M_Natas
Hero
That is true.
What is exploration?
The Oxford dictionary says it is "the action of investigating (exploring) an unfamiliar area".
So, if we explore, we are going into an area we are not familiar with.
In D&D that could be a Dungeon, a City, the Wilderness, a different plane of existence or other places. It can be a whole planet, continent, solar system or a small forest or the cellar of a tavern.
If we are familiar with the area, it is not exploration.
What is the goal of exploration and the difference to travel?
In general, the goal of exploration it is to find something we are not familiar with.
Travel is usually the movement between two points trough an area.
We want to go from Town A to City B and are using Road C.
Travel can be exploration when B and/or C are unknown. When we need to find C in order to get to B for example.
So some travel can be exploration (we are looking for a way to get to City B), but not all Travel is exploration (we take the known route C to get to City B) and not all exploration is travel (exploring Dungeon D is not traveling). There is a Venn-Diagram between Travel and Exploration with an Overlap.
And that Overlap of Travel and Exploration is at the specific scenario, where the group is searching for point B and have to go trough Area C. So Area C is the obstacle to reach point B.
So travel becomes exploration, when Area C becomes an obstacle in reaching point B.
Exploration is not Travel, when there is no Area C. They explore then unfamiliar area B. While in Travelexploration, Area C is an obstacle, in Non-Travel-Exploration investigating the Area is the goal.
For example, finding a route from Hometown to Interest-Town trough the Dangerforest is Travel-Exploration.
Just Exploring the Dungeon of Danger is Non-Travel-Exploration.
In Old-School-D&D Travel- and Non-Travel-Exploration were usually combined.
First you had to find (explore) the way to the dungeon and then you would delve into (explore) the Dungeon.
So, Travel becomes exploration, when you need to find the destination, while Travel is not exploration, when you already know where the destination is and how to get there.
So the defining moment of Exploration is the unfamiliarity- the uncertainty of "can I find what I'm looking for?". Without that, it is not Exploration.
What is good exploration?
So now that we have a grasp on what exploration actually is, we can look at what is needed for exploration to be fun in a game and why D&D 5e regularly fails at it and what we can do to fix that.
What are the elements needed for a satisfactory exploration experience?
1. A goal.
2. Uncertainty in finding that goal.
3. Being able to influence the uncertainty.
That it's actually it. Lesson closed
.Okay, deep dive.
1. Goal
I think a goal is pretty self explanatory. You need a reason to go exploring in the first case.
That can be totally intrinsic and general like "I just wanna find cool locations in that area" or "I need things for my survival like Food water and shelter" to something very specific like "I want to find the ruins of CoolAncientTown" or "I'm looking for the leaf of the Bloodtree to create a potion to Cure the curse of the Blood pidgeons".
So as a DM you need set up hooks for the players, so that they have a reason to go exploring in the first place.
And the players would need to accept on of those plot hooks.
Aimlessly wandering trough the Wilderness will usually not create a satysfying game experience (that's one of the reasons a lot of Open-World-Games without a story fail to engage the player base in the long run). Like, the Novelity of finding nice planets in No Mans Sky or Starfield get boring pretty quickly, while exploring Skyrim or Fallout is usually fun, because Skyrim uses a Goal-Driven Exploration approach.
The better the goals, the better the exploration experience.
And I would say, even beginner DMs don't have a problem of presenting exploration goals for the party in D&D.
2. Uncertainty in finding the goal.
That is the big culprit No. 1 for unsatisfactory D&D 5e exploration game play, I think.
Uncertainty.
People play a game to experience a challenge. How hard that challenge needs to be must be decided on a player by player and group by group base, but there needs to be a challenging element.
Because nothing becomes faster boring than "No matter what I do, I will reach that goal".
There needs to be one or more failure states.
D&D 5e delivers only one easy to implement out of the box failure state: The Total Party Kill.
Everything else is up for the DM to plan out without a lotmof goose guidance in the books. And that is actually a problem.
It is even hard to implement temporary failure states in D&D because a long rest will reset the whole party to 100% ressources.
So, what are permanent or temporary failure states in general for any exploration?
- Definitly not finding/getting the Goal.
- Just not finding it (probably the most boring one)
- dying before reaching it
- somebody else snaps it up, before you reach it.
- the time runs out and the goal gets unreachable
- Running out of ressources / being forced to turn around
- the party runs out of Food/Water
- the party runs out of HP / Spellslots
- the party runs out of other necessary ressources that are needed (radiation pills to protect from radiation)
- Illness / Injury
- Getting Lost / Stuck
- Finding an obstacle that the group can't overcome (yet)
This is not an exhaustive list butnI think I covered the most common failure states. And I think we already can see the problems:
Except for Dying, in D&D 5e there are no real mechanical failure states for exploration.
A player group will not run out of Good/Water because even if the party tracks that stuff, by the rules even without magic finding that stuff is trivial. And with magic it is even easier than trivial.
Also a party, unless TPKed, will never run out of HP and Spell Slots because of the sucky long rest rules.
Lingering Injuries or Illness can usually be cured with on spell (which we have in abundance). Which makes getting lost meaningless, because when you have infinite ressources, getting lost means you just need some more time.
So in 5e the burden of creating failure states for Exploring are solely on the shoulders of the DM.
The DM needs to implement like a time restraint (a common proposed solution for the 5-Minute-Work-Day in general), that can be fix (like the Bloodtree will loose all its leafs in 4 days) or dynamic (another adventuring party that also wants to steal the treasure). And that's where my creativity comes out blank, because without changing the 5e rules outside of a time restraint and a TPK, I don't see any possible failure state for a 5e Party. Without a time restraint, getting lost is meaningless, because they just will get back on track and time doesn't matter and we already established, thatba 5e Party will never run out of ressources (outside of Level 1 to 3 maybe).
Because without ressource attrition, we don't have any real failure state for exploration outside of a TPK. And if we see Time as a ressource, it all makes sense. To implement challenge, uncertainty into Exploration, we need to implement a form of ressource attrition.
Something needs to be limited in order to challenge the party. That can be time, food, water, spells, anything you can think of that the party can run out of so that they have to abort/fail the mission, even if it is only temporary.
As a DM you need to be aware if that and the only thing that a DM can implement without changing the rules are usually time restraints:
- the City will disappear after midnight
- the Goblins will sacrifice the hostages tomorrow
- the opposing adventure party will plunder the lost temple of coin in 1d4+1 days.
Everything else I can think of would need house rules/setting specific rules or a big fight with most players:
- different Resting Rules, like you need to long rest in town or can't rest here to stop the infinite ressources a 5e Party has, when they don't have a Time limit.
- a special ressource like radiation pills so the magical radiation in that area will not kill you
- enforcing encumbrance and tracking of food and water
When you have such homebrew rules, now it actually matters when you get lost, habe to go around a rushing river orwhen you have a fight and get wounded. Without such rules and restraints, getting lost or batteling a random encounter becomes meaningless.
Without such restraints, it is not a game anymore, but just the DM reading out to you all the nice "discoveries" you will make.
So you need to implement restraints. You need to implement uncertainty into the game because 5e doesn't do that.
3. Being able to influence the uncertainty.
Thus is less of a 5e problem and more of a DM problem.
So, let's say we homebrewd the f out of 5e or use another system, where there are restraints on ressources and Exploration can be done meaningful and there is actual uncertainty in the outcome of exploration it still can be a bad game experience.
When does that happen? When the players can't make meaningful decisions.
5E gives actually the tools to influence the outcome of exploration, or better how fast you can explore (because with 5es unlimited ressource, you have no problem finding what you are looking for). Survival and Nature Skill, spells, racial and class abilities, feats, equipment (somewhat) ...
So the players can influence on the character creation level how good their characters are at exploring. Which is good, because that should matter. If I build a ranger, I want to be good at exploring the Wilderness and that should be rewarded in Wilderness situations.
But the players need also to be able to influence the uncertainty while playing the game and not only trough character creation.
And that is solely on the shoulders of the DM.
Because he needs to give the players enough information so that they can make informed decisions while exploring.
And that is true foe dungeons, Wilderness or a city.
If the players are in a dungeon junction with a corridor going to the left and one to the right and there is no hints what there could be at the end of those corridors, the decision to going left or right becomes random. Without Information, such a junction is a senseless decision point. A DM needs to give the players somethings. Spiderwebs to the right, the sound of drums to the left. Now the players can make a more informed decision.
The information doesn't need to be complete. But it shouldn't be 0. And that is something the DM needs to do. Information Management, so the players can make informed decisions and are not forced to decide randomly.
Sadly, the DMG and a lot of published adventures are also not very good at this information management, but it is a necessary skill a DM needs to have in order to run meaningful exploration.
