D&D 5E [+]Exploration Falls Short For Many Groups, Let’s Talk About It

[Bedrockgames]

Okay so if you love exploration in 5e and think the idea of adding more meat to it is silly, that’s valid, but it ain’t what we are here for.

I want to talk about exploration as a pillar of the game, what that means, how it falls short for each of us, how it can be expanded on while staying within 5e design aesthetics, and what we hope to see in revised core books.

1. Exploration isthe part of the game where you are being physically challenged, and challenged in terms of problem solving and related stuff, that isn’t combat. It includes travel and wilderness survival, but it is also a lot more than that.
   1. I think it’s important to separate action-by-action exploration challenges like finding and disabling traps or parkouring around some temple ruins to solve a 3d puzzle, from wilderness survival and travel, because I think they have different needs
   2. It’s also import IMO to note that all of point 1 is what the designers meant early on when talking about 3 pillars, and this is part of why these discussions often end with ppl talking past eachother.
   3. I propose Survival and Exploration for the purposes on this discussion.
2. Exploration fails (for me)to lead to interesting challenges IME because there just aren’t that many things for the PCs to leverage to create chaos, like there is with NPCs, and D&D style Travel and survival have always been very boring to me. A game that gets Survival in travel right, for me, is The One Ring. Rest structures don’t help, with it feeling like harsh adverserialism to make up new rules like having to make checks to be able to get good rest, and ending journeys with hit dice and other resources spent.
   1. Exploration (parkour and traps and investigation) fall short less for me, but I do find that in some campaigns I’d like to have more structure (although I usually prefer just action resolution and the DM and Player conversation as what drives the action)
3. Exploration could be very interesting and engaging in more cases. For survival, it could be done with better travel rules that cause you to use resources (more later) and end the journey with those resources spent, making resting in the wild/on the road less restorative than resting in comfort and safety, and handing narrative reins to the players at intervals amidst the journey or other survival challenge. For Parkour and Traps, I think that something like a skill challenge but with a success ladder does the trick.
4. Exploration in the revised core has me very curious to see what they do. I think Bastions give a sort of “vibe” they might be aiming for, but I think they are very aware of how lacking many groups find exploration in 5e. I think that the UA thing of giving skills a little more specificity might help (if they keep it lite), I think we will see travel rules that speak to what they’ve learned but that aren’t going to be ambitious, and I think we might see some optional rules out front and center and expanded on, along the lines of a normal short rest on the road gets you less than the default, along with benefits to sleeping in safe places, or the Ranger making a well hidden and cozy bivouac to rest in, or spending healing resources at the end of a rest (meaning they aren’t regained by that rest), stuff like that.

So, what do you think? Do you have wildly different answers from me?

I can't really comment on 5E specifically but I generally like fairly light and flexible methods and procedures for managing stuff like travel and exploration. I just wanted to say though, I played in a game of the The One Ring and found the travel rules very effective. I agree it is worth people checking out. I was a player so I can't say what it looks like on the GM side though

 

[Minigiant]

Published adventures are a good place to find interesting encounters. Not that they are all interesting by any means, but they usually include far more than the adventure actually needs, so steeling some encounters doesn't preclude running the adventure. I tend to mix in encounters from several published adventures amongst my own. Which give far more encounters than are actually needed, but unused ones can be banked for another occasion.

• 10 Gnolls

is not an interesting encounter, but

• 10 Gnolls, escorting a wealthy merchant and his daughter (it's unclear if they are prisoners or not) encamped in a narrow rocky gully.

is.

But isn't that the crux of the issue.

Exploration mechanics, advice, and examples are split up into dozens of adventures and not in the corebooks.

So you have to buy a ton of adventures or run dozens of sessions to learn to do exploration well.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But isn't that the crux of the issue.

Exploration mechanics, advice, and examples are split up into dozens of adventures and not in the corebooks.

So you have to buy a ton of adventures or run dozens of sessions to learn to do exploration well.

You certainly don't need to buy "dozens" of adventures, and there isn't any need for special mechanics, but there is no way to avoid that the more encounters you have in the bank the better the experience will be, and since everyone's creativity is finite, that's going to mean spending some money.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is exactly right IMO. Talking about attrition/survival mechanics, foraging etc, really misses the point of how D&D works, is designed to work.

It's amazing to me how few good wilderness exploration adventures there are for D&D, how few examples there are to call on. When I want examples of it done well I tend to reach back to old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks like Forest of Doom, Shamutanti Hills, Scorpion Swamp. Here the wilderness is treated exactly like a dungeon. 6-8 encounters in that Adventuring Day is not implausible! Mind you when I run 5e I always make Long Rests several days to a week, so that PCs are not healing up overnight. And having seen how OP Leomund's Tiny Hut is, I would not allow it in this kind of campaign anymore. Really though LTH could mess up dungeon exploration pacing nearly as badly.

When you say, "miss how D&D works", are you specifically speaking of the current edition of the game as officially expressed by Wizards of the Coast? Because if you aren't I can't agree. Both previous editions (I'm thinking of hexcrawl rules here) and 3pp versions of 5e (Level Up is a good example) spend time and effort on exactly those concerns. If WotC 5e doesn't care about them, that's not going to placate those who do.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think the real question is, how can this stuff be made interesting? Especially the section you label "routine". My players have enough routine in their real lives, and play D&D to get away from it. What they are looking for is action, adventure, and really wild things.

Does everyone in your group, yourself included, want to get to the action? If so, perhaps you should just narrate time passing with the occasional description of spectacle and dispense with exploration altogether. I don't believe, however, that we should assume everyone feels that way and so validate WotC's choice not to put serious effort into one of the parts of the game they themselves say is just as important as combat.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Many DMs and groups don't.

They only know exploration as the routines and random encounters as that is the only stuff in the core books.

Everything else is typically only found in adventures and tailor specifically for the adventure's themes.

Another reason why Level Up does a much better job. All those aspects are in the core books.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

As far as ideas go? No. I honestly don’t. It’s something I really struggle with. To the point where I largely give up on exploration after a certain number of levels. It’s just too much work with too little reward.

My honest opinion is that most of the utility spells should simply give skill check bonuses and that’s all. No more pocket dimension camping. No more distance traveling (at least 5e did go some ways to remove this). Most of the information gathering spells need to be either ejected or reworked.

Because no, a rogue’s 20 Stealth is not the same as an Arcane Eye. That stealth check only applies to that one group of observers. The rogue is going to have to make multiple checks. And deal with the consequences of failure.

Arcane Eye never fails.

At a certain point, neither does the rogue, but i get your point. I think that exactly is why reliable talent dropped to level 7 in UA6.

But ejecting all the utility spells rather than doing the work for DMs and players to make exploration different but just as engaging at higher levels, is a big nonstarter for me. I'm not ejecting magnificent mansion because if I don't I have to challenge the group differently because getting attacked while resting is basically impossible.

Maybe it isn't impossible and there are things that live between dimensions that can sometimes get into a pocket dimension. Maybe the big spells have dangers and opportunities built in, that tie in with the general rules for exploration, laid out in the chapter on exploration in the PHB. Tasha’s also has expanded supernatureal terrain, and Bigby’s has places made to challenge higher level parties.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

.

 

[Minigiant]

Another reason why Level Up does a much better job. All those aspects are in the core books.

Level up doesn't have to cater to the whole community.

 

[overgeeked]

The essential D&D exploration is the dungeon crawl.

So, it involves:

Imminent Danger. Around the next corner could be your demise. You are not safe. For the wilderness, this means this is no camping trip.

Darkness. You don't know how the path is going to go. You don't know how the road is going to twist. You have to make active decisions at junctures in the path.

Traps. Broad enough to include "wilderness hazards" like wildfires or whatever, but broadly speaking: things could change suddenly, and that change could hurt you (the role of the ranger or druid is like the role of the rogue - protect the party from traps).

Monsters. The flavor of monsters changes depending upon terrain, but D&D is a world full of monsters, where wicked things lurk in every crack and crevice and shadow in this land. This is no walk in the woods, either.

Barriers. In a dungeon, this is locked doors. In the wilderness, this is impassible rivers, sheer cliffs, supernatural terrain. (Again, the druid/ranger parallels the rogue - get us through barriers)

Treasure. In a dungeon, there are rewards to seek - coin and magic and MacGuffins. In the wilderness, there is also coin and magic to seek.

Entrances/Exits, and Jacquaysing. A dungeon has many paths into it and through it. The wilderness does, too. Civilizations can be seen as entrances and exits, and the roads through the wilderness, like dungeon corridors, link sites of interest.

Attrition. A dungeon will take your HP. The wilderness will take your HD. They'll both take your spell slots.

This leads us to a few principles:

1. Exploration is not routine. In D&D, we don't worry about the rules if there's no threat of death. If there is a safe path between Point A and Point B, there's no exploration. It's explored. The wilderness we explore should be deadly. That's where we use monsters and traps and barriers. You can rest, but resting is risky, and interruptions can happen - spells like rope trick are mostly for the avoidance of that threat. Note that the threat isn't really starvation or dehydration or infection or any of the things that normally kill people in the wilderness. The threat is climactic, cinematic, fantastic. We don't worry about boiling our water to avoid giardia, we worry about the kraken in the lake.
2. Exploration is not direct. In D&D, we don't worry about the rules if we know how to get from A to B. Travel involves making decisions - do we go over the mountains or under them? Do we go left or right at the fork? If we have a good map, we don't need these rules (this is the realm of montage and skill challenges, where the outcome is already pretty clear and the main questions are about what getting there looks like). This is important both to retain meaningful player decision-making (the best way to engage!) and to keep discovery and uncertainty in play. You don't know when you'll stumble on a magical lake or a haunted ruin or whatever.
3. Exploration is still about finding something in the wilderness. It's not just a trip from Point A to Point B. Point B is just another town, really, and there may be relatively safe roads between them (unless they are cut off from each other points-of-light style). We dive into the wilderness - this place of death and danger - to find something within. A site of magic. A place of hidden treasure. A geographical McGuffin (petroglyphs! a circle of standing stones!).
4. There's magic in the wilds. Like, supernatural geography. Fey creatures. Weak points between worlds. Sentient storms. Just as a dungeon is a place of contrivance and machination, so is the wilderness.
5. Class Matters. The "wilderness classes" (barbarian, ranger, druid) should feature prominently in the clearing of barriers, the disabling of traps, the clearing of the fog of war, etc. You rely on skill checks and spells when you can't rely on those classes. Those classes should have features that directly address the difficulties of the wilderness just as the rogue has features related to disabling traps, stealth, and perception.
6. Exploration features all the other modes of play, too. You fight things, you interact with things, other creatures are part of this story. This isn't just the party by itself.

So how do we use this practically?

When you want to add a dose of Exploration to your games, remember that you are always Adding a Dungeon. The wilderness might be a bit more zoomed-out (hours or days instead of 10-minute rounds), but the mindset is the same. Don't use exploration as like a default for moving between Point A and Point B and roll for thunderstorms or whatever. Assume the party can move from A to B. Instead, use it as a challenge with a goal. It's something they can fail at, that they need to engage with and unknot. It's magical, it's deadly, it's interesting to visit at a fairly granular level. Maybe there's something in the wilderness that they need to find. The hostile nature of the place means that even our druid can't stay out there forever (thieves don't live in the dungeon!). This does mean that the place isn't somewhere you want the party to be able to safely and easily rest. It's dangerous. By definition, not a place you can let your guard down.

And then you make a dungeon. Hallways become paths. Rooms become villages or castles or sites of interest. Monsters live here. Potential allies do, too. There's treasure to be found. There may be a Big Bad here somewhere.

Yep. That's exactly how old-school exploration works. And it's fantastic. But it's also a lot of resource management and bookkeeping. And the vast majority of players now refuse to have anything to do with resource management or that level of bookkeeping. They want more cinematic exploration. Which is where things like dramatic tests and skill challenges come in.

Which is part of why a mechanic like a skill challenge kind of fails to get at the interesting thing to me. The decisions need to be bigger and more impactful than "what skill do I use?" For exploration to matter, it has to be worth the details.

Dramatic tests and skill challenges are only the framework, not the details. The referee needs to provide the details. If you remove the details and only care about the skill roll, you're doing it wrong. As you say, for exploration to matter, it has to be worth the details. Trouble is, the vast majority of modern D&D players don't want the level of detail required for old-school exploration. Hell, most groups dumped encumbrance back in the '80s. Talk about removing the details.