D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Mort]

I agree with @Mort. The party with the ranger has more time to deal with the cult, and that is a good thing. The feature is benefiting the party, which is what those features are intended to do.

It's only a problem for the DM who insists that the players need to interrupt the ritual at the last possible second, but also insists on using a clock. In which case the only problem is the incompatibility of those two agendas. It can still be done, but you can't be hamfisted about it. For example, you could have the ritual nearing completion whenever the PCs bust in, but the clock determines some other factors, like how many demons the enemy has been able to summon.

Exactly. @Chaosmancer presents a ticking clock as binary (either the PCs get there just in time or the clock is a failure), when it should be anything but.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Okay great, if we want combat instead of exploration we go through the woods. If we just want to get to the destination to begin the adventure we take the road. We like the main adventure and would rather not waste time on random encounters just to fight more (we'll get plenty of fighting in anyways) so we take the road.

A 30-second DM montage and we are back on track.

Obviously this scenario would also involve a time pressure, otherwise the choice would not be a choice. Possibly where your thinking is going wrong here is in the phrase 'begin the adventure'. I'm not designing wilderness travel to waste time until we get to the adventure. I'm designing an adventure, part (or, perhaps, all) of which is set in the wilderness.

Let's run with this for a second. Let us say that the ritual is going to be done in 15 days. And it is a five day journey. Then a single two day detour is no problem, but more importantly, let us say the the party does decide to skip all the shiny things and just rushes to the site of the Ritual of Evil Ritualing... then they arrive 10 days before it is done. How could we possibly not stop it with 10 days to act to stop it?

Well, obviously you couldn't actually let us arrive with 10 days to spare, could you? Because then there is no challenge when we arrive, the cultists are clearly unprepared to even start the ritual and we have stopped it with ease.

This is the problem with time pressures, either they end up being an illusion, because the party will always arrive "just in time" or they are serious and if the party actually does take them seriously and rushes... they could arrive with so much time to spare, that there is no real challenge or rush to complete the mission.

My time pressures are never an illusion, they are they to put choices in the game. This whole conversation is very strange. You seem to be imagining ways that someone could design a clock so that it didn't matter. But obviously I wouldn't design my clocks that way. That's the whole point. And of course I could let you arrive early. But the camp where the cultists are is fortified, and you'd have to sneak or fight their way in. And defeating the evil mages would be more difficult without the Magic Item of Plot Device. But if you get the magic item of plot device, you will either arrive just on time (in which case you almost certainly win and feel like heroes) or you will arrive late. Because the detour will be designed to potentially slow you down if you make the wrong choices.

But, unless you totally screwed up the detour, you have the Magic Item of Plot Device and so still have a chance to save the day by using it to banish the summoned whatever. Or, if you show up late and failed to get the magic item, then the whatever is rampaging and you're too weak to stop it. So you either get killed or run away in shame having failed miserably. Which is fine.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The gods have temples, creeds, factions, they have domains. A temple of Chauntea will be different to a temple of Helm. You can find out information about the gods of a campaign in order to better understand the services they can provide or the disciplines they oversee. If you are investigating a murder of a priest of Sune you may find different clues to a priest of Malar. It’s world building. When you find the Spire of the Morning in Myth Drannor you know the priests of Lathander are less likely to screw your than the priests of Cyric you met on the road. If you find a holy symbol of Loviatar in someone’s belt purse it means something different to a holy symbol of Tymora.

Okay, this is some real sketchy grey area stuff.

The only reason I'm not saying you are wrong outright is because I know you see Exploration as literally everything that isn't immediately talking to someone or fighting them.But what you are talking about is literally world-building.

Like, I don't think many people would say they have engaged in exploration when the DM says "The Kingdom of Cylvania has a long-history of golemcraft". It's just information, which, yes it isn't directly combat or talking to someone, but... if a player chooses to take acolyte as a background and says "My character was an orphan taken in by the convent of the Spear of Light, and raised by Sister Margarite there." have they engaged in exploration? They've established information about the world, but I don't think it is exploration, I think that is something else.

I refer to the DMG rules for settlement size etc.

Okay... but knowing that a town has about 6,000 people doesn't tell you how to build a town. Or how to build a temple. Or how to cooridinate a government bureaucracy

You use stealth if you’re trying to stealthily move through occupied territory. Even before combat. Sure you’ve just named some societal skills. Though Deception can also be used to hide a camp or make a disguise.

Occupied territory? You mean, you use stealth to maybe avoid combat? that is literally what I'm talking about. You don't use stealth in an empty room to get to the other side, because there is no risk of combat.

My point was, "skills" encompass all three pillars, so saying they are exclusively part of exploration is weird. Skills go beyond that.

When they’re written down in an old book, or inscribed on a map or a sword blade they’re exploration.

So, only written information. That is a far cry from saying "languages"

instead of expecting other people to answer the questions why don’t you try conceiving the answers yourself first. Maybe google it?

Because if you want to make a point in a discussion it isn't my job to make it for you. If people ask you for clarification on your points, you shouldn't just say "well, why don't you come up with your own answers about what I mean" because you might not like the answers we come up with.

Now I remember why I did the first time. If you want people to engage with you then you’ve got to be open to discussion. We tend to get walls of text and a very negative approach.

Because I get sick of people dismissing me and expecting me to fill in their points for them. I am open to discussion, but being told, for example

Now I realize you’re a player complaining about their DM it puts even more into perspective. Maybe set up your own group with you as DM. Then you can run the game however you want. If you can find players willing to play with you. I think you would find it an illuminating process.

When not only am I DM as well as a player, but dismissing me as being ignorant of the process does nothing to indicate you yourself are open to discussion. I'm not "negative" in pointing out that if I'm using the rules as written than any party with 40 gold to buy four sets of winter clothes has nothing to fear from a blizzard or trek across the tundra. If you want to claim a blizzard is a challenge for more than giving cover to monsters about to engage in the combat pillar, then give me something, don't just say "but it is" and hope that I'll homebrew some rules to make you right.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I should have been clearer. Survival as a character goal is fine, but that's a very different thing from survival as a player goal. It just needs to be filtered through the character, rather than being a default, cautious, "I want to win" player approach. Even in OSR play, which kind of indexes the latter, it still needs some filtering IMO. YMMV.

Why? I can't avenge my family if I am dead, so surviving is important to me.

I can't become the underworld king of thieves if I am dead, so surviving is important to me.

I can't retire with a wife and kids if I am dead, so surviving is important to me.

It takes literally nothing to have a character approach literal death traps in a cautious manner, only a realization that you can't accomplish goals if you are dead, and move on from there.

 

[tetrasodium]

When you look at this, I'm wondering why people complain so much about the exploration pillar...

There are a few reasons & largely they revolve around the lengths that the 5e designers went through to code the rules against something they treated like abhorrent adventure design. In no particular order

• 5e has problems that are equally massive if not even more significant elsewhere too but the tendency to blame the gm makes it easier to divert the discussion into areas like class design spell design gm choices & so forth. For example, 5e is designed to make it so players know that it's nearly impossible for them to die due to various design choices & fixing them all just leads to a continuous cascade of things that also need one off fixes... or the gm could target downed players more often... except monsters rarely have enough attacks to drop then hit a character two times before someone else can heal that pc at least 1 hit point to reset the risk so the gm should redesign monsters and encounters to make certain players will simply be executed & know that's exactly what happened because the gm needs to fix all of the prior things plus a bunch more to make it something other than straight up execution. Usually at some point it gets diverted into situations & specific class tradeoffs then dragged so far from the original problems that are created as a result of players knowing they are basically unkillable that no amount of wrangling will bring things back to the original point diverted by blaming the GM.
• Exploration is a massive pillar that works best when used to apply stress to the party's resources & capabilities but the rules are designed to nullify them making specific scenarios like the bridge washed out one that came up earlier coming down to "ok and?" where all solutions are either a trivial nonissue with no impact or little more than a transparent quicktime event with a penalty the players never had an ability to influence.
• the exploration related rules are utterly indefensible in how they exist to nullify the external pressures that can arise from exploration and as a result the oberoni fallacy & gm blaming lack the ability to kill the original complaint by shifting the discussion away from the original complaint without running into new areas also having rules to nullify the new set of external pressures the spotlight is shifting to.

 

[Ovinomancer]

The thing is that, if you consider the three areas of the game, you can certainly try to order them in terms of amount of rules provided:

1. Combat: Tons of rules, and tools for encounter building
2. Exploration: Quite a few rules and a few tools (DCs)
3. Social: Almost no rules and absolutely no tools

When you look at this, I'm wondering why people complain so much about the exploration pillar...

Especially since you consider that, in terms of time taken by players to resolve a situation, at least at our table, combat takes the longest per amount or preparation, then probably exploration. Social is a bit of a special case, our tables spend hours on social encounters and roleplay, but it's as much planning and discussion as actual resolution anyway.

And, although I like it best by far, I find it hard to create social encounters, where I need to define the NPCs, the intrigue, what all the NPCs are doing behind the PCs backs, etc. Fortunately the players discussions help a lot formulating new plots and improvising, but still.

Whereas honestly an exploration challenge is not that hard if you have a bit of imagination. Just imagine the situation from any movie or book of the genre, present it to the players, and ideas will start flying, just select the ones that make sense and look cool

Social actually has some pretty decent rules for resolution -- better and more concise that exploration at least. You should look them up -- they're one of the more ignored sets of rules in 5e, mostly due to bringing previous experience into the game.

 

[Chaosmancer]

One thing I would like to raise seeing as it is always put forward as an answer is that time limits can only be used so many times before they feel contrived or an admittance to a lack of other answers. I have played with a DM who put time limits on everything and it got to the point where we took our time just to screw with him and teach a lesson.

Exactly, it can work occasionally, but it carries a lot of risks and problems and certainly can't be used every single time.

But, that and wandering monsters are the main answers we've gotten again and again.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Why? I can't avenge my family if I am dead, so surviving is important to me.

I can't become the underworld king of thieves if I am dead, so surviving is important to me.

I can't retire with a wife and kids if I am dead, so surviving is important to me.

It takes literally nothing to have a character approach literal death traps in a cautious manner, only a realization that you can't accomplish goals if you are dead, and move on from there.

This is because the "play your character like a stolen car" doesn't mesh well with the usual approaches to 5e. Your examples show this out, because they assume that the challenges aren't related to the PC's goals, but rather the usual party-challenging GM curated challenge set. If your dealing with a literal death trap was directly tied to your goal of whatever, such that it was directly in your way, then how you approach it changes. Also, death being the only serious consequence to PCs is another factor, also from the usual way D&D is framed.

Take, for example, my character in the Blades game I'm playing in. This character has the Trauma (unwanted flaw, if you will, earned by stressing out) "reckless." So, the character's mindset is that the character is reckless, which can be very detrimental. But, I, as a player, get to use this as a cue for how this character acts, and so if I'm leaning into playing my character strongly, then I'm going to declare the occasional reckless action. This came out in the last session, as during the score we had fully accomplished our mission but there was a chance to earn some more coin via engaging with some dangerous shades and attempting to capture them. This hit a number of my character's interest point -- they were shades of his nationality, killed during an attack, and I was an ex-solider, plus I am very money oriented, with a primary character vice of luxury, so coin is important, and one of the crew's motivations is to be ambitious, which coin allows us to engage. And then my PC is reckless. So, no hesitation, my PC immediately engaged the shades, and did so while the rest of the crew was occupied and could not immediately help (one was collecting the objects of the score and the other was guarding against the return of some Deathlands monstrosities she had chased off). THIS is playing like your character is a stolen car -- it's leaning into everything the character is about and jamming the pedal down on them. And it doesn't really work in D&D mostly due to the party focus and the fact that consequences are usually death or nothing much.

 

[Faolyn]

Combat's pretty popular. And, oh look, an entire abstract system for resolving combat conflicts. Interacting with NPC's is pretty popular. Oh, look, an entire abstract system for dealing with social encounters. But, apparently, despite exploration being popular with lots and lots of people, in forty years of the game, no one has bothered coming up with systems for resolving challenges.

Funny how that goes. Almost like stuff that isn't really very popular barely appears in the game and is only really liked by a very vocal minority that figures that the rest of us should just get with the program. Reminds me of something, but, I've only got half of the idea.

You mean it reminds you of the time you made a completely erroneous assumption about how unpopular something was and ignored all of the people and books that contradicted that assumption?

Before, you were claiming that exploration challenges only exist to screw over rangers or railroad parties. Now you're claiming they don't exist at all. Which is it?

Because a quick googling shows literally hundreds of websites dedicated to exploration in D&D, both how to do it, challenges you might encounter while exploring, and interesting things to find. Plus lots of 3pp books on the subject. And that's just for 5e. Plus there's all the info that's actually in the DMG and various adventures WotC has put out for 5e--which isn't comprehensive, no, but does exist. Heck, Level Up--you know, the "Advanced 5e" that's being put out by this very site has vastly increased exploration in a way that's backwards-compatible, with creating regions to be explored, creating new actions that exist only for exploration, and giving each class exploration abilities.

Remember, a short time ago you were also claiming that there were no rules for how to find secret doors, and laughed when I and another person showed you different rules that could be used to find secret doors, because that... somehow supported your notion that there were no rules. When I showed you whoops, I was wrong, there's actually an entire section in the DMG on how to find secret doors, no interpretation of rules needed, we heard nothing but crickets from you.

So in light of my quick googling, wouldn't it be more accurate to say that you simply haven't found the rules for exploration?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Party with a ranger gets there faster and has that much more time to plan and disrupt the ritual.

Party without a ranger gets there slower and has significantly less time to disrupt the ritual.

Yay, the Ranger has proven really useful in this instance.

I really don't see the problem.

I have been told repeatedly that the major element I am ingoring in making exploration challenging is a time limit. I must have a ticking clock to pressure the players to push on and rush and take risks.

However, how did you determine that ticking clock?

If you make the clock for a party without a ranger, and then the ranger gets them there far faster and without error... then the ticking clock wasn't providing pressure. I actually am writing/running a "Quest" where a group of people are controlling a single character. I gave them a "ticking clock" in that they had 1 year to complete their first mission. I intentionally set this up as not something to provide them any pressure, because six months later and I don't think we've even had a month of game time. The story isn't focused on that and they are dealing with a lot of things and progressing a lot of plots without needing to focus on that, but they can't forget it.

But, the challenge of that mission isn't the clock. The clock is just so we don't forget about it.

However, in the example of the party needing to get somewhere to disrupt a ritual, we have a double problem.

See, if a party without a ranger can reach the location, and still have enough time to disrupt the ritual... then the ranger allowing them to arrive even earlier, and have even more time not only removes the pressure of the clock but also makes the adventure itself easier. Both aspects were made far easier, because the clock said they had more than enough time.

But, if the party can't reach the location without a ranger... then you've begun curating the game. You've made sure that the challenge is able to be overcome with the resources they have, and the ranger's ability is simply making it possible, passively, for them to do what they could have done without the ranger.