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

[S'mon]

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.

I don't think either exploration or social interaction necessarily involve challenge, though they may do. Exploration for me is moving through an environment discovering stuff. The paradigmatic D&D example is the dungeon crawl. Wilderness hexcrawls and point crawls are also good examples of exploration.

In terms of wilderness survival as a challenge, I agree 5e is poor at this. I run Dragonbane which has pretty well developed systems that are quite D&D compatible if you'd like to check it out. Just getting an overnight rest can be tough!

 

[CreamCloud0]

i think the primary reasons exploration fails in modern play is because it's tied up in a whole group of mechanics that are consistently ignored, rendered obsolete by other mechanics or just plain lacking: encumberance, food management, environmental hazards/weather and mapping.

exploration is about getting from location A to location B without dying on the way from starvation, monsters, diseases, 'falling off a cliff' or exposure to the elements,

correct me if i'm wrong but most people don't use any kind of distance map while travelling, the terrain is abstract challenge rather than concrete distance, oh sure the GM might look at the environment and say 'oh we're going through the swamp i'll throw in some apropriate challenges' but at most what'll happen is the trip boils down to a few battles against random monster or bandit encounters, but in previous editions it'd be a much bigger decision point: do we have enough supplies, there's no source of fresh water in there are we carrying enough, is it worth spending the extra days to go around the swamp for more safety, but spending more days meant that your food had to last longer and you had more chances to get lost which would cut into your food even more and if you didn't make your foraging check oh no we're all starving and have exhaustion, but is it worth making more easier checks going around than the harder checks from through the swamp

i think exploration could be improved by substituting encumberance's resource management for places of sanctuary, now what you're counting against is your finite class resources, without anywhere to long rest between locations every spell cast is permanently one less until you find safety, goodberries and create water chip away at your slots, do you cast tiny hut for a safe short rest or conserve the slot and risk a random encounter, your frontliners have taken a beating and are low on hit dice-best avoid that gobin cave even if you can see the fat stacks of treasure in the back, why cast fly or spiderclimb when your rogue or ranger can make an athletics check to climb the cliff and drop a rope down.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I think @EzekielRaiden is correct in that the reason why Exploration doesn't lead to compelling gameplay is because there isn't any "game" to play. There's no board game equivalent for Exploration (or Social for that matter) that is like Combat. Combat has its board game rules and its isolated process that occurs almost outside the narrative of the campaign. And without a similar set of game rules for Exploration that actually turns Exploration into its own essential board game... it will never be satisfying for a contingent of the playerbase.

The real problem though is that because D&D is in fact (as Matt Colville likes to say) a "monster fighting game"... few if any attempts at gamifying other parts of D&D have worked, gained any traction, or survived. Mass Combat? Attempts have been made to add it to the game but few people ever latch onto it. Social Combat? Attempts have been made to turn argument and negotiation into its own minigame within D&D but again few people have ever latched onto it. And in the Exploration sphere, Chase rule have been tried and tried and tried but nothing has ever stuck with anyone-- which is why ever few months or years we get people asking in places like this "Does anyone have any good chase rules?" They've all been half-baked because in my opinion it really goes against the ethos of D&D's "monster fighting game".

At its foundation, that's what D&D is-- a game about fighting monsters. And that's why like 90% of everything on a character sheet is giving numbers and rules towards that game. And anything that falls outside of that purview... like Exploration or Social... are not part of the game. Exploration and Social do not have a place in the monster combat game, and thus there are no substantive rules for it. Instead, things like Ability Checks are the closest thing we have to "game rules" for those pillars, and as a result each DM is forced to "invent" actions, reactions, and results from those Ability Checks to provide the win state or loss state from them. Which means that... yes... Exploration and Social is all determined by the dread "DM Adjudication".

And to be honest... I don't think this is a problem that can truly be solved. Because most players know in the back of their minds (as much as they might not want to accept it) that D&D IS a "monster fighting game" with almost all of its game rules that have maintained and sustained over the past 50 years designed purely for that gameplay. And thus anything not connected to it will never be anything more than an extraneous appendage from a "game rules and game play" perspective. And if an individual DM wants something else... they are going to have to go elsewhere to get it or make up a set of rules themselves. Because most other players just don't care.

 

[mamba]

And to be honest... I don't think this is a problem that can truly be solved. Because most players know in the back of their minds (as much as they might not want to accept it) that D&D IS a "monster fighting game" with almost all of its game rules that have maintained and sustained over the past 50 years designed purely for that gameplay.

First of all, while 5e’s rules predominantly revolve around combat, the gameplay itself is not your party standing in an arena, fighting monster after monster. So the gameplay itself involves exploration and social interactions, they are just handwaved away from a rules perspective.

Second, this has not been the case for 50 years, the early editions did have more rules for exploration, up to entire supplements (Wilderness and Dungeoneering Survival Guides).

And if an individual DM wants something else... they are going to have to go elsewhere to get it or make up a set of rules themselves. Because most other players just don't care.

whoever does not care is free to ignore the rules…


The problem with 5e is twofold, it has next to no rules for exploration and it is actively hostile to the survival aspect with spells like goodberry and tiny hut.

Take such spells away, give a penalty to not resting in a safe and comfortable place and provide some rudimentary rules (two guidebooks is overkill), and this would go a long way to bringing some exploration back

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think @EzekielRaiden is correct in that the reason why Exploration doesn't lead to compelling gameplay is because there isn't any "game" to play. There's no board game equivalent for Exploration (or Social for that matter) that is like Combat. Combat has its board game rules and its isolated process that occurs almost outside the narrative of the campaign. And without a similar set of game rules for Exploration that actually turns Exploration into its own essential board game... it will never be satisfying for a contingent of the playerbase.

The real problem though is that because D&D is in fact (as Matt Colville likes to say) a "monster fighting game"... few if any attempts at gamifying other parts of D&D have worked, gained any traction, or survived. Mass Combat? Attempts have been made to add it to the game but few people ever latch onto it. Social Combat? Attempts have been made to turn argument and negotiation into its own minigame within D&D but again few people have ever latched onto it. And in the Exploration sphere, Chase rule have been tried and tried and tried but nothing has ever stuck with anyone-- which is why ever few months or years we get people asking in places like this "Does anyone have any good chase rules?" They've all been half-baked because in my opinion it really goes against the ethos of D&D's "monster fighting game".

At its foundation, that's what D&D is-- a game about fighting monsters. And that's why like 90% of everything on a character sheet is giving numbers and rules towards that game. And anything that falls outside of that purview... like Exploration or Social... are not part of the game. Exploration and Social do not have a place in the monster combat game, and thus there are no substantive rules for it. Instead, things like Ability Checks are the closest thing we have to "game rules" for those pillars, and as a result each DM is forced to "invent" actions, reactions, and results from those Ability Checks to provide the win state or loss state from them. Which means that... yes... Exploration and Social is all determined by the dread "DM Adjudication".

And to be honest... I don't think this is a problem that can truly be solved. Because most players know in the back of their minds (as much as they might not want to accept it) that D&D IS a "monster fighting game" with almost all of its game rules that have maintained and sustained over the past 50 years designed purely for that gameplay. And thus anything not connected to it will never be anything more than an extraneous appendage from a "game rules and game play" perspective. And if an individual DM wants something else... they are going to have to go elsewhere to get it or make up a set of rules themselves. Because most other players just don't care.

I am going to push back a little here, I am not denying that D&D is a monster fighting game and exploration rules can lean into that. I also believe that they are not needed at a core level but a nice to have. D&D once did have exploration rules and procedures but they were reliant on record keeping.
Stil this is a plus thread, so while I understand the reasons for the current state of exploration in D&D I would like to see some actual suggestions as to what might make that aspect of the game more interesting.

 

[Retros_x]

exploration is about getting from location A to location B without dying on the way from starvation, monsters, diseases, 'falling off a cliff' or exposure to the elements

Thats just travel. I would argue exploration is about "searching and finding", literally exploring. If you just want to get to point B its just travel and in most DnD games I would handwave it or use an abstract method. Exploring starts if you don't know where point b is or if you don't even have a point B and are just exploring for explorings sake (finding treasures and such)-

Exploration doesn't lead to compelling gameplay is because there isn't any "game" to play.

I am really surprised to read these takes. Exploration is the core gameplay of classic DnD together with combat. There is much more "game" to play, than for the social pillar, where you have almost nothing besides charisma skill/ability checks. Most of the skill checks are relevant for exploration. There are rules for finding and deactivating traps, secret doors etc., navigating in wilderness, finding food. Thats all exploration. Exploration is that what you do between the combats in a standard DnD-adventure. You explore some sort of location to navigate between combats, social encounters and traps/hazards to find treasures and/or reach story milestones. I know that many modern DnD tables don't play like that and are much more focused on social game in a city, but social is actually the problem pillar in terms of gameplay. Exploration pillar is almost as big as combat pillar in terms of mechanics etc.

I think the main problem is that the exploration pillar is heavily dependent on (good) adventure design. You can improvise a social encounter and you can easily build a simple combat encounter, but you need more intentional and thought out design to build an exciting exploration location be it a dungeon, a wilderness crawl or a foreign city. And the rules are all over the place. To get all the related rules together you have to jump between dozens of different pages in the PHB and DMG. Furthermore these are just mechanics. The 5e dmg is heavily lacking in good instructions how to actually run a good dungeon or wilderness crawl.

 

[S'mon]

The real problem though is that because D&D is in fact (as Matt Colville likes to say) a "monster fighting game"

4e is the only edition IME where that was true. Other editions are designed as dungeon exploration games, albeit with combat a big part of gameplay.

BTW if you want wilderness exploration to be a big deal, detail it at a similar level to dungeon exploration. The B2 Keep on the Borderlands and B5 Horror on the Hill wilderness maps are good examples, so is the wilderness in Elder Scrolls games like Skyrim. Mechanics are no substitute for an actual environment to explore!

 

[UngainlyTitan]

...

I think the main problem is that the exploration pillar is heavily dependent on (good) adventure design. You can improvise a social encounter and you can easily build a simple combat encounter, but you need more intentional and thought out design to build an exciting exploration location be it a dungeon, a wilderness crawl or a foreign city. And the rules are all over the place. To get all the related rules together you have to jump between dozens of different pages in the PHB and DMG. Furthermore these are just mechanics. The 5e dmg is heavily lacking in good instructions how to actually run a good dungeon or wilderness crawl.

I would argue that the mechanics are there (though some additional one might not go amiss) but the procedures or framework is missing as is the DM advice on constructing an exploration as a challenge in the adventure.
Again, a lot of the elements are touched upon but not in enough detail to be really helpful. This is an area where extended DM advice would be useful. It is unlikely that the average DM has wilderness navigation experience. More especially, experience of navigating an unexplored landscape with some potentially hostile local forces.
The party may often need a reason to hurry through the area otherwise random encounters, environmental hazards and the like are an annoyance because they can simply rest. This is often not an issue in a dungeon or similar location due to the locals being powerful and hostile but the wilderness surrounding the dungeon is overlooked.
Random encounters alone are a waste of time there needs to be a reason to take the attrition and not rest. And, now that you have pointed it out this is an aspect of adventure design. It is also an aspect of DM advice.

 

[Minigiant]

D&D 5e has a exploration game.
The problem is it is all DM facing so player have no direction on how to use it..
D&D has a history of either giving too little guidance or telling you what to do. Almost nothing in between.

5e's Nature

Nature​

Your Intelligence (Nature) check measures your ability to recall lore about terrain, plants and animals, the weather, and natural cycles.

vs
3e's Knowledge Nature

KNOWLEDGE (INT; TRAINED ONLY)

Like the Craft and Profession skills, Knowledge actually encompasses a number of unrelated skills. Knowledge represents a study of some body of lore, possibly an academic or even scientific discipline. Below are listed typical fields of study. With your DM’s approval, you can invent new areas of knowledge
...
Nature (animals, fey, giants, monstrous humanoids, plants, seasons and cycles, weather, vermin)
...
Check: Answering a question within your field of study has a DC of 10 (for really easy questions), 15 (for basic questions), or 20 to 30 (for really tough questions).

In many cases, you can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster's HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster. For every 5 points by which your check result exceeds the DC, you recall another piece of useful information.

Action: Usually none. In most cases, making a Knowledge check doesn’t take an action—you simply know the answer or you don't.

Try Again: No. The check represents what you know, and thinking about a topic a second time doesn’t let you know something that you never learned in the first place.

Synergy: If you have 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (nature), you get a +2 bonus on Survival checks made in aboveground natural environments (aquatic, desert, forest, hill, marsh, mountains, or plains).

vs
4e's nature

186 C H A P T E R 5 | S k i l l s
Nature (Wisdom)
You have picked up knowledge and skills related to
nature, including finding your way through the wilder-
ness, recognizing natural hazards, dealing with and
identifying natural creatures, and living off the land.
If you have selected this skill as a trained skill, your
knowledge represents formalized study or extensive
experience, and you have a better chance of knowing
esoteric information in this field.
Forage
Make a Nature check to locate and gather enough food
and water to last for 24 hours.
Forage: 1 hour.
✦ DC: DC 15 to find food and water for one person,
DC 25 for up to five people. The DM might adjust
the DC in different environments (5 lower in a culti-
vated environment or 5 higher in a barren one).
✦ Success: You find enough food and water for 24
hours.
✦ Failure: You find no food or water. You can forage
again but in a different area.
Handle Animal
Make a Nature check to calm down a natural beast,
teach a natural beast some tricks, or otherwise handle
a natural beast. Handling a natural beast is usually part
of a skill challenge that requires a number of successes.
Nature Knowledge
Make a Nature check to remember a useful bit of
knowledge about the natural world—about terrain, cli-
mate, weather, plants, and seasons—or to recognize a
nature-related clue. See “Knowledge Checks,” page 180.
Examples of Nature knowledge include determin-
ing cardinal directions or finding a path (common),
recognizing a dangerous plant or another natural
hazard (master), or predicting a coming change in the
weather (expert).
Monster Knowledge
Natural
Make a Nature check to identify a creature that has
the natural origin (a creature of the natural world). See
“Monster Knowledge Checks,” page 180.

Guess which edition likely had more players roll unprompted Nature checks.
Ten bucks it's the "monster fighter board game" edition. But its layout was so bad that few got to it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

It's not even rules clarity.

5e should tell you what the skills do.
Leave adjudication and resolution of the skill to the DM.
But make a list of what each skill does in order for players to feel informed of their options.

I disagree with the first statement. Rules clarity is a big deal.
As for skills, I do think that they should have more explanatory text, but I really like how they are accomplishing that in the UA rules, by describing the rules for actions you can take, which ability mod and skills are relevant to that action, etc.
what I absolutely would hate enough that if 5e had it from day one I wouldn’t be playing it, is the “you can do exactly these things with this skill” with every skill having extensive rules around it. Tell players that acrobatics is for getting around obstacles, showing off, maneuvering around enemies, and whatever else in fairly broad terms.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely. Obscurantism is a selling point: by not telling people what things are for, you don't piss off the (extremely) vocal minority who believe that being told what something is for is identical to being told that it can't do anything else. If your goal is to stay within 5e design aesthetics, then obscurantism is an unavoidable stumbling block.

Please don’t bring this into the + thread about expanding and modifying exploration.

As for the actual thread topic, I agree with Minigiant that a big part of the problem is that it defaults to the least-game-like form of "gameplay": "DM decides." When essentially the entire process, from beginning to end, is "one person weighs the factors and then says what happens," there's...really no gameplay. It would be like if you took gridiron or association football, removed all of the rules, and then said everything had to be decided by a referee weighing the relevant factors and declaring a result. There wouldn't be a game anymore, and nobody would be interested in watching nor playing it.

In order to have gameplay challenges that are worthy of the name, you have to have gameplay more textured than "convince the referee that my plan works." You need player goals, tools to achieve those goals, clarity about how and why an adjudication is made, and steps/processes of resolution. In simple terms, you actually need a system to engage with, rather than a big empty nothing.

I will point out that there are more rules for exploration than that. If you’re intentionally hyperbolising, that isn’t helpful. If you aren’t, another posted listed some of the rules in the game for exploration challenges or actions. They aren’t extensive, but they certainly aren’t “nothing but ask the DM”.

I push back on this because having clarity about what the rules are is necessary to having the discussion laid out in the OP.

I've put it front and centerline one of my campaigns atm. And in previous campaigns.

Mostly it's about risk/reward. I Give you exp per person per hex. At low levels explore a few and level up no combat required.

Also hide magic items in non obvious places that are a head of the curve for their levels. Philosophers stone in cesspit, magic sword hidden behind a fireplace.

Helpful NPCs with sidequests. Remember speak with plants and animals. That strange ox.......

Also mix it with social. Generally I don't have magic item vendors. Occasionally they might sell sonething though. If PCs have put the effort in.

Ranger ability to lead people through terrain fast? Early 5E refugees avoiding dragons and goblins. Experience points awarded per refugee. Few social checks tgey might join your settlement.

Find a landmark. Award xp. Map a region. Xp and rewards from who paid you.

It would be helpful for people who don’t want to just improvise that, but instead want players to know what is possible and what the stakes are, if the game had a system for rewarding xp for non combat challenges, rather than just “wing it”. I don’t remember any such guidance in the rules but I’d be stoked to be proven wrong. What amount of xp should finding a landmark give, and are there any other benefits like lowering navigation DCs while within X distance of the landmark?

This is an area that I have been thinking about a lot, though I have not reached any definite conclusions. I more or less completely agree with @Minigiant's post above.
The big issue with the current system is that it is vestigial and also undermined by other game elements. It does not have to complete procedures, what the DM need to have in place to make it work and the kind of record keeping needed to make the old school logistics base exploration work.
Then there are all the elements that D&D has accumulated to bypass that kind of exploration, e.g. everything from goodberry to bags of holding and ranger survival features.
All of this needs to be addressed in the rules/DMG.
Then discuss alternative ways to abstract time other than strict accounting (May be a dice pool for time with rules to roll for random events as die are added). Similarly for supply.
Then look at one or two alternative approaches to the same issues. Like an extended skill challenge system or something like Cublicle 7's Journey system.

I do agree that the DMG needs an actually helpful section on each aspect of exploration and how different ways of running it can work.

The real problem though is that because D&D is in fact (as Matt Colville likes to say) a "monster fighting game"...

Colville is both overrated and also wrong about this, in that he’s being reductive to a point that just doesn’t match large swaths of player experience at the table.

And to be honest... I don't think this is a problem that can truly be solved. Because most players know in the back of their minds (as much as they might not want to accept it) that D&D IS a "monster fighting game" with almost all of its game rules that have maintained and sustained over the past 50 years designed purely for that gameplay. And thus anything not connected to it will never be anything more than an extraneous appendage from a "game rules and game play" perspective. And if an individual DM wants something else... they are going to have to go elsewhere to get it or make up a set of rules themselves. Because most other players just don't care.

This is a + thread. I explicitly asked in the OP to not do exactly this.

I think the main problem is that the exploration pillar is heavily dependent on (good) adventure design. You can improvise a social encounter and you can easily build a simple combat encounter, but you need more intentional and thought out design to build an exciting exploration location be it a dungeon, a wilderness crawl or a foreign city. And the rules are all over the place. To get all the related rules together you have to jump between dozens of different pages in the PHB and DMG. Furthermore these are just mechanics. The 5e dmg is heavily lacking in good instructions how to actually run a good dungeon or wilderness crawl.

This is exactly right, IMO. Scattered rules and bad instruction.