D&D 5E Three pillars: what is "exploration"?

[iserith]

If I had to summarize the concept of exploration, I would say "non-social investigation and problem-solving".

There is a very distinctive feeling about the exploration phase of an adventure: it's an out-of-character conversation between the players asking questions and the DM providing answers, then players making decisions and the DM describing the outcome.

The focus is not on the rules but on narrative descriptions. Rules kick in more or less often depending on DM's style, but they are not usually the starting point; even in a game where players think heavily in rules terms (i.e. they constantly go "I will make a check to search for traps", "I use my ability X to do Y") the overall feel is free-form and unstructured description. This is very different from combat, when almost every player starts thinking in terms of the structured rules framework.

Investigation and interaction are non-social and therefore mostly out-of-characters, even if descriptions are of course given by the DM through the eyes and ears of the PCs. So for instance, the players are not thinking in terms of language as being used by their PC in first person (as they would during the social interaction phase), but they are using language to ask questions / state intents directly to the DM and therefore just as they would do IRL.

Overall they are 3 quite different ways of thinking!

That said, just because the authors have summarized the game as being based on these 3 pillars, this does not mean we have to worry about fitting every single thing that happens at the gaming table into one and only one of those :/

While what you describe appears pretty common to me, it's not something that is fostered at my table. Exploration, combat, and social interaction are all done by the players describing what they want to do as per the basic conversation of the game (a statement of goal and approach). Questions of the DM are unwelcome. I discourage them by (1) striving to be clear and succinct in my descriptions and (2) encouraging players to do stuff in order to find out what they want to know. Excepting the players not hearing or understanding what the DM is saying, a question can actually be a form of purposeful failure mitigation on their part which goes outside the bounds of the game. A statement of action carries with it the possibility of consequence. Your character is doing something and you might have to roll dice to see what happens or something else undesirable occurs. But with questions, you can just have a little Q&A session with the DM without any risk to get what you need, bypassing any true exploration of the game world.

In my games, you state what you want to do and what you hope to accomplish. Then we go to the mechanics as necessary. There is more of an expectation of mechanics to come into play during combat than the other two pillars and initiative makes it a bit less free-form; however, the basic conversation of the game remains consistent.

 

[Tony Vargas]

If I had to summarize the concept of exploration, I would say "non-social investigation and problem-solving".

There is a very distinctive feeling about the exploration phase of an adventure: it's an out-of-character conversation between the players asking questions and the DM providing answers, then players making decisions and the DM describing the outcome.

Exploration in the 3P sense is hardly exclusive to D&D, but it's not surprising that it crops up in a model of how D&D has traditionally been played as co-equal to combat & social interactions. Literally exploring dungeons was more a feature of early Dungeons & Dragons than literally fighting dragons was.

 

[Hussar]

In my view, the biggest issue with the Exploration pillar is the lack of information and goals. Why are we mapping this great big mega dungeon? Are we just making more or less random turns until we "fill in" the map? That's not interesting or engaging.

What is needed to make exploration a bigger pillar are clear goals and actual real decision point. So, we're exploring the big mega dungeon because we want to find something in there. We know that there is the Macguffin in there (because that's why we're here in the first place) and we have a vague idea where it is (look for these landmarks). And, because we've interrogated a few prisoners, bribed a couple of other critters, and we found that map fragment, we know 60% of the map layout anyway, so, now our choices are informed choices, rather than randomly wandering about.

The thing is, IMO, a lot of modules and adventures don't get enough information into the player's hands and don't spend enough time setting it up.

 

[Hriston]

I see strong reasons to think the PH uses exploration in the pillar sense coined by WotC specifically to facilitate it's development, none to sugest the GNS sense coined by the Forge for their extensive elaboration on the false Role vs Roll dichotomy.

Maybe you'd like to elaborate on what you mean by "facilitate [exploration]'s development". I'm also not sure what you mean by "role vs roll" in the context of the Forge. I may not have seen those discussions there, unless you mean GNS, which is more of a trichotomy anyway. As for the Forge's definition of Exploration being associated with D&D's Exploration Pillar, it's suggested by the quote from the PHB that has caused the OP to question what exactly Exploration means in 5e. It says, "Exploration is the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result." If that isn't 5e's procedure for what the Forge calls the Shared Imagined Space or Exploration, directly producing the Transcript of play (all of these terms being synonyms or near-synonyms), then I don't know what is.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Maybe you'd like to elaborate on what you mean by "facilitate [exploration]'s development".

Facilitate the PH's development (really, 5e's development) the Pillars were dreamed up during the development and playtesting of Next/5e as part of their efforts to divine/define what exactly made D&D, well, D&D.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "role vs roll" in the context of the Forge.

The Role vs Roll 'debate' (really, much like the edition war of its day) on UseNet ate up a chunk of the 90s, and was taken up in a more thoughtful way and re-imagined as the Threefold Theory, which, in turn, was one of the ideas the Forge worked from in hammering out GNS.

The end result is just as wrong-headed and divisive as the original, IMHO.

As for the Forge's definition of Exploration being associated with D&D's Exploration Pillar, it's suggested by the quote from the PHB that has caused the OP to question what exactly Exploration means in 5e. It says, "Exploration is the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result."

You mean, it's suggested by taking part of that natural-language definition out of context. 5e is not written in jargon and it's not meant to be parsed. Read it for comprehension, in the context of the other two pillars, and it's clearly /not/ talking about social interactions with NPCs nor violent altercations with monsters, but the PC's interaction with the rest of the environment.

And, yeah, that makes it kinda a catch-all, since that environment might be a devious trap-filled dungeon, natural cavern, trackless desert, storm-shrouded mountaintop, or pocket dimension among myriad other things.

But, no, that it sorta re-itterates the basic resolution process doesn't imply that it's all things that vaguely use that same process...
...since prettymuch everything in 5e /does/ use that process, it's not useful in differentiating.

Now, if you want to say that explanation isn't a wonder of clarity, go ahead. It's not like it's unusual in that. But it's not impenetrable.

 

[robus]

I would say the videogame Myst is an entirely Exploration pillar driven game. There is no combat, no social interaction, just exploration. And yet that game packed an amazing amount of fun!

There were puzzles, fantastical locations and hidden sections waiting to be "explored" .

 

[Hussar]

Honestly, I think part of the issue is that DM's and module designers simply don't spend enough time on making exploration a thing. You have your adventure map, maybe a couple of hazards or traps and that's about it. Thing is, blindly turning left or right isn't really exploration. It's flipping coins.

If you want to do exploration right, you have to spend about as much time developing it during your adventure design as you would any other part of the game.

 

[Imaculata]

For my campaign I have taken exploration to a larger extreme. Players can get lost while exploring jungles, and may end up somewhere they didnt plan to go. They can visit things indicated on the map, but there are also lots of planned discoveries that I randomly roll for wherever they happen to be going. I feel that perhaps more D&D games could benefit from this sort of sandbox approach, where players are free to roam the world, and make discoveries, without every inch of the map already being painted in from the start.

 

[Yaarel]

For my campaign I have taken exploration to a larger extreem. Players can get lost while exploring jungles, and may end up somewhere they didnt plan to go. They can visit things indicated on the map, but there are also lots of planned discoveries that I randomly roll for wherever they happen to be going. I feel that perhaps more D&D games could benefit from this sort of sandbox approach, where players are free to roam the world, and make discoveries, without every inch of the map already being painted in from the start.

It adds delight to discover ‘uncharted’ locations on a D&D map.

Then the world enriches and deepens organically.

I never have been into random encounters - but having a list of things that the DM can ‘drop in’ wherever it would make sense is an awesome way to go.

 

[Imaculata]

It adds delight to discover ‘uncharted’ locations on a D&D map.

Then the world enriches and deepens organically.

I never have been into random encounters - but having a list of things that the DM can ‘drop in’ wherever it would make sense is an awesome way to go.

Indeed. I like to do both. When I'm not partial to what they encounter, I roll randomly. But then if it doesn't fit, I may reroll, or simply pick something from my list. And some of the things that I randomly roll (such as rivers, swamps, mountains) can dramatically affect the lay out of the region, while others could lead the players to discover a dungeon that perhaps I hadn't planned at all. But it's also nice as a DM to be surprised every now and then by what they discover.

One of the best examples of this, was a large crevice in the side of a cliff of one of the islands in my campaign. It lead to a large lake in the middle of a valley, surrounded by steep walls of rock. The crevice was just large enough for the players to squeeze their ship through. And now they are planning to make this location that they discovered, their own pirate base.

I rolled this landmark completely random, and made up the rest of the details on the spot. Such as, that the valley walls were littered with old wooden scaffolding from some long lost tribe of islanders (which they had to carefully navigate). They explored the place, and found indications that the original inhabitants were killed and/or driven off by the local cannibal tribe. This is a pretty straight forward way to link the random discovery to another plot thread and make it feel to the players like a coherent whole.

I feel that one of the key things in making the players 'feel' like explorers, is to not only throw in combat encounters. Most of the random encounters I write, are none-combat encounters.

-An ancient statue/shrine/pillar from some long lost civilization.
-Tracks that lead to another random encounter, if they choose to follow them.
-An old sign post, that gives rough directions to other random encounters nearby.
-A watchtower that provides the players with a view, so they can see any tall structures and geographical features that are nearby.
-An old weapons cache, buried by other pirates.
-A tree full of fruit, with random tropical fruit of course. And beware, some fruit can make you sick if not properly prepared!
-An ancient inactive golem.
-A sleeping giant.
-A parrot sitting on the branch of a tree, who repeats phrases from previous pirates that visited.

I just want to throw in things that are interesting, and may provoke some cool roleplaying opportunities. Or things that I can easily tie to the current narrative. If you were to venture into a jungle in real life, I doubt that you'd be immediately jumped by a hungry tiger or a bunch of cannibals. Plus I feel a combat encounter with one of those baddies is far more interesting, if it has first been build up by other discoveries. Maybe they first encounter an abandoned cannibal watchtower, or one of their victims dangling from a tree? Maybe they first find tracks, or poop from a tiger, but the beast probably hunts at night? If you can make your players afraid to revisit the same place at night, you've already succeeded in creating suspense, without any combat at all.