D&D 5E Social/Combat/Exploration Ratio

[Sunseeker]

Since I don't randomly generate my games:

3/8 is exploration, which includes simple exploration (we travel through the forest!) to challenging exploration (skill checks through dangerous terrain) to mixed exploration (exploration that could result in combat, but may not).
2/8 is strict combat. These are always going to be fights, you may choose not to fight them, but there is no option here to 'talk them down'. Avoidance is possible though outmaneuvering the enemy, but it's designed to be a fight.
2/8 is soft social. Soft social is any situation which is intended to be resolved through words rather than the sword, but the option to use a sword remains. I don't build "hard social" encounters where my players have no choice but to talk their way out.
1/8 is "empty". These are open plains, empty deserts, pre-looted dungeons. They serve some purpose, but they are not a challenge and they provide no reward. They are generally for giving players leads towards the other parts of the game.

I don't see how people are responding so much with "it depends". Don't you pre-plan what a certain area is going to be or do you just write "King" on your notes and make it all up when the party gets there? Because that's the only way I can see it as "it depends". Yes, every campaign is going to be different but I'd imagine you have some forethought as to if this campaign will include favor certain types of play over others and what parts of the game it will do so in.

The OP isn't asking how your game turns out. They're asking how you intend it to be.

 

[iserith]

I don't see how people are responding so much with "it depends". Don't you pre-plan what a certain area is going to be or do you just write "King" on your notes and make it all up when the party gets there? Because that's the only way I can see it as "it depends". Yes, every campaign is going to be different but I'd imagine you have some forethought as to if this campaign will include favor certain types of play over others and what parts of the game it will do so in.

Speaking for myself, I usually pre-plan what's going to be in a given area, but I try to include opportunities for the players to engage with any of the pillars they like to overcome the challenges therein. I don't, for example, write in my prep "this is a combat encounter and the players must engage with the combat pillar to overcome it." Instead, I write "there are some orcs over here and their goal/motivation is X." So I can't really say whether that's a combat, exploration, or social interaction situation until the players interact with it.

 

[Remathilis]

@Wik You forgot #5: The players kibitz in-character, crack terrible jokes, play pranks on sleeping/unconscious/dead party members, antagonize every possible NPC, interrupt your attempts at introducing anything resembling story, and turn down fair deals on that one magic item they really want in favor of stealing it!

What pillar is that called?

I call it my game, 5 years ago.

 

[jrowland]

In general, I follow more of a real-table-time ratio if at all. That is, its not how many encounters but how long in real time. I figure about an hour each per session (little less for 2 hour sessions, little more for 4 hour, etc). It's all about pacing, the ebb and flow of tension/narrative/interest level.

If the players are REALLY INTO the diplomatic discussions (social pillar), I'll let it ride, eating into exploration or combat time (drop an encounter or do an Indiana Jones travel montage for exploration), but usually I just cut the scene short (you win, you lose, whatever) and move on. After an hour, people get a little rote about whatever pillar they're on.

 

[Sunseeker]

Speaking for myself, I usually pre-plan what's going to be in a given area, but I try to include opportunities for the players to engage with any of the pillars they like to overcome the challenges therein. I don't, for example, write in my prep "this is a combat encounter and the players must engage with the combat pillar to overcome it." Instead, I write "there are some orcs over here and their goal/motivation is X." So I can't really say whether that's a combat, exploration, or social interaction situation until the players interact with it.

While I usually provide options, I intentionally make certain areas have limited resolution options. It may just be my groups, but I tend to find the people I play with respond better to fewer choices, 101 flavors often leads to indecision and inaction, which just drags the game down.

 

[iserith]

While I usually provide options, I intentionally make certain areas have limited resolution options. It may just be my groups, but I tend to find the people I play with respond better to fewer choices, 101 flavors often leads to indecision and inaction, which just drags the game down.

In my experience (and I run have run a lot of pickup groups in additional to regular campaigns), what gets rid of the indecision and inaction is the players being aware of their characters' goals, personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, and staying laser-focused on them in the face of whatever I present. In addition, an agreement among players to keep debating plans of action limited means they don't spend much time deciding on what to do. One person suggests a course of action and the others "Yes, and..." it, generally speaking.

These are things I stress to the players prior to play, usually during Session Zero, reinforced during play.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Eh... I don't think I use keys the same way that the OP does. When I do have site-based maps, traps and puzzles are located in specific places, but social/combat/empty encounters are dynamic. E.g. I may know there are 60 goblin slaves and 60 goblin serfs on the outskirts of the mind flayer fort. They're not allowed inside, and any given room might have 50% chance of 2d6 goblins in it at any given time doing some room-appropriate activity (cooking in the kitchen, sharpening weapons in the armory, sleeping in the barracks), but I don't have a key in advance which says how many goblins are where. In a way you could say that in a site-based adventure, most encounters are random encounters on a virtual custom table, with virtual modifiers for time of day and whether/how long since an alarm has been raised.

Ideally I'd like to make every room potentially interesting, even if it's just lifestyle details like "Huh, goblins raise moles for food instead of pigs or rats? I bet that's because pigs sicken and die in permadarkness" followed later by "Hey look, a pig skull. Somebody must have stolen this pig from the surface world." (I give players XP for figuring out little mysteries.)

So I guess that means I'm voting for keyed sites being 100% exploration and 0% social/combat/empty, with the social/combat/empty determination being all random encounters.

 

[Fralex]

It depends on the number of players.

 

[Wik]

Eh... I don't think I use keys the same way that the OP does. When I do have site-based maps, traps and puzzles are located in specific places, but social/combat/empty encounters are dynamic. E.g. I may know there are 60 goblin slaves and 60 goblin serfs on the outskirts of the mind flayer fort. They're not allowed inside, and any given room might have 50% chance of 2d6 goblins in it at any given time doing some room-appropriate activity (cooking in the kitchen, sharpening weapons in the armory, sleeping in the barracks), but I don't have a key in advance which says how many goblins are where. In a way you could say that in a site-based adventure, most encounters are random encounters on a virtual custom table, with virtual modifiers for time of day and whether/how long since an alarm has been raised.

So, I'm just gonna say this, because this sort of answer comes up a lot - I get that this is the case with a lot of players. Just a few hours ago, I ran an encounter that was supposed to be a hard combat, that turned more into an extended skill challenge that the players blitzed through. PCs change expectations.

But I DO think that when you write a module, you should have an idea what is expected. You don't put a ghost in a room and say "Well, I'll deal with it when we get there!". No, if you think the party can handle a fight with a ghost, you make sure that it can be presented that way (or multiple ways). If the party is a bunch of second level schlubs, you make sure that there are clues that they don't fight the ghost and walk into a TPK.

When I run my own games, things change. And that is ideal, and something I do much like @isereth. I try to plan for changes. And when I write, I make sure things can go multiple ways. But, when we're planning an adventure, where do we want to weight things?

***

As for empty rooms, I actually love empty rooms, but I consider a lot of "exploration" encounters to take place in so-called empty rooms. To me, an "empty room" is one that has flavour, possibly, but doesn't provide any information or bonus relevant to the adventure at hand. Empty rooms that still provide information, and take time to search, but provide nothing, shouldn't be in abundance in the game. Because if they are, it slows the game down too much. But they should be around... simply so that you can hide treasure for the players to find in other rooms.

As for the reason I'm asking... I'm writing a few modules for other people to use, and was wondering if there was a sort of general theme in how I should be stocking this module.

 

[S'mon]

Dungeons will likely be mostly exploration + combat about even time, with occasional social, most of the social stuff occurs outside the dungeon. For campaigns as a whole, even time on all three is good, I think 4e suffers a bit from combat tending to dominate the time.