What is exploration & why is it fun?

[UngeheuerLich]

Exploration is the one where the wizard makes the rogue useless by casting a couple of spells, isn't it?

No, its where the rogue sneaks up in the night, setting off the alarm spell every half an hour for a several night. And when the wizard is out of spells, he sneaks in and put´s a little piece of paper on the sleeping wizard telling him, he is out of spells and dead now...

 

[Gold Roger]

Exploration gives the context of the game. It's gathering the pieces together and then seeing how they fit.

Exploration is stimulating the mind and creativity of players and DMs, wether it's a puzzle, the scouting of a castle and subsequent plan making for taking it or the discovery of setting secrets throughout a decade spanning campaign. All these elements need to be thought up (DM), discovered (players), imagined (both) and resolved (again, by both).

 

[TwoSix]

In game, I think exploration is the middle layer between combat and roleplaying.

Combat is the zoomed-in, second by second tracking of the action, where very round matters and the risk of personal injury and death is at its highest. This is the province of the Warrior archetype.

Roleplaying is the zoomed-out, scene-framing aspect of the game. Death and injury chance is usually minimized, and the focus is on changing the situation of the game, whether by talking to the nobleman to gain information, or by casting a spell to teleport to the villian's lair. Time is usally tracked by the hour or day, not by the round or turn. The Mage archetype, with his knowledge, status, and ability to periodically change the nature of the environment, excels here.

Exploration is the muddled in between. Time is tracked more closely than in roleplaying, but individual order rarely matters. Risk is lessened compared to combat, but still present due to traps and other environmental hazards. The focus is on understanding the environment in order to gain advantage and rewards. The Rogue archetype, with their focus on awareness, and using special tricks to gain advantage, is the focus for exploration.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Exploration = interacting with the setting and environment. (The other two involve interacting with the inhabitants)

 

[renau1g]

No, its where the rogue sneaks up in the night, setting off the alarm spell every half an hour for a several night. And when the wizard is out of spells, he sneaks in and put´s a little piece of paper on the sleeping wizard telling him, he is out of spells and dead now...

Naw, just use Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound and the rogue will get bit in the behind.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I was taken aback to find Exploration as one of the 3 pillars of D&D. I describe my experiences with D&D as “Tactical miniatures games with in character chat”, which covers the other two “pillars”. Clearly many other people play D&D as something like an interactive story which obviously has much more emphasis on the interaction part.

So who does all of this exploring? What are they doing?
The only think I can think of is all that 10’ pole prodding we used to do in the day & setting up exhaustive SOPs for opening doors & setting watches & meticulous mapping so on – all stuff I was happy to drop. (Though conceded I did have fun mapping Pharaoh it was a solo project the rest of the party were oblivious).

What does “exploration” in D&D mean to you?
What do you enjoy about it?

i think exploration is where things like investigation and discovery reside. If you have ever investigated a dense forest, searched the countyside for anthing, or delved into a dungeon, you have explored. The only timei can honestly see exploration not coming up is if your games simply go from one encounter to the next with no setting or character agency in between. Exploration is about interacting with the setting.

 

[KesselZero]

My favorite D&D moment from the last four years occurred while delving an ancient dwarven tomb. We found a seemingly abstract pattern carved into the wall. Points on it were labeled in Dwarven so it was clearly a map, but none of our characters spoke Dwarven. If we had, we would have figured it out in a second, but instead all five players were on their feet, huddled around the handout the DM gave us, trying to make sense of this map. Eventually we started comparing it to our map of the campaign area-- "Hmm, this point and that point are in the same relationship as where we are now and the lost elven forest city we've heard about, so that big marking must be the elven city"-- and suddenly it hit us: we weren't just in any old dwarven tomb, we were in the tomb of one of the three great dwarven heroes of old! And those other two small marks must be the locations of the other two heroes' tombs! And there was a big mark for the elven city because the wall map was made at a time when the dwarves and elves were closely allied against the monstrous hordes, which we knew from moldering wall hangings earlier in the tomb that showed dwarves and elves fighting side-by-side!

It was a thrilling moment in which we the players did all the heavy lifting. No skill checks were rolled, and in fact it would have been short-circuited if anyone had known Dwarven. There was tension and drama; we learned more about the campaign world and engaged meaningfully with the environment; we got sucked into the gameworld completely for a few minutes.

That's exploration!

 

[Melan]

Exploration = interacting with the setting and environment. (The other two involve interacting with the inhabitants)

And I think this covers it briefly and elegantly.

 

[Uller]

It's the bit between the bits where you are interacting with NPCs (i.e. talking to them and/or killing them and taking their stuff).

You're in a room. There is a door to the north and a passage to the east. You can see what appears to be the glow of candle light and some shadows as if there might be a room with someone in it a few dozen feet down the passage. Through the door you hear shouting and occasional whimpering...what do you do?

or

You wake up. You don't remember who you are or why you are here. You are cold but you feel the warmth on your face and can see the glow of the sun through your eye lids. You feel dust under you and taste it along with blood in your mouth. Your head aches. When you open your eyes you see that you are in the middle of a dusty plain. The sun is low on the horizon (probably rising). In all directions is flat dry land covered by low scraggly bushes. You here a low rumbling sound...at first you think it to be thunder but you a could of dust indicates it is like the hooves of many large beasts...possibly horses or cattle. They appear to be approaching you...you are wearing tattered rags. You have no weapons. A set of broken shackles are on your wrists. Your hands and clothes are covered in dried blood that is likely not your own. What do you do?

Exploration is where the players (through their characters) get an opportunity to determine the direction of the game. Do you go right? Do you go left? It is out of initiative order.

 

[Dragoslav]

If your focus is on combat, think of it this way: exploration is what determines which combats you fight next, whether you fight in them, and under what conditions you engage them.

For example, you're trapped atop a snowy mountain in an ancient fortress. Which corridor do you take? As a result, you run into some people, beat the hell out of them as is standard, and find out that you need two keys, one of which is held by some guy and one is held by a blue dragon. However, your party already took a beating while opening the magically-trapped door that needed the blue dragon's key, so you decide to avoid any room that seems like it might have a dragon in it because it's unnecessary and you want to manage your resources. Your sneaky party members sneak around and hear the guy with the other key in another room, so you barge in and get the jump on him, but an enemy runs out and grabs the patrol that you had avoided earlier.

Just as an example.