go explore. Putting the Silt Strider in plain view in Seyda Neen was a masterclass in game design, and once you get into the game and start learning how to get around, you have an emergent minigame of definining an efficient route to wherever it is you want to go, as you swap between different modes of fast travel that all have different destinations.
Both Morrowind and BOTW touch on another key game design principle in this regard: interesting decisions.
Next up is Encounters and Complications. While they sound similar, they are distinct ideas. Encounters should be representing all kinds of random or fixed occurrences that the player(s) would either be obliged or encouraged to interact with. These aren't merely random combat with quantum ogres, but can extend into all sorts of things. Wizards falling out of the sky, an NPC with a problem on the side of the road, and even things like stumbling onto a striking view all fall under this.
Mechanically, we can then consider Encounters to be fixed, predetermined events that, while they can and should be flexible in when and where they occur, are ultimately predetermined by either the system, the GM, or both.
Complications meamwhile, are a parallel aspect that goes beyond actual events and is more of a divide between odd, fleeting moments, and circumstances that are far too large in scale and scope to be considered mere events. While Encounters can often spawn out of a Complication, the scale for how consequential a Complication is is much more highly variable. A sudden gust of wind at the right moment is just as much a Complication as a pack of Ogres wandering by, and the sudden onset of a fierce thunderstorm dwarfs either one.
In our video game examples, Morrowind doesn't have much tl support this (but Skyrim does. Go figure), while Breath of the Wild manages it well in execution, if a bit scant. In BOTW, complications mostly arise from the ocassional onset of a storm or the ambush of an assassin, but thats it. This is a section where TTRPGs have generally excelled.
Then, we finally come to the really juicy parts, but first lets talk about the other two.
Survival is an often contentious aspect of games, as its often times designed to be fairly punishing and can also be quite tedious as well. But it doesn't have to be, and with the right design one could integrate the need to Survive into the overall gameplay loops without it becoming abrasive.
But, its also often still contentious regardless, as some will just bounce off of it no matter what. Breath of the Wild is no exception, as while it doesn't feature a typical Survival system (temperature matters but you don't technically have to eat food), it does feature a prominent equipment durability mechanic, which is in fact a hallmark of more robust survival systems, and as such there is no shortage of people who face it and bounce right off the game, ne'er to return. Even with Tears of Kingdom mostly smoothing over the last vestigial abrasiveness of that system, it still turns people off.
Hard to win or please everyone, but there again, not everyone actually wants what this topic is about to begin with.
Questing is the most obvious aspect of an Adventure, and its because of that that I rank it least in importance. But even despite that, Questing is by no means skippable, especially in the context of Fantasy.
But, it also isn't necessarily as straightforward as one would assume. While true Quests, stories of good and evil or the fetching of objects or the slaying of rats, are a part of this aspect, it goes beyond that.
Questing, in truth, is the underlying reason to be (I refuse to speak gibberish) for adventuring, and isn't strictly limited to an actual Quest. Rather, any goal an adventuerer, and thus the player, has is a sort of quest unto itself.
Ergo, the reason why it ranks least is because Questing is largely and fundamentally an emergent property of developing a game people want to play. The game is fun, entertaining, interesting etc for a variety of reasons, and so people are compelled to play and in doing so they begin to form their own goals and desires for and within their playtime. They, in a way, are already writing their own Quest just by playing.
This is the key thing that makes games a legitimate artform; this emergent interaction just doesn't happen in other forms of art, and TTRPGs, Story Games, and Improv games are all relative equals in honing in on this kind of interaction specifically. (Video games in this context are more akin to how Movies relate to Books. Both valid art forms, but the former trades in limitations for a more comprehensive audio/visual experience that the latter can't necessarily match. (Technology has changed that paradigm considerably, and the advent of VTTs is slowly bringing TT games and video games to parity)
But now, with all those aspects covered, we come to the big enchilada, Exploration itself. The key thing here is to recognize that many, arguably most, humans have an innate urge to explore. Its driven primarily by curiosity, but theres a great number of different factors that play into it (which incidentally all map in various ways to the aspects Ive just laid out), and most of the time, exploration, like Questing, is something that will emerge from a well designed game.
After all, we all know what its like to become enticed by a new game and be eager and excited to explore what it does.
So, with that in mind, trying to "force" exploration is the wrong approach, and one I've observed being the way most try to go when they aren't just doing some variant on Travel or Survival rules.
What can be done instead, though, is to reinforce it. To emphasize and capture that urge to explore so that, when people naturally go looking, they're rewarded.
So how is that accomplished? Has anyone done it?
Many certainly try. Much as I love Breath of the Wild (it is actually one of the few games I can say I fell in love with pretty much immediately. I literally said so within less than a minute of being able to control Link), even it doesn't really accomplish it to a satisfactory degree. It does successfully reinforce the gameplay loop of exploration itself, by emphasizing its durability system and introducing lots of wonderful "what the hell is that" moments all over the place (and just as well it has very conscious world design, which is its single best contribution to this topic), but it doesn't reinforce exploration for its own sake, and indeed, it does in fact force you to do it as its the only way you can really do anything in the game. While not an issue in a video game, in a TTRPG that becomes a true pain point.
So does any game do it well? Well, I don't call it my white whale just to be funny.
I didn't think any game really did, and strictly speaking, that is still the case.
However, over time and through lots of research, playing, and reading, a few standouts really came to light, and collectively, I think they provide the essential secret ingredients to finally harpooning this whale, and its just a matter of synthesizing a system out of it.
Applying All This Crap to make something Playable
So, without further verbose ado, these are what I think collectively provide the components of this system (and for those who care, this is the exact reason why I find the prejudicial attitude towards video game design in tabletop circles to be distasteful):
Arora: Age of Desolation
Breath of the Wild
Morrowind
Ironsworn
Each in isolation accomplish a great deal of things in regards to getting this system right, and I feel truly nailing involves incorporating aspects from all of them.
Arora its a relatively obscure (meaning I seldom see anyone ever mention it) supplement for 5e DND. It is mostly a setting book (and a pretty decent one at that), but its claim to obscure fame is its Exploration system, which accomplishes the feat of actually reinforcing exploration for its own sake, and doing so in a way thats not only fun but is actually almost identical to how exploration was portrayed in the classic macdaddy of all fantasy, Lord of the Rings. I don't know to what degree this was intentional, but it is there.
How Arora's system works is by introducing a meta currency called the Discovery Bonus, which is tied to different systematized Regions in the gameworld, which you can spend to discover new places in those Regions. How you accumulate this bonus is rather simplistic (its for 5e afterall) and involves making skill checks. The key though is what these checks are for: through the use of personal knowledge (Recall Lore), perusing documents (Research; Maps, tomes, etc), and asking around.
This is where the Lord of the Rings comes in. Do you want to guess what the Fellowship does prior to leaving Rivendell?
Hearing those passages speak of them doing just those things is ultimately what made all of this click in my head, for the record, so good on slightly younger me for deciding to listen to the books.
But, where Arora falls short is in the issue of integration, which is something I've taken fo complaining about pretty much constantly. Arora's system is self-contained and doesn't really provide for any kind of rewards or incentives that aren't just finding interesting things in the world.
Where Arora falls short, though, Breath of the Wild excels, with deeply integrated mechanics all throughout. Storms for example aren't just a complication meant to hinder you in Traversal, but can also be exploited for great effect in combat (throw a sword into a puddle next to some enemies and watch the lightning fry them all), and you're directly rewarded for figuring out these kinds of systemic interactions, which you might not ever figure out unless you got out there and observed metal attracts lightning, and lightning frys everything wet, and that standing in a puddle makes you wet.
And beyond that, BOTW's depiction of Hyrule as a gameworld was very consciously designed. The triangle rule that the devs used to design the map is brilliant game design, and naturally the above wouldn't be possible without their Chemistry system.
But as mentioned, even BOTW still falls short. It forces you to explore, and much of what there is to find when you do so, while often interesting to look at, is pretty shallow otherwise, and doesn't often provide for a more substantive adventure than the one you're already on.
Which is where Morrowind comes in. Morrowind, and truly even its successor games, excel at providing "attractors", distractions essentially that pull you into new adventures if you let them. And it should be no surprise it excels at this, as it was crafted by hand and was designed as a true sandbox, arguably one of the first of its kind at least in 3D graphics.
But Morrowind also excels in absolutely phenomenal worldbuilding and art design. So strong are these aspects that, if you ignore the janky looking people and monsters, much of the game still holds up in terms of being pretty to look at. You truly don't need all that much to stop it looking so dated.
As it happens though, Morrowind has the same problem pretty much all video games do when it comes to Exploration: scope. Video games simply can't support possibilities that table top games can, and won't be able to for a long time even with AI. (We need Holodecks)
And that segues into Ironsworn. Ironsworn itself is a pretty solid game, especially for a PBTA game, and Ive related before that I attribute its success as a game to the fact that its supports solo play as an equal means of playing to GM-less play and the traditional GM play. Its because of this that I think Ironsworn manages to accomplish what pretty much every other PBTA claims to do (or perhaps what their zealots misguidedly claim they do) in providing an experience that cuts right to the end experience, but also does so in a way that doesn't sacrifice the synchronicity between player and character, and without building up a wrong way to play (or rather, a wrong way to play that goes beyond what's already inherent to PBTA general)
And as Ironsworn is fundamentally about going on an adventure in the same sense as it is meant in most other fantasy (and not about emulating a specific subgenre or set of stories; key difference), its system provides some of the best exploration you can have in a tabletop game. Its integrated, is systematic, and its a lot of fun.
Its single biggest contribution though is that, more than anything else, Ironsworn emphasizes that by playing the game, it is ,your Adventure that you're experiencing. That simple emphasis is, ultimately, what I think ties all four of these sources together, as they all fundamentally carry this idea as a principle of the experienced they're trying to convey. It is this principal that I believe has to carry through into the system that synthesizes all of this together.
But, yet again, Ironsworn does fall short, in more or less an inverse way to Breath of the Wilds shortcomings. While one can get an interesting story out of it, its hard to just play it to play. (Whereas I can just hang out in BOTW, because its gameplay is fun even if Im not actually doing much)
You're either always working towards a story or you're basically not playing.
Golly Gee Wiz I thought we were getting to the point
Sorry. I have an immense amount of things to say on this subject, and ultimately all of this is important context for why I feel my idea and still developing design might just have cracked the code here, so to speak.
But anywhoo, how do we synthesize all of this then? For that, Ill pitch my take.
To start, I did already list the idea that Adventuring is what we're after, and I've long since set up my overall Adventuring system to follow the different aspects I mentioned. I won't cover my designs for those, but I will probably make mention of a few, as I am striving to integrate all of this together alongside the other parts of the game.
But for Exploration and Discovery itself, I have started by taking the base mechanical framework from Arora. The concept of using a bonus number to do things is intriguing, and it provides a solid little gameplay loop for me to work with.
However, its use of a Metacurrency is a bit undesirable, and this was a conundrum for me for a long time, as I knew as soon as I saw it and tried it that Arora had the right idea, but its implementation could certainly be better.
Not too long ago I watched a GDC talk on Practical Creativty (its on the youtube, great talk), and in the middle of watching it the solution hit me like a ton of bricks and its what got the ball rolling towards a final vision.
What if this currency became more than just an esoteric widget you spend to skip parts of the game? What if by learning about the gameworld, exploring its depths, its wonders and dangers, its cities and cultures, you could become stronger and better able? What if creativity was the key?
So, the Discovery Bonus becomes the Lore Bonus, which is to be a collective representation of the knowledge you and your party have gained by exploring the gameworld. This alone makes the bonus more diegetic, and also opened up a huge design space for the Discoveries themselves; all sorts of things can now contribute, and I can tie them to other parts of the game. Surely, finding the ancient tomb of Xargablax is an obvious discovery, and important for one's Quest, but so too is finding out Xargablax is weak to the smell of fruits. (Combat, Smell)
The the basic use of the Lore Bonus is, effectively, inspiration. At will, you can invoke the Lore Bonus, add it as a positive modifier to any roll you make (whilst in the EA the bonus is tied to, more on that later), and then deduct -1 from the Bonus. Essentially, by getting out there and exploring, your character gains knowledge, and through that your character can, occasionally, come up with novel approaches to the challenges they face, which manifests mechanically as that bonus to a roll.
But, thats not all. While its undesirable to retain it as only a metacurrency, I don't think its worthwhile to abandon it altogether. But instead of merely revealing points of interest on a map, as was done in Arora, I would introduce new abilities that use the Bonus as a resource.
One example, which tied Exploration into Warfare and Questing (under which I place Reputation mechanics, to be clear), is to Call for Allies. By using this, you spend +5 of your Lore Bonus to call 1d10 Parties (think Horde but smaller) of a faction in the area that you've managed to ally with. If you blow at least +20 LB in one go, the Parties become Hordes, and if you go really nuts and manage to blow +50, you could summon an entire (but singular) Army, provided your allies have the numbers.
You'd still need to have made the alliance first, of course, which is a discovery and a quest in its own right, and unless you have high Leadership or are really Charismatic, they'll also need a reason to be there. Can't just arbitrarily summon them to some far off place; they'll defend their home locales readily, but they won't march to War on a whim.
But once you got that, oooh are you in for a heckin good time.
Now, an important part of the Lore Bonus is that it isn't permanent. You do lose it as you expend it, but you can always get more. But, what makes this more of a game is through the introduction of the Exploration Level (EL), and the Permanent Lore Bonus (PLB).
The EL wears a couple hats. First, it is in fact a level in a conventional sense, and is tied to each individual Explorable Area, and it grows by +1 every single time you use your Lore Bonus for any reason whatsoever. And every 10x this happens, your party gains +1 to the area's PLB, which you can combine with the conventional LB when you go to use it.
Secondly, it serves as a sliding DC for different Exploration related tasks (to be spoken of later), and as such as it grows it will become harder to gain more LB. But at the same time, it also increases your capacity for the LB, so while it gets harder, you can maintain a higher reservoir, so to speak, of inspiration to draw on in your adventures.
But what are Explorable Areas? In Arora, these were originally defined as just being Regions, which were areas of some size (it didn't assume a Hex Map but could be used for one) that contains a large number of systematically created points of interest, ranging from the obvious to secret, and which could be something as mundane as a stretch of road or as mysterious as an ancient ruin.
For my system, I elaborated on these, and expanded to Cities and Labyrinths, in addition to Regions. Personally I need to explain why I went with those, as I think it should be self-evident why those two would beget their own distinction from Regions, despite them existing within Regions. (Im still undecided on whether the LB's will stack, as there would be instances where all three types would be overlapping)
The system will also be featuring the same points of interest system, though not with the same implementation.
Firstly, on the GM side of things, POIs will mostly be a function of Encounters and Complications, as well as whatever "fixed" POIs would result from creating a world map. (Following the adage of leave blanks)
But the player side is where things get interesting in my opinion, and is where I think the inspiration from Ironsworn carries through. Essentially, I've integrated Oracles into player facing mechanics.
But to explain that, I should explain how the Lore Bonus is actually accumulated.
If one wishes to explore deliberately, there are a series of Exploration Tasks one can take, depending on where they are, to do so. Regardless of the Task chosen, you are essentially making an improvised Skill Check of your choice, with which you describe how you're undertaking the task and how your chosen Skill applies.
So for example, when simply Travelling or Exploring (these are two different means of Traversal; difference is the formers for distance while the latter is for efficiency), one can undertake the Search task. Essentially, you rummage around the area (Hexes), and see what you find. If one wanted, and it made sense in context, even Combat skills work here. One skilled in Striking for example might just find something hacking away at foliage as they walk.
While Delving, you can undertake the Inspect task, which should be pretty familiar to anyone whose done a dungeon crawl before; its literally what you do from turn to turn, just named, codified, and integrated.
When Rambling (city crawls), you can also Inspect, but you also gain the ability to Research, which allows you to make discoveries about far off places you're interested in going to. This is also something people tend to already do, if they care about preparing for their adventures anyway. Research is also possible if you find a source of knowledge elsewhere in the world. Plumbing a wizards tower is very useful for this, but even kooky hermits can be insightful.
Each of these, by making the Skill checks you desire to use, will generate some number of Discoveries, and depending on what you do, any number of encounters, complications, or general distractions can manifest.
But you can also accumulate an LB by just going out into the gameworld and playing in whatever way you like. Discoveries will be integrated into every other single aspect of the game as passive rewards. Already mentioned are identifying vulnerabilities in your enemies; thats one of the ways Combat will generate them. For Crafting, you'll occasionally stumble into new effects, and Critical Successes will often be reflected as discoveries, representing you essentially innovating in your craft. And so on.
And indeed, when one seeks to simply travel, or to gather materials for their Crafting, one will find that fate will intervene. These are where the Oracles come in. While what Im doing isn't actually an Oracle as Ironsworn or any other system uses them, this idea was directly inspired by how Ironsworns Oracales feel in play.
So when undertaking certain travel tasks, such as Pathfind, Find Bearing, Foraging, or Prospecting, you'll be making Skill Checks and/or Sequence rolls (a 7 dice mechanic for resolving complex tasks like crafting or gathering things), and embedded within the results will be what Im still calling Oracles; story prompts that incite an incident (usually related to what you were doing) and then prompt you to act, immediately.
For example, imagine you are going out into the woods and you desire to find some Honey specifically. You'd go through the Foraging sequence (this is a common ingredient, so its only two steps to basically follow the bees to their hive), and you'd gain different bonuses depending on how you resolve the sequence, and then you finally make a Skill Check to confirm the sequence and determine your final reward.
Lets say you do all this, and you roll a 2, for a final total of 5. (You had +2 from your Talent modifier, and +1 from your Sequence, with a doubling of any loot as well). You then check the result table for Foraging and are met with this result:
"You gain the rewards of the previous result (1d4 Ingredients), but fate intervenes: They are coming...Run!"
The idea from here is that the Player will then improvise both what has just happened and how their character reacts to it. They are fully allowed to basically ignore it if they wish, and they can add any details they care to. And more than that, if they dare, they can also bring this to their party (and the watching GM), and they might collectively play out a scene, and could even combine Oracles.
So using the same example, lets say you decide to interpret this as a Bear family showing up, so you describe your character running for their life, but with the honey safely in tow. But meanwhile, your Dwarf friend went Prospecting, and they say found a cave, and upon hearing about the bears, perhaps your friend decides the dwarf has found themselves an adorable bear cub in that cave, and guess whose snout is poking out of his bag?
From there, it'd be on the GM to more or less confirm these circumstances and follow through on the consequences. (While they'd have override authority, this whole system would ideally be set up in such a way that it minimizes the need to do this too much. Some of that is already embedded into the design, as the prompts will be tuned to encourage more intuitive improv)
So in this example, the GM follows through and Mama Bear is here and becomes enraged upon realizing her other cub was taken. Now its a fight.
But lets say common sense prevailed and your party returns the cub and runs for it. And then lets say common sense doesn't prevail twice and the party decided to go investigate the cave.
Your Dwarf friend decides to go for another Prospecting attempt, but you instead decide to use your much higher Animal Handling Skill to Inspect the bear's den. You don't find anything peculiar about the bears, but as you rolled 18, you do find buried under some gnawed bones a necklace bearing a strange symbol, but made out of an extremely rare kind of mineral, one you've heard rumors only came out of the fabled city of Vulkuth, which was lost in this Region centuries ago. But before you can ponder this Discovery, Papa Bear has just wandered in, and he smells his cubs on you...
As you can see, the idea follows through on the adage that the game should be about your Adventure, and ergo, you are given a lot of agency as possible to make that so, and you are not punished for choosing to ignore it entirely, nor are you restricted from turning into a whole new adventure. Where BOTW and Ironsworn force it in their own ways, this system gives you a choice.
And it helps follow the principles revealed by other games. While Traversal for example is still similar to how other TTRPGs have done it (Im working on it though), the integration of Oracles into the various traversal options leads to a funner experience.
When playing solo its the best and most practical adaptation of Attractors I could come up with, and that practicality carries through to GM play. And when you play with others, you aren't merely collaborating on a story but collaborating on an adventure.
And that, i think, is what I and all the rest that keep wanting more out of these kinds off systems are really searching for, and this system not only does that, but does it in a way that doesn't impede other modes of play or other desires.
Now don't get me wrong, its by no means perfect, not yet at any rate, and theres still a lot of work I need to put in to really nail it down, but just in the piecemeal playtesting I've done, it is proving to work to achieve the game feel Im looking for.
The main hurdle is mostly in writing up the actual playable rules in a way thats concise (if you can't tell I have a problem with that) but conveys all the necessary information, but in regards to my Oracles Im also very concerned about getting the formula for them down, and then of course comes the basic mechanical balancing and developing solo and GM support.
But all in all, I think this is it. I think Im reeling the whale in. It may not satisfy all, but it is satisfying the proverbial Ahab in me, and if nothing else I say that counts.
And as I ended up writing a possibly obnoxious introductury spiel Im going to put it in a quote block so those who don't care about that part can more easily skip to the point.
I also won't be providing a TL;DR as its really important to understand my thought process and how I came to these conclusions. You can skip the Golly Gee heading if you want to just read the actual idea rather than its full context.
Developing a "Theory" of Exploration
So the first question here that has to be answered is what is Exploration. It sounds like it should be obvious, but it isn't for the most part, especially in the context of exploration as a dynamic within a game.
My answer is that the question is a red herring. What Exploration is is a relatively minor aspect of a much greater whole, and as such, the question that should be asked is what is Exploration actually a part of?
My answer to that new question, is that Exploration is just one aspect of Adventure, and that when one wants to make exploration a robust part of a game, it needs to be in the context of supporting and reinforcing Adventuring. Adventuring is much more straightforward to understand and explain in a pinch; to see the new and exciting, seek thrills, face mighty challenges, and, in fantasy and scifi at least, claim fame, fortune, glory and all that hullabaloo.
Supporting Adventure through Game Design
So with that in mind, supporting Adventuring becomes a prominent focus. So what makes up and guides an adventure? By my estimation, its the following, in order of importance:
The Senses
Traversal
Encounters and Complications
Exploration and Discovery
Survival
Questing
The Senses covers, as the name implies, the literal senses one uses to percieve the world around them. I define these mechanically, again in order of importance, as Time, Touch, Vision, Hearing, Smell, and Taste.
These Senses not only cover, more or less, the full range of physical interaction with a gameworld, but also serve as a rather handy organizational tool for rules and mechanics that will form the basis of how characters will interact with the world. Ie, Touch covers stuff like Range, Size and Weight mechanics, while Vision covers sight distances and light, and so on. The time rules in fact are the single critical core mechanic in the game, hence their prominence as essentially step one in the Adventuring system.
Now, I've said that a true exploration system, or as we should call it now an Adventure system, isn't and shouldn't be just travel rules. And that is still true. But what is also true is that Adventuring isn't not travel either, and when we propose to have explorable gameworlds, we are essentially saying that travel itself is at least one of the principle gameplay loops.
Ergo, Traversal becomes important, and it is vital that getting around the gameworld is fun unto itself, which of course is just basic game design. If you expect people to be constantly doing such and such thing, it needs to be really fun and satisfying.
We see this play out, for good and bad, in video games like Skyrim versus games like Breath of the Wild, or even its predecessor Morrowind.
In Skyrim, world traversal is usually pretty boring, especially once you've settled into familiarity with the gameworld (this concept becomes important later), and its no surprise that the presence of fast travel becomes a crutch even for those whod rather not have it, because the game simply isn't designed to make getting around its large world fun.
Whereas in Breath of the Wild, you have a number of really satisfying ways of getting around, with the two core ones being the Paraglider and Climbing, which are practically as perfect as it gets. They don't make traversal tedious, but they also don't make it an afterthought either, and in terms of gamefeel they just feel good to engage with.
And even Morrowind, which doesn't have those kinds of cool mechanics, still has a fun to engage with system of diegetic fast travel, one that is so prominent in the game its actually the first thing that makes you go "What the hell is that?" and prompts you to go explore. Putting the Silt Strider in plain view in Seyda Neen was a masterclass in game design, and once you get into the game and start learning how to get around, you have an emergent minigame of definining an efficient route to wherever it is you want to go, as you swap between different modes of fast travel that all have different destinations.
Both Morrowind and BOTW touch on another key game design principle in this regard: interesting decisions.
Next up is Encounters and Complications. While they sound similar, they are distinct ideas. Encounters should be representing all kinds of random or fixed occurrences that the player(s) would either be obliged or encouraged to interact with. These aren't merely random combat with quantum ogres, but can extend into all sorts of things. Wizards falling out of the sky, an NPC with a problem on the side of the road, and even things like stumbling onto a striking view all fall under this.
Mechanically, we can then consider Encounters to be fixed, predetermined events that, while they can and should be flexible in when and where they occur, are ultimately predetermined by either the system, the GM, or both.
Complications meamwhile, are a parallel aspect that goes beyond actual events and is more of a divide between odd, fleeting moments, and circumstances that are far too large in scale and scope to be considered mere events. While Encounters can often spawn out of a Complication, the scale for how consequential a Complication is is much more highly variable. A sudden gust of wind at the right moment is just as much a Complication as a pack of Ogres wandering by, and the sudden onset of a fierce thunderstorm dwarfs either one.
In our video game examples, Morrowind doesn't have much tl support this (but Skyrim does. Go figure), while Breath of the Wild manages it well in execution, if a bit scant. In BOTW, complications mostly arise from the ocassional onset of a storm or the ambush of an assassin, but thats it. This is a section where TTRPGs have generally excelled.
Then, we finally come to the really juicy parts, but first lets talk about the other two.
Survival is an often contentious aspect of games, as its often times designed to be fairly punishing and can also be quite tedious as well. But it doesn't have to be, and with the right design one could integrate the need to Survive into the overall gameplay loops without it becoming abrasive.
But, its also often still contentious regardless, as some will just bounce off of it no matter what. Breath of the Wild is no exception, as while it doesn't feature a typical Survival system (temperature matters but you don't technically have to eat food), it does feature a prominent equipment durability mechanic, which is in fact a hallmark of more robust survival systems, and as such there is no shortage of people who face it and bounce right off the game, ne'er to return. Even with Tears of Kingdom mostly smoothing over the last vestigial abrasiveness of that system, it still turns people off.
Hard to win or please everyone, but there again, not everyone actually wants what this topic is about to begin with.
Questing is the most obvious aspect of an Adventure, and its because of that that I rank it least in importance. But even despite that, Questing is by no means skippable, especially in the context of Fantasy.
But, it also isn't necessarily as straightforward as one would assume. While true Quests, stories of good and evil or the fetching of objects or the slaying of rats, are a part of this aspect, it goes beyond that.
Questing, in truth, is the underlying reason to be (I refuse to speak gibberish) for adventuring, and isn't strictly limited to an actual Quest. Rather, any goal an adventuerer, and thus the player, has is a sort of quest unto itself.
Ergo, the reason why it ranks least is because Questing is largely and fundamentally an emergent property of developing a game people want to play. The game is fun, entertaining, interesting etc for a variety of reasons, and so people are compelled to play and in doing so they begin to form their own goals and desires for and within their playtime. They, in a way, are already writing their own Quest just by playing.
This is the key thing that makes games a legitimate artform; this emergent interaction just doesn't happen in other forms of art, and TTRPGs, Story Games, and Improv games are all relative equals in honing in on this kind of interaction specifically. (Video games in this context are more akin to how Movies relate to Books. Both valid art forms, but the former trades in limitations for a more comprehensive audio/visual experience that the latter can't necessarily match. (Technology has changed that paradigm considerably, and the advent of VTTs is slowly bringing TT games and video games to parity)
But now, with all those aspects covered, we come to the big enchilada, Exploration itself. The key thing here is to recognize that many, arguably most, humans have an innate urge to explore. Its driven primarily by curiosity, but theres a great number of different factors that play into it (which incidentally all map in various ways to the aspects Ive just laid out), and most of the time, exploration, like Questing, is something that will emerge from a well designed game.
After all, we all know what its like to become enticed by a new game and be eager and excited to explore what it does.
So, with that in mind, trying to "force" exploration is the wrong approach, and one I've observed being the way most try to go when they aren't just doing some variant on Travel or Survival rules.
What can be done instead, though, is to reinforce it. To emphasize and capture that urge to explore so that, when people naturally go looking, they're rewarded.
So how is that accomplished? Has anyone done it?
Many certainly try. Much as I love Breath of the Wild (it is actually one of the few games I can say I fell in love with pretty much immediately. I literally said so within less than a minute of being able to control Link), even it doesn't really accomplish it to a satisfactory degree. It does successfully reinforce the gameplay loop of exploration itself, by emphasizing its durability system and introducing lots of wonderful "what the hell is that" moments all over the place (and just as well it has very conscious world design, which is its single best contribution to this topic), but it doesn't reinforce exploration for its own sake, and indeed, it does in fact force you to do it as its the only way you can really do anything in the game. While not an issue in a video game, in a TTRPG that becomes a true pain point.
So does any game do it well? Well, I don't call it my white whale just to be funny.
I didn't think any game really did, and strictly speaking, that is still the case.
However, over time and through lots of research, playing, and reading, a few standouts really came to light, and collectively, I think they provide the essential secret ingredients to finally harpooning this whale, and its just a matter of synthesizing a system out of it.
Applying All This Crap to make something Playable
So, without further verbose ado, these are what I think collectively provide the components of this system (and for those who care, this is the exact reason why I find the prejudicial attitude towards video game design in tabletop circles to be distasteful):
Arora: Age of Desolation
Breath of the Wild
Morrowind
Ironsworn
Each in isolation accomplish a great deal of things in regards to getting this system right, and I feel truly nailing involves incorporating aspects from all of them.
Arora its a relatively obscure (meaning I seldom see anyone ever mention it) supplement for 5e DND. It is mostly a setting book (and a pretty decent one at that), but its claim to obscure fame is its Exploration system, which accomplishes the feat of actually reinforcing exploration for its own sake, and doing so in a way thats not only fun but is actually almost identical to how exploration was portrayed in the classic macdaddy of all fantasy, Lord of the Rings. I don't know to what degree this was intentional, but it is there.
How Arora's system works is by introducing a meta currency called the Discovery Bonus, which is tied to different systematized Regions in the gameworld, which you can spend to discover new places in those Regions. How you accumulate this bonus is rather simplistic (its for 5e afterall) and involves making skill checks. The key though is what these checks are for: through the use of personal knowledge (Recall Lore), perusing documents (Research; Maps, tomes, etc), and asking around.
This is where the Lord of the Rings comes in. Do you want to guess what the Fellowship does prior to leaving Rivendell?
Hearing those passages speak of them doing just those things is ultimately what made all of this click in my head, for the record, so good on slightly younger me for deciding to listen to the books.
But, where Arora falls short is in the issue of integration, which is something I've taken fo complaining about pretty much constantly. Arora's system is self-contained and doesn't really provide for any kind of rewards or incentives that aren't just finding interesting things in the world.
Where Arora falls short, though, Breath of the Wild excels, with deeply integrated mechanics all throughout. Storms for example aren't just a complication meant to hinder you in Traversal, but can also be exploited for great effect in combat (throw a sword into a puddle next to some enemies and watch the lightning fry them all), and you're directly rewarded for figuring out these kinds of systemic interactions, which you might not ever figure out unless you got out there and observed metal attracts lightning, and lightning frys everything wet, and that standing in a puddle makes you wet.
And beyond that, BOTW's depiction of Hyrule as a gameworld was very consciously designed. The triangle rule that the devs used to design the map is brilliant game design, and naturally the above wouldn't be possible without their Chemistry system.
But as mentioned, even BOTW still falls short. It forces you to explore, and much of what there is to find when you do so, while often interesting to look at, is pretty shallow otherwise, and doesn't often provide for a more substantive adventure than the one you're already on.
Which is where Morrowind comes in. Morrowind, and truly even its successor games, excel at providing "attractors", distractions essentially that pull you into new adventures if you let them. And it should be no surprise it excels at this, as it was crafted by hand and was designed as a true sandbox, arguably one of the first of its kind at least in 3D graphics.
But Morrowind also excels in absolutely phenomenal worldbuilding and art design. So strong are these aspects that, if you ignore the janky looking people and monsters, much of the game still holds up in terms of being pretty to look at. You truly don't need all that much to stop it looking so dated.
As it happens though, Morrowind has the same problem pretty much all video games do when it comes to Exploration: scope. Video games simply can't support possibilities that table top games can, and won't be able to for a long time even with AI. (We need Holodecks)
And that segues into Ironsworn. Ironsworn itself is a pretty solid game, especially for a PBTA game, and Ive related before that I attribute its success as a game to the fact that its supports solo play as an equal means of playing to GM-less play and the traditional GM play. Its because of this that I think Ironsworn manages to accomplish what pretty much every other PBTA claims to do (or perhaps what their zealots misguidedly claim they do) in providing an experience that cuts right to the end experience, but also does so in a way that doesn't sacrifice the synchronicity between player and character, and without building up a wrong way to play (or rather, a wrong way to play that goes beyond what's already inherent to PBTA general)
And as Ironsworn is fundamentally about going on an adventure in the same sense as it is meant in most other fantasy (and not about emulating a specific subgenre or set of stories; key difference), its system provides some of the best exploration you can have in a tabletop game. Its integrated, is systematic, and its a lot of fun.
Its single biggest contribution though is that, more than anything else, Ironsworn emphasizes that by playing the game, it is ,your Adventure that you're experiencing. That simple emphasis is, ultimately, what I think ties all four of these sources together, as they all fundamentally carry this idea as a principle of the experienced they're trying to convey. It is this principal that I believe has to carry through into the system that synthesizes all of this together.
But, yet again, Ironsworn does fall short, in more or less an inverse way to Breath of the Wilds shortcomings. While one can get an interesting story out of it, its hard to just play it to play. (Whereas I can just hang out in BOTW, because its gameplay is fun even if Im not actually doing much)
You're either always working towards a story or you're basically not playing.
Golly Gee Wiz I thought we were getting to the point
Sorry. I have an immense amount of things to say on this subject, and ultimately all of this is important context for why I feel my idea and still developing design might just have cracked the code here, so to speak.
But anywhoo, how do we synthesize all of this then? For that, Ill pitch my take.
To start, I did already list the idea that Adventuring is what we're after, and I've long since set up my overall Adventuring system to follow the different aspects I mentioned. I won't cover my designs for those, but I will probably make mention of a few, as I am striving to integrate all of this together alongside the other parts of the game.
But for Exploration and Discovery itself, I have started by taking the base mechanical framework from Arora. The concept of using a bonus number to do things is intriguing, and it provides a solid little gameplay loop for me to work with.
However, its use of a Metacurrency is a bit undesirable, and this was a conundrum for me for a long time, as I knew as soon as I saw it and tried it that Arora had the right idea, but its implementation could certainly be better.
Not too long ago I watched a GDC talk on Practical Creativty (its on the youtube, great talk), and in the middle of watching it the solution hit me like a ton of bricks and its what got the ball rolling towards a final vision.
What if this currency became more than just an esoteric widget you spend to skip parts of the game? What if by learning about the gameworld, exploring its depths, its wonders and dangers, its cities and cultures, you could become stronger and better able? What if creativity was the key?
So, the Discovery Bonus becomes the Lore Bonus, which is to be a collective representation of the knowledge you and your party have gained by exploring the gameworld. This alone makes the bonus more diegetic, and also opened up a huge design space for the Discoveries themselves; all sorts of things can now contribute, and I can tie them to other parts of the game. Surely, finding the ancient tomb of Xargablax is an obvious discovery, and important for one's Quest, but so too is finding out Xargablax is weak to the smell of fruits. (Combat, Smell)
The the basic use of the Lore Bonus is, effectively, inspiration. At will, you can invoke the Lore Bonus, add it as a positive modifier to any roll you make (whilst in the EA the bonus is tied to, more on that later), and then deduct -1 from the Bonus. Essentially, by getting out there and exploring, your character gains knowledge, and through that your character can, occasionally, come up with novel approaches to the challenges they face, which manifests mechanically as that bonus to a roll.
But, thats not all. While its undesirable to retain it as only a metacurrency, I don't think its worthwhile to abandon it altogether. But instead of merely revealing points of interest on a map, as was done in Arora, I would introduce new abilities that use the Bonus as a resource.
One example, which tied Exploration into Warfare and Questing (under which I place Reputation mechanics, to be clear), is to Call for Allies. By using this, you spend +5 of your Lore Bonus to call 1d10 Parties (think Horde but smaller) of a faction in the area that you've managed to ally with. If you blow at least +20 LB in one go, the Parties become Hordes, and if you go really nuts and manage to blow +50, you could summon an entire (but singular) Army, provided your allies have the numbers.
You'd still need to have made the alliance first, of course, which is a discovery and a quest in its own right, and unless you have high Leadership or are really Charismatic, they'll also need a reason to be there. Can't just arbitrarily summon them to some far off place; they'll defend their home locales readily, but they won't march to War on a whim.
But once you got that, oooh are you in for a heckin good time.
Now, an important part of the Lore Bonus is that it isn't permanent. You do lose it as you expend it, but you can always get more. But, what makes this more of a game is through the introduction of the Exploration Level (EL), and the Permanent Lore Bonus (PLB).
The EL wears a couple hats. First, it is in fact a level in a conventional sense, and is tied to each individual Explorable Area, and it grows by +1 every single time you use your Lore Bonus for any reason whatsoever. And every 10x this happens, your party gains +1 to the area's PLB, which you can combine with the conventional LB when you go to use it.
Secondly, it serves as a sliding DC for different Exploration related tasks (to be spoken of later), and as such as it grows it will become harder to gain more LB. But at the same time, it also increases your capacity for the LB, so while it gets harder, you can maintain a higher reservoir, so to speak, of inspiration to draw on in your adventures.
But what are Explorable Areas? In Arora, these were originally defined as just being Regions, which were areas of some size (it didn't assume a Hex Map but could be used for one) that contains a large number of systematically created points of interest, ranging from the obvious to secret, and which could be something as mundane as a stretch of road or as mysterious as an ancient ruin.
For my system, I elaborated on these, and expanded to Cities and Labyrinths, in addition to Regions. Personally I need to explain why I went with those, as I think it should be self-evident why those two would beget their own distinction from Regions, despite them existing within Regions. (Im still undecided on whether the LB's will stack, as there would be instances where all three types would be overlapping)
The system will also be featuring the same points of interest system, though not with the same implementation.
Firstly, on the GM side of things, POIs will mostly be a function of Encounters and Complications, as well as whatever "fixed" POIs would result from creating a world map. (Following the adage of leave blanks)
But the player side is where things get interesting in my opinion, and is where I think the inspiration from Ironsworn carries through. Essentially, I've integrated Oracles into player facing mechanics.
But to explain that, I should explain how the Lore Bonus is actually accumulated.
If one wishes to explore deliberately, there are a series of Exploration Tasks one can take, depending on where they are, to do so. Regardless of the Task chosen, you are essentially making an improvised Skill Check of your choice, with which you describe how you're undertaking the task and how your chosen Skill applies.
So for example, when simply Travelling or Exploring (these are two different means of Traversal; difference is the formers for distance while the latter is for efficiency), one can undertake the Search task. Essentially, you rummage around the area (Hexes), and see what you find. If one wanted, and it made sense in context, even Combat skills work here. One skilled in Striking for example might just find something hacking away at foliage as they walk.
While Delving, you can undertake the Inspect task, which should be pretty familiar to anyone whose done a dungeon crawl before; its literally what you do from turn to turn, just named, codified, and integrated.
When Rambling (city crawls), you can also Inspect, but you also gain the ability to Research, which allows you to make discoveries about far off places you're interested in going to. This is also something people tend to already do, if they care about preparing for their adventures anyway. Research is also possible if you find a source of knowledge elsewhere in the world. Plumbing a wizards tower is very useful for this, but even kooky hermits can be insightful.
Each of these, by making the Skill checks you desire to use, will generate some number of Discoveries, and depending on what you do, any number of encounters, complications, or general distractions can manifest.
But you can also accumulate an LB by just going out into the gameworld and playing in whatever way you like. Discoveries will be integrated into every other single aspect of the game as passive rewards. Already mentioned are identifying vulnerabilities in your enemies; thats one of the ways Combat will generate them. For Crafting, you'll occasionally stumble into new effects, and Critical Successes will often be reflected as discoveries, representing you essentially innovating in your craft. And so on.
And indeed, when one seeks to simply travel, or to gather materials for their Crafting, one will find that fate will intervene. These are where the Oracles come in. While what Im doing isn't actually an Oracle as Ironsworn or any other system uses them, this idea was directly inspired by how Ironsworns Oracales feel in play.
So when undertaking certain travel tasks, such as Pathfind, Find Bearing, Foraging, or Prospecting, you'll be making Skill Checks and/or Sequence rolls (a 7 dice mechanic for resolving complex tasks like crafting or gathering things), and embedded within the results will be what Im still calling Oracles; story prompts that incite an incident (usually related to what you were doing) and then prompt you to act, immediately.
For example, imagine you are going out into the woods and you desire to find some Honey specifically. You'd go through the Foraging sequence (this is a common ingredient, so its only two steps to basically follow the bees to their hive), and you'd gain different bonuses depending on how you resolve the sequence, and then you finally make a Skill Check to confirm the sequence and determine your final reward.
Lets say you do all this, and you roll a 2, for a final total of 5. (You had +2 from your Talent modifier, and +1 from your Sequence, with a doubling of any loot as well). You then check the result table for Foraging and are met with this result:
"You gain the rewards of the previous result (1d4 Ingredients), but fate intervenes: They are coming...Run!"
The idea from here is that the Player will then improvise both what has just happened and how their character reacts to it. They are fully allowed to basically ignore it if they wish, and they can add any details they care to. And more than that, if they dare, they can also bring this to their party (and the watching GM), and they might collectively play out a scene, and could even combine Oracles.
So using the same example, lets say you decide to interpret this as a Bear family showing up, so you describe your character running for their life, but with the honey safely in tow. But meanwhile, your Dwarf friend went Prospecting, and they say found a cave, and upon hearing about the bears, perhaps your friend decides the dwarf has found themselves an adorable bear cub in that cave, and guess whose snout is poking out of his bag?
From there, it'd be on the GM to more or less confirm these circumstances and follow through on the consequences. (While they'd have override authority, this whole system would ideally be set up in such a way that it minimizes the need to do this too much. Some of that is already embedded into the design, as the prompts will be tuned to encourage more intuitive improv)
So in this example, the GM follows through and Mama Bear is here and becomes enraged upon realizing her other cub was taken. Now its a fight.
But lets say common sense prevailed and your party returns the cub and runs for it. And then lets say common sense doesn't prevail twice and the party decided to go investigate the cave.
Your Dwarf friend decides to go for another Prospecting attempt, but you instead decide to use your much higher Animal Handling Skill to Inspect the bear's den. You don't find anything peculiar about the bears, but as you rolled 18, you do find buried under some gnawed bones a necklace bearing a strange symbol, but made out of an extremely rare kind of mineral, one you've heard rumors only came out of the fabled city of Vulkuth, which was lost in this Region centuries ago. But before you can ponder this Discovery, Papa Bear has just wandered in, and he smells his cubs on you...
As you can see, the idea follows through on the adage that the game should be about your Adventure, and ergo, you are given a lot of agency as possible to make that so, and you are not punished for choosing to ignore it entirely, nor are you restricted from turning into a whole new adventure. Where BOTW and Ironsworn force it in their own ways, this system gives you a choice.
And it helps follow the principles revealed by other games. While Traversal for example is still similar to how other TTRPGs have done it (Im working on it though), the integration of Oracles into the various traversal options leads to a funner experience.
When playing solo its the best and most practical adaptation of Attractors I could come up with, and that practicality carries through to GM play. And when you play with others, you aren't merely collaborating on a story but collaborating on an adventure.
And that, i think, is what I and all the rest that keep wanting more out of these kinds off systems are really searching for, and this system not only does that, but does it in a way that doesn't impede other modes of play or other desires.
Now don't get me wrong, its by no means perfect, not yet at any rate, and theres still a lot of work I need to put in to really nail it down, but just in the piecemeal playtesting I've done, it is proving to work to achieve the game feel Im looking for.
The main hurdle is mostly in writing up the actual playable rules in a way thats concise (if you can't tell I have a problem with that) but conveys all the necessary information, but in regards to my Oracles Im also very concerned about getting the formula for them down, and then of course comes the basic mechanical balancing and developing solo and GM support.
But all in all, I think this is it. I think Im reeling the whale in. It may not satisfy all, but it is satisfying the proverbial Ahab in me, and if nothing else I say that counts.
