D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Chaosmancer]

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.

But then the clock isn't adding anything to the exploration challenge. Which is why I keep getting told that we need a ticking clock.

"You need to rescue the princess before she is killed in one week's time"

Well, if the ranger can get us there in two days, and the DM designed the challenge to be achievable if we only had 12 hours to complete it, then having nearly 100 hours means it is going to be trivially easier. We have nearly ten times the amount of time we need.

If the DM designed the challenge to only be achievable with those five extra days.. then the ranger ability didn't really do anything about the ticking clock. We were expected and the clock was set accordingly. And if the DM miscalculated, maybe by forgetting the Ranger's favored Terrains, then they have put forth a mission that is impossible to complete. And I don't think anyone would say that is a good game, to be given a task you literally cannot succeed at.

 

[Chaosmancer]

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.

I'm just going off of the examples people have used. And many ticking clocks are binary, you can't "fail to save the princess" without that being a pretty binary situation. You've failed if she is killed when she is supposed to be killed.

And if the clock is only "the longer you take, the harder the fight" then you are talking a lot more about the combat pillar than anything about exploration.

 

[Lanefan]

For you maybe. Which means you are free to ignore the mechanics. I'm telling you right now, that without that mechanical framework, I simply ignore 99% of exploration in games. And, frankly, most of the players I've played with are perfectly happy to ignore it as well. Any time I've tried to make exploration important, either as a player or a DM, it's been pretty much entirely rejected in favor of simply using class abilities that make exploration a non-issue.

And yet, funnily enough, 5e has them. D&D has had hard coded social mechanics since 3e. Again, you are free to ignore them, but, that doesn't mean that they aren't there.

Ron Wick once made an excellent point about game design. He asked a designer of a new RPG what his game was about, and the designer replied with this or that thing that you do during the game. To which Ron Wick replied, "No, what is your game ABOUT?" "Hope" was the answer. "Now, where is your "Hope" mechanic" was his advice. To me, if your game doesn't have mechanics to deal with something, then your game isn't about that thing. "Mechanic absent" game design is just free form play by another name. And it should come as zero surprise that when you try to free form, it doesn't work far more often than it does.

Collectively these paragraphs tell me you're pretty much only concerned about the mechanics; and by extension the more mechanics a game has, the better that game is.

Conversely, it seems you're saying that a mechanics-absent RPG isn't a game at all.

Disagree on both counts. To me the ideal game has just enough mechanics to provide a framework for resolving things that have to be abstracted (the most notable of which is combat) and for resolving disputes, and after that the mechanics get out of the way in favour of freeform (and, preferably, immersive) roleplaying.

Game mechanics and player immersion don't play well together.

 

[Fanaelialae]

But then the clock isn't adding anything to the exploration challenge. Which is why I keep getting told that we need a ticking clock.

"You need to rescue the princess before she is killed in one week's time"

Well, if the ranger can get us there in two days, and the DM designed the challenge to be achievable if we only had 12 hours to complete it, then having nearly 100 hours means it is going to be trivially easier. We have nearly ten times the amount of time we need.

If the DM designed the challenge to only be achievable with those five extra days.. then the ranger ability didn't really do anything about the ticking clock. We were expected and the clock was set accordingly. And if the DM miscalculated, maybe by forgetting the Ranger's favored Terrains, then they have put forth a mission that is impossible to complete. And I don't think anyone would say that is a good game, to be given a task you literally cannot succeed at.

There's a simple solution. Don't design your clocks to be so swingy. They can still have an impact, but it doesn't need to swing between trivial and impossible to be a meaningful difference.

 

[Lyxen]

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.

These are the ones that I was referencing, but honestly, they are very short, not that applicable to our groups because of the lack of flexibility in the process, and there is nothing about designing them. But I agree that they are mostly ignored by a lot of players.

 

[tetrasodium]

Frostmaiden has a quest in it to rescue someone that pretty clearly shows how even they can't finagle the "advice" given about using doom clocks. A party of white dragon sorcerer aarakokra could literally fly directly from the NPC asking them to rescue the mountain climbing expedition bypassing any encounters & arrive deeeep into forced march after skipping the entire mountain climb & not one member of the expedition would be in a different condition than if they casually spent the night in every town along the way dealing with each local issue as they traveled from town to town.

 

[Lanefan]

Not quite. Every time we say there is a problem, we get told that no problem exists. So, we have to bring up issues to show that the problem exists. To which the goalposts get shifted fifteen feet further on and we're told that no problem exists and if we were just better DM's, we'd have no problems.

The problem exists*. The disputes are a) whether it's problem enough to be worthy of attention; and then b) if it is, how to fix it.

If one isn't willing to critically examine and then significantly overhaul the 5e rule-set almost from the ground up - and there seems to be a generally entrenched resistance here to doing so - then being a better DM is really the only other option you've got.

* - in all editions, though 5e seems particularly egregious.

 

[Mort]

I'm just going off of the examples people have used. And many ticking clocks are binary, you can't "fail to save the princess" without that being a pretty binary situation. You've failed if she is killed when she is supposed to be killed.

But even here, there are different gradations.

Depending on when you get there, the challenge plays out differently. If the party gets there too late, for example, they encounter an empty hideout with traces of blood and not much else. The challenge now becomes, do we crawl back home? Do we try to track the kidnappers?

Once you move past binary challenges, lots of avenues open up.

And if the clock is only "the longer you take, the harder the fight" then you are talking a lot more about the combat pillar than anything about exploration.

I find your insistence of separating the pillars with a hard divide really confusing.

Sometimes combat results from exploration (eg. The players bumbling around accidentally set off a nest of giant hornets).

Sometimes exploration results from combat, the bad guy ran from the fight and into an environment that really needs exploring.

Sometimes the two are linked. My group had to recently fight their way through an ancient Suel city. Exploring rooms as they went and culminating in an escape on an ancient spelljaming vessel that they found when barricading themselves into a room. So the whole session flowed between combat and exploration and exploration during combat.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

Yeah, we're definitely different players.

I'd take the woods every damn time. If nothing else, the party will have more xp when we get there, and maybe more resources as well depending what we can loot off the monsters.

Never mind that unless the original mission was hella urgent (many are not) I'd almost always be open to spending a lot more time in the woods and clear 'em out proper, if we could, so the next travellers could pass through safely.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Obviously this scenario would also involve a time pressure, otherwise the choice would not be a choice.

Exactly. This is it, 100%. There is no choice unless there is a time pressure. And if the time pressure is "you have three days" then it is also not a choice, because you can't afford five days of travel.

And this also ties right back into the question. Which road to take isn't a choice, it isn't a challenge, unless there is a time pressure of let's say 6 days for this example. So, do you honestly try and have a ticking clock for every single overland travel, every single dungeon crawl, every single city exploration... how are your players supposed to take the time to actually explore and experiment if they must be constantly rushing?

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.

If going through the Forest of Random Encounters is the adventure you want, why are you presenting it like a choice? Just tell the players.

"You could take the high road, but that will take 5 days, and in 4 days it will be too late, so you turn your gaze to the dangers of the Forest of Random Encounters it is the only way"

Or, just say "hey guys, I have a cool forest adventure before we get to the temple, let's take the forest road, it'll be fun."

But now, how do you make the forest exploration interesting?

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.

I'm sorry, why does the Magic Item of Plot Device mean I don't need to sneak or fight my way into the fortified base? I still need to do that, right? So, we go and get the Plot Device, and we arrive at the fortified camp with an hour until the ritual... and since it takes longer to get through the defenses then we lose because we don't have the time to get through.

Or we show up without the Plot Device item, and we have plenty of time to sneak into the compound, but then despite the ritual being potentially days away from completion ", then the whatever is rampaging and you're too weak to stop it." and we fail anyways. So, our only way to succeed is to take the detour... then why give us a choice? Do we even know that there is a summoned monster protecting the ritual that we can't possibly defeat without the McGuffin? What is your goal as a DM giving players false choices that lead to them being defeated if they don't follow your plan.


What you have actually done here is set up a scenario where if the party deviates from your plan, they lose. They need to take the detour, and they need to do steps three four and five, and then they will arrive in time to sneak in, beat the unbeatable monster and save the day. But if they don't take the detour, they lose. And if they get bogged down on steps 3 and 4 then they lose. And the players likely know none of this information.

This is all a massive problem with the design of your adventure, there aren't multiple routes to success, there is a single route, and you might as well just tell the players.