D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not arguing that 5e requires no work. I'm saying that all RPGs require work. It seems like you want to wax philosophical about 5e requiring more work than some other unstated game, which may or may not be true, but please realize that I don't care. It doesn't matter. It's almost certainly true that 5e requires more work than some RPGs and less than others (and I seriously doubt that it's a significant outlier on either end of the spectrum).

Of course RPGs take work. This isn't a defense against saying that 5e requires specific work in this specific area. There are other systems that do not require you to ignore parts of the system or to invent in subsystems at all in order to do what it says it can do on the tin. 5e, on the other hand, suggests it can do survival on the tin -- it has rules for it after all -- but then takes that away. You have to do the work, in this case, no because of the general level of effort it takes to make RPGs work in general, but specifically to address this failure of the system to operate. The work his is caused by the system, it's not a necessary part of running RPGs in general.

Only allowing fighters for an all fighter campaign, or banning abilities that create food and water for a campaign where that is meant to be front and center, is not difficult. Walking and chewing bubble gum is arguably more challenging.

At what point is it reasonable to assume that the GM has a brain, rather than simply being a calculation machine incapable of more than running simple procedural algorithms? Personally, I prefer the game that assumes the former, as opposed to the latter.

Ah, the strawmen, they keep getting stuffed and keep getting beat up triumphantly. You put forth that it's trivial to observe, analyze, and repair the 5e system if you want to have survival challenges that aren't thwarted by other system elements, but the only thing you have here is an assertion that it only takes a brain. I suppose, then, anyone that ever asks for help on this you'd consider brainless? No, of course not, you'd probably leap to provide suggestions, because it's only brainless if 5e needs defending from criticism and just good advice to ask if 5e isn't under criticism.

Why does 5e engender such loyalty that insults will readily fly in defense of it being criticized to any degree while the same question asked differently (help me fix 5e to enable survival challenges) will instead receive encouragement and advice?

 

[Faolyn]

I play my NPCs as insufferable in a fictional sense to the characters but funny to the players, and prone to being useless or troublesome when with the party. But I also make keeping them alive worth XP or gold, and there's always that One Time they do something that is great (usually before they die).

Yeah, personally, I'd probably hate those NPCs and not want anything to do with them. Obviously, this is a YMMV type of thing, but for me, comic relief characters are both an in-game and out-of-game annoyance.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Of course RPGs take work. This isn't a defense against saying that 5e requires specific work in this specific area. There are other systems that do not require you to ignore parts of the system or to invent in subsystems at all in order to do what it says it can do on the tin. 5e, on the other hand, suggests it can do survival on the tin -- it has rules for it after all -- but then takes that away. You have to do the work, in this case, no because of the general level of effort it takes to make RPGs work in general, but specifically to address this failure of the system to operate. The work his is caused by the system, it's not a necessary part of running RPGs in general.

Ah, the strawmen, they keep getting stuffed and keep getting beat up triumphantly. You put forth that it's trivial to observe, analyze, and repair the 5e system if you want to have survival challenges that aren't thwarted by other system elements, but the only thing you have here is an assertion that it only takes a brain. I suppose, then, anyone that ever asks for help on this you'd consider brainless? No, of course not, you'd probably leap to provide suggestions, because it's only brainless if 5e needs defending from criticism and just good advice to ask if 5e isn't under criticism.

Why does 5e engender such loyalty that insults will readily fly in defense of it being criticized to any degree while the same question asked differently (help me fix 5e to enable survival challenges) will instead receive encouragement and advice?

You keep stating that banning Create Food and Water is an unreasonable amount of work. It's not.

I said that I prefer a system that assumes the user has a brain and doesn't feel the need to explain simple and obvious things, not that someone who asks questions is brainless. Someone asking for advice on how to make food and water more important almost certainly already recognizes that Create Food and Water is something that shouldn't be allowed. However, they may be worried they overlooked something. Asking questions typically demonstrates that you do, in fact, have a brain.

And you accuse me of strawmanning...

 

[billd91]

Why does 5e engender such loyalty that insults will readily fly in defense of it being criticized to any degree while the same question asked differently (help me fix 5e to enable survival challenges) will instead receive encouragement and advice?

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

 

[tetrasodium]

You keep stating that banning Create Food and Water is an unreasonable amount of work. It's not.

I said that I prefer a system that assumes the user has a brain and doesn't feel the need to explain simple and obvious things, not that someone who asks questions is brainless. Someone asking for advice on how to make food and water more important almost certainly already recognizes that Create Food and Water is something that shouldn't be allowed. However, they may be worried they overlooked something. Asking questions typically demonstrates that you do, in fact, have a brain.

And you accuse me of strawmanning...

There are a great many more problems. Create food and water is behind a bunch of other larger problems deliberately created to negate or trivialize any impact that might be added through exploration. Simply removing banning or nerfing a bunch of stuff creates a new problem though.

As @Ovinomancer mentioned earlier about the gm needing to have the experience to quickly recognize the problematic elements while knowing how to alter them in order to avoid creating new ones is certainly half of that problem. If the players do not also have that experience they will be given s bad impression of an apparent adversarial gm rolling out a long laundry list of nerfs right out of the gate for no reason that they as players can see. Without a sidebar from wotc te GM can point at to say "we are using this option" the gm has no good way of easily correcting the bad impression wotc set them up to make for daring to strip away all the fun protecting abilities in order to create new problems & complications wotc went to great lengths in order to keep that type of unfun gameplay from wrecking the perfection thst is 5e. In past editions the GM had a variety of dials they could adjust so players got a boon in this & that area making up for how this other one might hurt or even frustrate a bit , but in 5e they are all already tuned to 11 in favor of the players out of the box to force mass nerds as step zero for the gm to take.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Personally, I think the back and forth regarding who is or isn't making a straw man makes all participants look the lessor, and would advise dropping it, but that's just one opinion.

Why does 5e engender such loyalty that insults will readily fly in defense of it being criticized to any degree while the same question asked differently (help me fix 5e to enable survival challenges) will instead receive encouragement and advice?

I think there's a heavy dose of 'I don't like everything about this thing, but I've seen a lot of complaints about it that seem unfair.' Similar for me are the latest Star Wars movies or Star Trek shows and some of my favorite webcomics that honestly were better some time in the past -- I'll happily discuss how I'd rather things have gone with one or the other, but it doesn't take all that much disparagement for my mind to go to 'ah, we have a hate-watcher here.'
5e has some problems. Good DMing advice and facilitating specific gameplay styles especially. However, once the bile starts dripping, I think it's pretty natural for the wagons to start circling.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You keep stating that banning Create Food and Water is an unreasonable amount of work. It's not.

No, I do not. I say it's not a trivial amount of work, because it relies on extensive experience. For example, glazing a bit on a model to shade it isn't an unreasonable amount of work for me -- I can do it pretty well pretty quickly and even use different color glazes for nice effect. This, however, is based on years of practice and study on painting models and lots and lots of failure. I would never say that glazing is a trivial amount of work and you only need a brain to do it because while it's pretty easy for me, it's not at all easy for lots of others.

I said that I prefer a system that assumes the user has a brain and doesn't feel the need to explain simple and obvious things, not that someone who asks questions is brainless. Someone asking for advice on how to make food and water more important almost certainly already recognizes that Create Food and Water is something that shouldn't be allowed. However, they may be worried they overlooked something. Asking questions typically demonstrates that you do, in fact, have a brain.

And you accuse me of strawmanning...

You're calling this simple and obvious, but it's not -- it's part of the received wisdom of long term D&D players coupled with your own long experience with the game (and doing this kind of thing). Look at it with fresh eyes -- would a brand new player with no help and no experience with RPGs understand that all you have to do to have food and water matter to your 8th level party is ban a background and delete a number of spells?

 

[Fanaelialae]

Personally, I think the back and forth regarding who is or isn't making a straw man makes all participants look the lessor, and would advise dropping it, but that's just one opinion.

I think there's a heavy dose of 'I don't like everything about this thing, but I've seen a lot of complaints about it that seem unfair.' Similar for me are the latest Star Wars movies or Star Trek shows and some of my favorite webcomics that honestly were better some time in the past -- I'll happily discuss how I'd rather things have gone with one or the other, but it doesn't take all that much disparagement for my mind to go to 'ah, we have a hate-watcher here.'
5e has some problems. Good DMing advice and facilitating specific gameplay styles especially. However, once the bile starts dripping, I think it's pretty natural for the wagons to start circling.

Yeah, you're right.

FWIW, I wasn't defending 5e. I think it stands on its own merits (or lack).

I just found the idea that 5e doesn't have something it obviously does so absurd that I let myself get carried away by the argument. Thanks for pulling me back from the edge, so to speak.

 

[Mort]

You're calling this simple and obvious, but it's not -- it's part of the received wisdom of long term D&D players coupled with your own long experience with the game (and doing this kind of thing). Look at it with fresh eyes -- would a brand new player with no help and no experience with RPGs understand that all you have to do to have food and water matter to your 8th level party is ban a background and delete a number of spells?

This is a true criticism of 5e and applies to Social Interaction and even (though much less so) to the combat pillar.

The 5e DMG is really poorly indexed and organized. To the point of, if you don't know what you're looking for (and what you're looking for isn't a magic item) you're going to have a tough time finding it.

The basic "exploration pillar" explanation seems less than a page long (I'm estimating because I'm looking at it in DnD beyond and not the actual book right now) and has no example play loop. While the DMG has multiple chapters that are about exploration, it doesn't fit them together and doesn't properly tell a new GM how to integrate them into his game. It certainly doesn't tell a new GM the various ways to conduct exploration and that if he wants to do a "survival heavy" game what needs to be emphasized and what needs to be deemphasized/eliminated.

So in that sense, I think you are correct. A new GM might well have serious problems (and frankly an experienced 2e, 3e DM might also have issues because rather than trying to decipher the DMG he will bring his 2e/3e experience in which can lead to square peg/round hole problems) - which could be solved with significantly better organization, a good play loop example etc.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Here is the beginning of my promised post. I'm having less time than I expected to write out how I would approach it, but I thought I would at least start. More to come.

The party finds a journal on the body of a slain adventurer. In the journal are the usual miscellaneous things, but also notes on some sort of tower, building, fortification- not sure. Between the pages are a couple of foolscap sheets that are a rubbing of a stela somewhere. Notes on translations of an old Elvish script that discuss astrological effects on moon light. The party spends a little time and discovers that the former owner pieced together some clues on a lost outpost and has an idea where it might be.

“Sorry you’re dead, buddy. But we’ll continue your work.”

The party is a fairly basic one, with a fighter, wizard, cleric, thief err rogue, and a ranger all at 6th level. They have a strong front line, scouting / flanking ability, and magical support. After spending some coin and referencing some larger scale maps, they figure out that there are two paths they can take. The perhaps safer one is a three week journey by sea from Grossburg to Vurzendorf, home base to a number of traders that trap beasts for their hide and others that grow and harvest spices that proliferate in the area. There is also an old road that leads from the outpost to a large ruin that was discovered by the first explorers here. While the ruin seems to have a very different culture to what is expressed in the journal, the road could make for some easier travel part of the way. Also, there would be a chance for resupply in Vurzendorf. If the party forgets to pick up something in Grossburg they have a second chance there. It would take six weeks of time to get from Vurzendorf to the area of the site.

The second option is a little quicker. As you would have to sail past the site to get to Vurzendorf, you could instead stop roughly at the point closest to it on the shore. This would be only a two week trip by sea, and four week trek through deep forest. It should be 2-3 weeks shorter travel time, although they won’t have access to the port of Vurzendorf and any goods or information that might be there. The ship certainly isn’t going to wait for them, as it would be a couple of months at best at anchor.

Another factor is that after the wizard reads through the journal and associated notes, assisted with a comprehend languages, she states that there is a door that opens only by the light of the Harvest Moon. When the party gets ready to go, that is about ten weeks away. Given the choice of a potentially easier nine week trip or a hard six week trip, the party chooses the six week long route as it gives them a broader window of time. If they are a couple weeks early that gives them more time to scout the area.

They’re off!

Current assumptions:
The cleric prepares detect poison and disease, purify food and drink, lesser restoration, protection from poison, create food and water, water walk. This takes about half his capacity.

The wizard prepares burning hands, comprehend languages, longstrider, misty step, fly, tiny hut, water breathing. This takes about half her capacity.

The ranger’s favored terrains are forest and wetlands, which coincidentally are the only terrains the party expects to travel through. Hurray!

The fighter is wearing his heavy armor while travelling.

The rogue is actually a thief! Notably, they are rather good at climbing.