D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[CleverNickName]

I have to ask though...is Redbeard's Razor still a +1 rapier in game?

Yep. But now it's got story attached to it, and a reason to explore and discover more about it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I added the Journeys, Audiences, and Fellowship phase subsystems from Adventures in Middle-Earth to my games. Makes the noncombat pillars much more engaging.

 

[guachi]

Nobody reads the DMG.

If the PHB included magic items how many just wouldn't have bought the DMG at all?

 

[MichaelSomething]

If you're looking for interesting things to explore, then you should back Over the Next Hill 2! It contains all sorts of cool things to amp up your exploration game!

 

[Lanefan]

I have to ask though...is Redbeard's Razor still a +1 rapier in game?

Yes, except if the opponent has a red beard it becomes +5 and vorpal until and unless the beard is removed.

 

[mrpopstar]

I'll set aside my pathologically optimistic evangelism for a second and offer up something critical: How hard would it have been to include an illustration of the hexes overlapping as you zoom from province scale, through kingdom scale, to continent scale?

 

[TheSword]

The exploration pillar is the best pillar of all. When done well it makes the combat and roleplay pillars much more interesting.

Context is King after all.

 

[turnip_farmer]

So... How do I subscribe to your game streaming channel???
Because this sounds amazing.

I find it embarrassing enough to do silly voices in front of five people. There is zero chance of me ever streaming anything!

Blimey. Did I touch a nerve? Sorry, man. I was just joking.

Sorry, tone doesn't come across too well in writing.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Nobody reads the DMG.

Problem is that the 5e DMG is crap.

Not that it doesn't have some good content, but it's structured and organised so badly that it's easy to forget most of what is in there by the time you need it in your game design.

I've found myself inventing rules for things more than once before remembering that 5e already has rules for them, buried somewhere in that unintuitive mess of a book.

 

[Fanaelialae]

But this ditches all the work to make exploration interesting on the GM without offering any tools to help with the process. If you can make great stuff up out of thin air. Great for you. You can't? Sucks to be you, then.

Of course it's true, but it excuses the absence of tools no more than saying a rule isn't broken because you're free to change them if you want.
Tools to help us make thing easier is what we're paying the game makers for.

No more so than the Monster Manual ditches all the work to make combat interesting on the GM. The only edition that actually did offer solid advice for assembling encounters was 4e (where they offered various arrangements of monsters by role). The difficulty tools, like CR, have their uses of course, but won't actually help you create an interesting encounter, just a more balanced one.

Mork Borg, Numenera, and Invisible Sun all contain ideas for interesting things to encounter during exploration, which I hardly think constitutes handing off all the work to the GM.