Exploration based adventures/campaigns: how do you do it?

[Jasperak]

1e is said to be big on Exploring the Dungeon, and I want to know how 1e did it. There has to be some various DM tricks that did so.

Dungeon or wilderness are the same with regards to my point. Go to your local sports store and buy a ruck sack, then fill it with two weeks worth of trail rations, a sleeping bag, (maybe a one-man tent as well), a change of clothes or two, a blanket, A light source (if spelunking), and a ten-foot pole. Then buy two or three canteens, fill with with water and strap them to the belt of the ruck. I missed a few things in the ruck, but it should be around 40-60 pounds or so.

Then watch Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Humphrey Bogart. [sblock]Understand why Bogie dies near the end.[/sblock]

Think about how nice it would be to have a mule to carry all of the equipment, food and hopefully treasure your character needs to transport. Final Fantasy for the NES is one of my favorite CRPGs of all time, but being able to carry 99 tents is kinda f-ing retarded. Or 99 of everything for that matter.

My whole snarky point is that to play in that more old-school/exploration/hexcrawl style, you would need to enforce encumbrance rules and the strategic planning needed for a two-week journey (estimated, my characters in those type of games always had 2 weeks trail rations since iron rations were too expensive and heavy for a 1st-level character.) Sure a fighter could carry all the equipment, but then how is he going to carry his share of the thousands of coppers and silvers.

As for DM tricks or specific 1e rules, I think you are chasing the Philosopher's Stone. Hexcrawling and Exploration Campaigns -- in my obviously limited (read anecdotal) experience -- were roleplaying experiences and not game experiences and had nothing much to do with any special rules aside from encumbrance which I alluded to earlier.

Sorry so snarky, just can't see a way to rewrite it.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Isn't there a complete pre-made sandbox out there that I can just buy and use? Making your own seems like a lot of work.

 

[buddhafrog]

I have been listening to the Nerdbound podcast actual play D&D recently and I think they give a great setting/motivation for exploration adventures. The PC's have traveled to a new land and are there to expand the empire, gain wealth, trading, etc. But they need resources, they need local knowledge about plants/food, there are plenty of tribes with various military and political ambitions, etc, etc. This concept is not new, but it is done very well on this podcast. A sandbox adventure with no motivation is the first key missing when trying to determine rewards/consequences for PC's choices.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm more interested in creating things and having the Pcs stumble on them and explore/play with these set pieces. I'm more interested in having the PCs interact with and play diplomats/politics with the natives.

Sounds like you need to address character motives, then. Give them a reason toe play with the setting. Typical reasons include: "There is treasure there," or "Something you are chasing goes there," or "You can see/hear/smell something REALLY WEIRD over there."

Provoke their curiosity with an unusual detail. It doesn't have to be combat. Just a hook of some sort. That should get them looking for stuff in all the cubby holes.

 

[ExploderWizard]

What I need are the other things that fill in the gaps beyond "What's on the map". How to invoke the feel of Exploration and Wonder, getting the ball rolling and getting the players involved in asking questions, being invested and interested. How do you make the players feel like Indiana Jones or Lewis and Clark versus feeling like just another adventuring party plundering a dungeon. How do you make them say "ooh, I want to go there next".

1e is said to be big on Exploring the Dungeon, and I want to know how 1e did it. There has to be some various DM tricks that did so.

Exploration is style of play that engages the players at the table on a level beyond the character sheet. The scope of imagined space can be as limited or expansive as you would care to make it. If the area is unfamiliar to the players you could run an exploration game within a city.

For a great modern product that screams exploration, pick up Frandor's Keep for the new Hackmaster game. Even if you don't play HM the supplement is a great read and chock full of ideas on building a mini-setting and interweaving the details in such a way as to make the place come alive.

The trick with this type of game is first to gather a group of proactive players. If the group just sits around waiting to be shoved into action constantly your exploration campaign will sink like a brick.

Once you have a scope for the place settled ( a new continent in your case) pick out the major features, flora, fauna, and population (if any) that make it interesting. Decide who or what weilds power and has any sort of control over this area. Is there a forgotten temple to an ancient slumbering malevolent deity out there somewhere? If so, does anyone know about it ? Decide on the major points of interest and general map layout. You can get more detailed and layer in other things as play progresses.

Campaigns of this sort can run for a long time on connected mini adventures with no central plot or story to work towards. If the area is untamed then there may be many powers that are attempting to annex, and colonize/exploit the area. All it takes is one rumor of gold in those unexplored mountains to draw all kinds of interest to the place. You could have a wild West atmosphere going eventually as all greedy nations send their teams into the great unknown in search of wealth and glory for mother (insert kingdom name here)

The best trick in your arsenal will be information. You will want to feed it to the players in abundance. Don't make finding out about the area in question a chore. Of course, being a largely unexplored region the vast majority of that info will be fantastical hogwash. Feed the players such outlandish nonsense that they will be compelled to go pull a Penn & Teller on the place. Once they have investigated at least a portion of the region they will have a treasure more valuable than gold: factual information about the area that others want desparately.

More later....very tired.

 

[SiderisAnon]

When I do exploration type games, I generally use what I consider a
"Star Trek" or "Stargate" model -- which is really just the model of any TV show where the main characters are traveling around. Even "Sliders" uses this model.

Basically, wherever the characters go, it's where it's going to be interesting. If they are exploring new lands across the Trackless Sea, they don't land on a piece of coast with nothing going on (at least not more than the first time), they show up where they can see a town. If they spend a week traveling among some small islands mapping them, it gets glossed over, at least until they get to the island where the pirates are.

To put it in terms of those shows, the Enterprise always showed up right when something interesting was going on (or already had happened and they have to solve it). Sure, they had boring missions like mapping stellar nurseries or whatever, but those get covered with, "So, you spent three weeks doing...." (Unless you like exploring such things, but that would be a really different sort of show.)

In "Stargate", the team would even talk about the time they went to P3-24A-7 and met those nice people and all, but you never see it on screen because, really, it's kind of boring to watch. We want to see the episodes where they meet interesting and exciting people, deal with tricky situations, or get into conflict with someone or something.



The OP seems to be aiming for exploring a smaller geographical area, not different lands or different worlds. What I would do is first lay out a map of the region and have a decent idea of what resources are where. The party can explore various areas initially to map them, during which time some stuff will happen. I'd do things like, "You spent four days traveling up the main river, mapping where the smaller branches are for future exploration. Midway through the fifth day, you see...." That's when it gets interesting.

Oh, I'd put in more details of what they find, either general ones like forest vs scrub if they know what the region is like, or more specific if they're exploring a totally new region.

Now for finding specific resources, the PCs have to travel to areas that look likely. A gold mine was mentioned. This could be found in a river (panning for gold) or buried underground (mining). Assuming that the PCs actually know how to look for gold, they could go to the general area and search for days, weeks, or even months. (From what I've read, it's not always easy to find a good mine location... though that ignores magical detection.) If I already knew the region was a source of silver then they'd have a chance to find that instead, depending on how long they search and what their skills in such were. If I knew the only gold was somewhere far away, it would never turn up, no matter how long they searched.

However, things can keep happening. They don't find gold, but they find orcs. (Who maybe have some silver, so it's a hint that it's around.) Later, they find goblins moving through the area. Maybe if they stay for months, they realize that more orcs are moving back into the area now that the original tribe is wiped out (or not, depending on your PCs).


I hope this rambling makes sense. Basically, it boils down to the idea that like a TV series, you focus on the interesting bits and not on the boring, slogging moments other than to mention them so that the audience and players know that there has been long, slogging moments.

Wherever you go, there you are.

 

[Lackofname]

Thanks, Exploderwizard! That's the kind of stuff I'm looking for!

One stumbling block I'm having is that this is a New continent, and the Pcs don't speak the language of the natives. So it makes getting immediate info as useful.

That's part of what I liked about Pathfinder's Kingmaker approach. The Pcs job is to Map the region, thus exploring extensively is useful for their job. I don't want epxloration to be a Chore, but sweeping hex to hex, combing through it would be good.

Also good point, SiderisAnon - not spending every moment mapping every hex if nothing interesting is there. PF gives the option of "Spend X hours thoroughly combing a hex". I could give them several hexes for free, those that have nothing of interest. Since the PCs aren't the only "team" doing the exploration (but the only team getting anything Useful), I can even fill in the grid with uninteresting things the other Teams have found.

The overall shape of it is that the PCs land in a generally "safe" area, sort of like a "Home base" neck of the woods where a few friendly villages are. This corner of the continent is Walled Off from the real nasty stuff Out There, where the real power playing is going on. This walled off corner is for the PCs to get their feet underneath them, to get a hang on the Colonizing, a bit of the exploring, before the PCs decide to push past the Wall, so the fit can start hitting the shan.

 

[Iron Sky]

The whole heroic tier of my game was focused on exploration (well, and running from the racist human Hegemony that was in the midst of taking over the world). What I did was create a few "events" before each session that the PCs could encounter.

Some were location based: if they go to the Elder Wyld, they'll probably run into the wandering Kenku village of Baba-yaga style huts with bird-legs; if they go to the ruins of the Eladrin outpost, they'll find it's home to a green dragon and her kobold minions, etc.

Some were interesting combats: being attacked by harpies/griffons/whatever while scaling a cliff; battling the dragonborn who control the only rope bridges between the treetops to cross the river, etc.

Some were interesting NPCs that might give quests or just add flavor: Rando Elissarian Magnoral XV out hunting for big-game with a dozen servants from his airship; Zarochi the Mayor of Redstone (actually a demon cultist) who sends the PCs out collecting stranger and stranger ingredients that they discover too late are for a Ritual to open an Abyssal Rift, etc.

I also had Godstorms in my world, supernatural weather events - byproduct of the war between the gods - that could be supernatural versions of other storms: rainstorms that literally rain down rivers worth of water and flood the land, ice storms that freeze everything within 100 miles solid, tornadoes of fire, etc. Those were always good for a skill-challenge and/or a properly elemental-themed combat, or both!

The party usually ran into 1-3 events a session, so the number I had kept on steadily growing since I created at least two before each session.

Of course, once the game hit Paragon, the game shifted from exploration to trying to collapse the Hegemony six-decades in the future, but that's another story...

 

[steenan]

For me, exploration is defined by four main traits. By focusing on them, you may build an exploratory aspect in your game.
1. Exploration is about learning something new. It requires surprises and twists. A dungeon crawl or visiting a town to buy something is not exploration. Dungeon crawl that lets you encounter monsters you didn't know that existed and learn history of long lost empire, or visiting a town during a holiday full of strange customs is.
2. Exploration is player-driven. You explore by interacting with something in a way you choose. It may be finding and evading traps in a "old school" way, it may be searching for a weakness of a seemingly invulnerable enemy, it may be finding your way through a courtly intrigue. Exploration is never a fixed plot. The GM presents a situation and lets his players decide what they do with it.
3. Exploration requires consistency. When you explore, you connect facts, you find meanings. It's impossible to explore something that is random, that has no real causes and effects, no internal structure. For this reason, it is easier to play exploration scenarios in a pre-existing game world (published or homebrewed), though a GM good at improvisation may run such a game making some things on the fly.
4. Exploration requires immersion. Players look at the game world through their characters' eyes. It's GM's responsibility to supply fun, colorful descriptions of places and creatures, to picture his NPCs and strange cultures. You can't really explore if you do not care about the game world and what happens therein.
I would never, ever show my players a hex map - and I would only show them any kind of map after they learn given place a little. I may have such things behind GM's screen, but I would work hard to make my players feel like they are there. Similarly, I would never just put PCs in a sandbox with no goal or motivation. It may be seeking fame and fortune, it may be searching for something (an item, person or information), it may be running and hiding from someone. These goals may well change during a campaign, but then the players already have their own ties to the game world.

Exploration has many faces; it's not always going through wilderness or dungeons. Players may explore cultures and customs. They may explore relations and interactions between people, like in a detective story or political intrigue. They may explore cosmology, religion and history (I use these themes quite often in my games). They may explore their own feelings, reactions and morals, being faced with hard choices and complicated interpersonal situations. Each of these fits into the general structure I described above and creates similar emotional ties to the imagined world.

 

[Jhaelen]

1e is said to be big on Exploring the Dungeon, and I want to know how 1e did it. There has to be some various DM tricks that did so.

I don't think that 1e did anything special to make exploration interesting.

Imho, the 'trick' is simply this: Exploration is interesting if the players find it interesting. E.g. I used to enjoy drawing maps, so naturally I was excited by any adventure that would allow me to have fun drawing interesting (read: complicated) maps. For me, finding cleverly hidden secrets was the greatest reward.

IOW, if your players don't find the idea of an exploration campaign appealing, there isn't much you can do. As others have mentioned, the pcs should have something in their backstory that gives them reasons to be interested in the exploration.

Otherwise, combing through hex after hex will get old pretty quick.

If I were to start a campaign that should involve exploration to some degree, I'd probably use two devices, to get things started and moving forward:

- lots of rumours: instead of wandering around aimlessy, these give the pcs some (vague) directions to something interesting that may or may not be actually there (or turn out to be something completely different).

- minor quests: while the pcs are wandering around, mapping everything, they might as well get a couple of things done for someone. This may (appear to) be side-tracks that don't have anything to do with their larger goal, or be actual stepping stones to complete their goals.

In the computer rpg genre, I always felt that Ultima was the ultimate (!) exploration based crpg. There were tons of npcs in every populated area that wanted something or told you stuff about something that would require you to travel someplace else. This encouraged you to travel back and forth, all over the continent until eventually you had explored everything.