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Message: <blockquote data-quote="loverdrive" data-source="post: 9745793" data-attributes="member: 7027139">I think it's all too common case of people mostly correctly identifying their feelings, but being atrociously bad at determining their causes.Dungeon crawling allows for skill expression. A better player consistently wins, while worse players consistently lose, but the root of it isn't in some macguyvering shenanigans, or big brain plays.It's in the process itself: dungeon is a casino. Every door is a slot machine, where you might get a jackpot (a treasure room), or a Space Quest-style literal annihilation beam, or anything in-between. A skilled gambler knows when to stop betting, a skilled dungeon crawler knows when to leave the dungeon, while a bad dungeon crawler runs into the danger and always moves towards the heart of the dungeon (and dies like a dog in the process).If you cannot leave the dungeon because you actually need a Very Specific Thing at the end of it — or, outside of the game, because GM worked on it and it'd be rude to walk away without seeing their fun setpieces — this whole thing breaks. You cannot make a dumb choice to leave if you cannot leave, and you cannot make a smart choice to press on if you are forced to press on.Exploration turns add another dimension to consider: time. A skilled dungeon crawler knows what side tunnels to explore, and which aren't worth the risk of wandering monsters. Without it, there's no reason to not search every room top to bottom — which then is annoying for everyone, so GMs stop hiding treasure to deter wasting real-life time on looting — which means being smart about what to search doesn't matter.Everything else aside, I don't quite get how the two are in any way opposing ideas. There's a word for knowing what buttons to press and, more importantly, when. That word is "skill". How much depth of expression of this skill D&D allows for is another matter.</blockquote>

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