Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scott Christian" data-source="post: 9268685" data-attributes="member: 6901101">Exploration is travel, traps & puzzles, searches, and sometimes skill checks. For example, I have always liked this description of travel:"Travelling adventurers need not always face the hardships of the land. After all, walking or riding down a well-traveled road for the day, stopping at an inn, having a hot meal, and getting a sound sleep is no more taxing than a day training. But there are not always roads nor trails, not always a nice campsite, and not always a restful sleep. Sometimes the cold creeps in, the heat and sand become unrelenting, the mountain’s too steep, or mysterious forces threaten adventurers – even in their dreams."Exploration is tied to the other pillars. To me, it is the glue in between roleplaying and combat. Exploration fails for me mostly when the gamemaster fails to communicate properly. It happens to the best of us, but that is when I see it failing the most. For example, the small pile of rags that takes a group ten minutes to go through because they were not described as they should be is an example. If the rags are harmless, and the players investigate them, tell them they are rags and harmless. There is no suspense in making a player think they are something that they are not. This is especially true for mundane items: beds, clothes, desks, etc. The opposite holds true as well. If the players are entering the feywild for the first time, take time to describe it. Let them explore and be consistent in the contrasts of the feywild versus the material plane. (For me, contrasts seem to work well.) This also includes detailing things like weather, terrain, and unique locales with clear and concise details. Some people have an issue with telling a player how their character feels, but I believe in many exploration cases, it is perfectly valid. Sit out on the deck of a ship going through a rough arctic storm, tell them they are wet and freezing. Tell them their fingers barely work. Tell them they keep shivering even when they try not to. This makes exploration real and palpable. It also opens the door for when they leave deck and go warm themselves with dry clothes and hot soup to a more descriptive narrative. Note: If any of the description telling how a PC feels affects their skill checks, then there needs to be a way for the PC to circumvent this, either through rolling or clever play. Exploration could be grander. In D&D, there are so many ways around this, that much of the travel, traps, and skill checks become trivial. A bard disarming a trap, a wizard reading an arcane rune, a barbarian jumping a pit, etc. are almost gimmes at higher levels. That is something that is accepted in the D&D verse.Exploration in the revised core will still be lacking - no matter what they do. There are two issues: power creep (including a plethora and almost unlimited spell casting) and the gamemaster. They will not take out the power creep, nor will they eliminate the problem spells. And it is very difficult to teach DMs how to do this. This is especially true if they don't bother to read the rulebooks, don't plan and write things out from a thoughtful perspective, and/or have little life experience "exploring."</blockquote>

Verification