innerdude
Legend
Exploration is such a weird, interesting thing for me, because I've always LOVED the sense of exploration in every aspect of gaming.
Take two recent video game examples:
I've been playing through the nearly-25-year-old game, Crusader: No Remorse which I picked up on GOG.com a while ago. I played it waaaaay back in the day when it first game out, and from the first time I played it, THE MOST ENGAGING THING about the whole experience was the sense of exploration. How did I get from A to B? Where did that blind hallway actually go? The whole idea was just to poke into every corner I could, because . . . it made me happy.
Reading through some GameFAQs walkthroughs, several of the guides pointed out that you can totally "shortcut" through the levels to get to the end faster. Which is the exact OPPOSITE of the type of experience I was wanting to have with the game.
I'm also a big fan of the Trine game series (Trine 1 and 2). A few days ago I was playing while two of my daughters watched and hung out with me, and there were several moments where they were saying, "Dad, you don't HAVE to get every single flask of XP in the game!" To which I immediately replied, "Yes, I do!" I would spend 15-20 minutes trying to figure out how to capture one small, relatively insignificant item in the game, but just HAD to prove to myself that I could do it.
So I am completely drawn in by the concept of exploration in pen-and-paper RPGs as well.
I think for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], though, the draw isn't to just "see what's around the next corner." There's exploration-for-exploration's sake, and there's exploration-for-the-sake-of-revealing-character-driven-stakes.
And even in spite of my love of exploration in gaming, I can sort of see his point. Exploration-for-exploration's sake in TTRPGs is ultimately a zero sum game. The very open-ended nature of the enterprise basically ensures you'll never run out of un-poked corners. I think for anyone other than a very small subset of gamers who are wholly committed to "The Sandbox" as an end of its own, this kind of exploration-for-exploration's sake gameplay wears thin rather quickly.
TTRPG play becomes more interesting when there's something of value at stake for the characters within the fiction, and the pursuit of those stakes gets expressed by the players.
Take two recent video game examples:
I've been playing through the nearly-25-year-old game, Crusader: No Remorse which I picked up on GOG.com a while ago. I played it waaaaay back in the day when it first game out, and from the first time I played it, THE MOST ENGAGING THING about the whole experience was the sense of exploration. How did I get from A to B? Where did that blind hallway actually go? The whole idea was just to poke into every corner I could, because . . . it made me happy.
Reading through some GameFAQs walkthroughs, several of the guides pointed out that you can totally "shortcut" through the levels to get to the end faster. Which is the exact OPPOSITE of the type of experience I was wanting to have with the game.
I'm also a big fan of the Trine game series (Trine 1 and 2). A few days ago I was playing while two of my daughters watched and hung out with me, and there were several moments where they were saying, "Dad, you don't HAVE to get every single flask of XP in the game!" To which I immediately replied, "Yes, I do!" I would spend 15-20 minutes trying to figure out how to capture one small, relatively insignificant item in the game, but just HAD to prove to myself that I could do it.
So I am completely drawn in by the concept of exploration in pen-and-paper RPGs as well.
I think for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], though, the draw isn't to just "see what's around the next corner." There's exploration-for-exploration's sake, and there's exploration-for-the-sake-of-revealing-character-driven-stakes.
And even in spite of my love of exploration in gaming, I can sort of see his point. Exploration-for-exploration's sake in TTRPGs is ultimately a zero sum game. The very open-ended nature of the enterprise basically ensures you'll never run out of un-poked corners. I think for anyone other than a very small subset of gamers who are wholly committed to "The Sandbox" as an end of its own, this kind of exploration-for-exploration's sake gameplay wears thin rather quickly.
TTRPG play becomes more interesting when there's something of value at stake for the characters within the fiction, and the pursuit of those stakes gets expressed by the players.