D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Chaosmancer]

Well, I feel I stepped in pretty hard, so I'll take it from here. I do enjoy drawing lines... Just to be clear, which 'he' am I committing myself to a forum deathmatch with?

LOL, I don't think forum deathmatches would be conducive to a better discussion, but the list from TheSword was this post back here on page 53

D&D General - Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

I see playing a D&D character in a similar light as playing in a Roguelike I would rather chew glass.

www.enworld.org

And his explanation was... here 2 pages later

D&D General - Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

I think the #1 change I would do with stock 5e is eliminate ritual casting, with a quick #2 being adjusting tiny hut back to a 1e-adjacent effect. I don't have enough experience with how the 5e travel rules intersect with the ranger and the druid to usefully comment on specifics.

www.enworld.org

I'm providing these just for context, because I can sort of see the point. If the game is divided into three parts, and every aspect of the game must fall into one of the three, then these aren't really combat, so they are either social or exploration. But I also think that that view point muddies the waters like you said, because it difficult to talk about exploration challenges when you could say that languages and descriptions of objects count as exploration.

For example, like Max said a little earlier, puzzles and mysteries are not something I always think of as an exploration challenge. Trying to figure out who is plotting against the Princess might be a puzzle, and the description of a pin or symbol might be a key piece, but I wouldn't place that as an exploration element.

 

[Imaro]

There is your FULL quote. Where in there is exploration an actual challenge? At most, it's a drain on resources. That's it.

So, in your words, you said that exploration is not terribly challenging. So, what am I misunderstanding here?

I listed out things exploration could be, it's multifaceted and different things depending on party level, DM usage, etc... an inconvenience can be a large one or a small one... correct? A drain on resources could be major or minor... in other words you are ascribing a value to words that don't intrinsically have one. Nowhere do I say it must be trivial, that's your view and argument...

 

[Imaro]

And that's where the whole issue with the wandering child comes in. And, the flooded bridge... and the ...

Every example that gets brought up is the DM intentionally attempting to make the situation worse for the player. But, apparently, that's okay, because that's just part of play.

And again I'm confused... when I create a combat encounter for the PC's... am I not intentionally making the situation worse? If I choose to place a trap in a dungeon they will explore...am I not intentionally making things worse for the PC's? When I decide the NPC King needs to be convinced to aid the PC's...am I not intentionally making things worse for the PC's? This is why I find this line of reasoning silly, a big chunk of the DM's responsibility is to create challenges for the PC's by creating and adding complications... and yet for some reason they shouldn't in a specific pillar of the game. Why? The only answer I've been able to infer from you and others is... because it weakens the argument you are making about the exploration pillar. SO please explain...

 

[Hussar]

Thing is, it's not all about challenges.

A lot of the game involves non-challenging moments and activities - examples: talking to shopkeepers, travelling through previously-unseen parts of a safe realm, banter and discussion with other PCs, etc. - yet these still nicely fall under the pillars as currently defined (in order: social, exploration, and social).

To say something's not in a pillar unless it's presenting a capital-c Challenge seems...odd, somehow. And I wonder if that's causing some of the disconnect here: you (and maybe a few others) are trying to tie everything to challenges, where I (and, I think, some others) are not.

And this is relevant, in that the non-challenging portion of Exploration pillar activities will be higher than in the other two. Combat, by comparison, will have a very low non-challenge portion; with Social somewhere in between and more highly variable by table.

Y'know, I'm actually trying to think of the last time the players talked to a shopkeeper, in game, that wasn't related to what the players were doing. IOW, talking to the shopkeeper, for other reasons than the NPC in question had some information about the adventure. I'm really drawing a blank here. It's been a LOT of years, either as a DM or a player. I remember, vaguely, a DM back in early 3e days that did this kind of thing where he wanted you to actually RP out every single interaction with an NPC. But, it's been twenty years or so since I've seen it.

So, as far as I'm concerned, no, Social interactions are almost never not-challenges. They are part and parcel of the adventure and, we haven't played out mundane shopping in I don't know how long. Again, the whole advice about skipping the town guards wasn't a surprise to me. It was how I had been playing for years before 4e came out.

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But, the fact that you call it cheating to simply assume the group has reasonable gear is pretty telling really. Add to that your reaction to Take 20 and yeah, we are not going to find a common ground here.

 

[Hussar]

And again I'm confused... when I create a combat encounter for the PC's... am I not intentionally making the situation worse? If I choose to place a trap in a dungeon they will explore...am I not intentionally making things worse for the PC's? When I decide the NPC King needs to be convinced to aid the PC's...am I not intentionally making things worse for the PC's? This is why I find this line of reasoning silly, a big chunk of the DM's responsibility is to create challenges for the PC's by creating and adding complications... and yet for some reason they shouldn't in a specific pillar of the game. Why? The only answer I've been able to infer from you and others is... because it weakens the argument you are making about the exploration pillar. SO please explain...

No.

I tried to explain twice. Other people have also explained. You do not get it, and I am not qualified to clear it up for you.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Here is what you said, repeated verbatim through the wonders of cut-and-paste:

Finding a new vista ... may be part and parcel of exploration, but [isn't] part of the exploration pillar.

You literally, and in not many more words, are saying here that exploration isn't part of exploration!

In this case the direct analogy would be to say your house (the game) is comprised of three pillars, the sum total of which is your house (the game). Obviously, to make it a functional house those pillars would be both a) interconnected and b) hollow on the inside, with all the living space being inthe hollow areas.

Sometimes it's not specific to any one pillar; but it quite often can be and when it is, it's most often tied to the info-gathering and learning aspects of exploration.

The DM describing a new area for the first time: exploration all the way. The PCs/players are learning something new about the world.
The DM describing the same area for the third time to the same PCs: not exploration. They're not learning anything new.

Oh, yes, finding a new vista in the sense that the GM tells you another cool description isn't the exploration pillar -- you haven't done anything. Just taking a trail and the GM saying, "oh, hey, you guys go past Beautiful View Point on this trail, let me describe the vista," doesn't require anything to be resolved. It's just a vista.

Description isn't the pillar. Else combat would be, "Ok, Bob, Monster A... <clatters> inflicts 20 fire damage. What do you do?" Bob, asks, "Um, how, what happened? What does it look like?" GM, "This is combat, Bob, not Exploration!" No, this is silly, description is part and parcel of combat as well -- Bob needs to know if that was some fire breath, if the monster is made of fire, if they used a spell, etc, etc. Same with social -- you have to describe things. So, then, just description cannot be enough to support a pillar of play -- it's necessary but not sufficient.

 

[Imaro]

No.

I tried to explain twice. Other people have also explained. You do not get it, and I am not qualified to clear it up for you.

Can you point me to the posts where you actually explained why this is different?

 

[Asisreo]

There is certainly a spectrum, but many times I have heard or seen people who are ambushed with no warning because "you didn't check the ceiling". Entire fields of stalactites have been missed by a party because they never said they were looking up, even though your vision isn't a flat field.

And, other than an invisible monster in an immaculately clean hallway, there isn't any monster I can think of that would at least get a perception check if it was following the party. Which again, I think you are in agreement with, but we have to acknowledge the spectrum, and that isn't always the case.

In fact, the only monsters I can think of in 5e that you could argue don't get perception to spot them are the "Indistinguishable" monsters like animated armor and ropers. But, I would caution using such monsters very very sparingly in this manner. Because a monster you had no way of detecting doesn't always increase tension, many times it increases frustration, because the player's had no chance to do anything except get caught off-guard.

Its just a case of bad DMing, then. Really, there's already a bit of guidance warning people about how encounters are not designed to be actively hostile to players. Past that guidance, the DM can do whatever they want in terms of how they present challenges and if they're bad at their job, you should really just leave.

Its like the guidance for encounter design. The DM can put any monster in the game against any level player, but if the DM puts an ultra-aggressive Ancient Red Dragon against a level 1 party, there's something clearly hostile going on.

The DM is meant to be fair. I don't think discussing the cases where the DM is intentionally unfair really proves or disproves whether exploration is bad because a poor DM makes a game bad no matter how granular the system?

Need proof? If you've ever been in combat with a poor DM and they suddenly come up with weird reasons why your features and spells don't work, that's poor DMing despite the rules. And technically, they can still be within the rules because they're the arbiters of the rules and can interpret even the most concrete rules in the most hostile way.

Hard rules for exploration doesn't help a hostile DM and strict rules for exploration will likely make the situation worse.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Oh, yes, finding a new vista in the sense that the GM tells you another cool description isn't the exploration pillar -- you haven't done anything. Just taking a trail and the GM saying, "oh, hey, you guys go past Beautiful View Point on this trail, let me describe the vista," doesn't require anything to be resolved. It's just a vista.

Description isn't the pillar. Else combat would be, "Ok, Bob, Monster A... <clatters> inflicts 20 fire damage. What do you do?" Bob, asks, "Um, how, what happened? What does it look like?" GM, "This is combat, Bob, not Exploration!" No, this is silly, description is part and parcel of combat as well -- Bob needs to know if that was some fire breath, if the monster is made of fire, if they used a spell, etc, etc. Same with social -- you have to describe things. So, then, just description cannot be enough to support a pillar of play -- it's necessary but not sufficient.

Even description has the potential to include a check. "oh, hey, you guys go past Beautiful View Point on this trail, let me describe the vista, and give me a Perception check". The check is to determine whether they notice sunlight glinting off the ancient metal plinth that stands in the forest below.

Other times the description includes details that may be relevant. "oh, hey, you guys go past Beautiful View Point on this trail, let me describe the vista, which includes withered looking trees below". The trees are withered due to a foul emanation from the metal plinth, which they are likely to discover if they decide to leave the path and investigate why the trees are withered.

I mean, sure, if the description is pure fluff, with no purpose in the game whatsoever beyond perhaps establishing mood, then that's not exploration. Personally speaking, I use description with a purpose far more often than description without purpose. Do the players always discover the purpose? No. Which is fine, else there would be no challenge to the discovery.

 

[Lyxen]

It's the "automatic" part that bothers me, as so many things aren't automatic at all.

Even if things are not automatic in the real world (but are they really not automatic ?), it does not mean that they need to be manual in their resolution, because it's only a game. I suspect (seeing as you employ the world "realism" below), that this is a fundamental difference in our approaches.

Realism, mostly.

My take is that D&D certainly does not aim at realism. It's intent is at best simulationist, but with a simulation of the high fantasy genre, where it can be as narrativist as really simulationist. It's a matter of taste.

Using the "search the room" example, if I hide somethine really well in a room - say, in a very-hard-to-detect secret compartment in the floor - and I send 100 different people (or groups) in to search for it, even if they have all day the odds of all 100 groups coming out having found it are negligible. Ideally, if my hiding job is good enough none of them find it; but it's inevitable some will just by fluke and some others will by either skill or deduction or whatever.

But this is not the principle of Take 20. The principle is that the group dismantles the room and takes as much time as needed to find whatever can be found with their skill.

If you do the exercise above in limited time, I agree that luck is important (what are you searching first ?), but the principle of Take 20 is different, you have given all you can, so narratively it makes sense to skip to the conclusion.

Again, a matter of taste, I understand your realism perspective but mine is different in a game which is about storytelling (mine is, at least).

I'm not after story-driven, though, in that sense; nor am I all that concerned about speeding up play by skipping over details (some here seem to want to sacrifice half the game on the altar of speed). I'd rather see the story emerge from the detailed run of play.

If this is what your table is looking for, it's perfect, it's just that there are so many ways to play the game.

Problem is, this allows players to meta-game their characters into always just happening to have exactly what they need when they need it; which means that anyone who bothers to put the forethought into equipping their character properly ahead of time is wasting their time, and also means some challenges might be easier to overcome than they should be - or even outright negated.

If some players indeed take the time to fill in their character sheet, I understand them feeling a bit cheated if this rule is used. But then, it's a question of preference at the table. If everyone prefers a more inventive game (this is not to say superior) than one rewarding preparedness (which is also a quality), it will not be a problem and even analytic people will enjoy the end result, I think.

Never mind that even mundane gear costs money, and particularly at low levels not every character can afford a complete kit.

This is why for me exploration with that level of detail is reserved to the very low levels, in which case it works OK.

Yes it's about role-playing - we agree there! But sometimes that role-playing is going to include "Damn, I forgot to bring that." or "Damn, I wanted to pick one of those up last time in town but couldn't afford it!"

And I'm fine with that, but it's a question of context. This is funny when you're looking for a string to hook the kobold trap, but when assaulting the astral fortress of the Lich Queen, it's not going to hand on a piece of string.

I mean, it could in a sense, but players will have myriad of other solutions at that point in their career.