So, I missed when the UA originally came out, so perhaps this was discussed elsewhere and I'm just missing it.
However, after reading this thread and this UA... what are people seeing in this that is leading to such a generally good response?
In terms of "things I'd like to see in the future" exploration and wilderness rules are definitely up there, but that isn't exactly what I'm seeing here.
The "rules" presented here are:
1) Choose a place to go -> Is this a step we really need to figure out, I mean, this is painfully obvious in a way
2) Roll Survival versus a DC -> Yes... this was already how it worked right? If there was going to be a roll to see if people got lost, it would be a survival roll, since survival is tracking and navigating in the wilderness. I guess having a more codified set of DC's is sort of helpful, but giving me a list of DCs a new set of rules does not make
3) Do the things in the PHB, with the added table of potentially being lost by 2d6 miles -> So... people who fail the check could get lost. Yes, this is a thing I already knew, sort of implied by the idea of failing the check involving finding the place you are going.
Then some of the rest of it is things like "You should determine what kinds of terrain are in an area" or "You should determine what kind of creatures and monsters are in the area"
Well, again, this sort of thing is a bit self-obvious isn't it? I don't think many DMs decide that there are "Dangerous and Dark woods" to the west and then never consider what it is that is inside them that makes them "dangerous" to the players.
So... where are the rule ideas here that everyone is liking? As far as I can tell, there is nothing here except a standardized DC chart and the idea of 2d6 miles of being lost. Even the idea of regional effects, while implemented in a cool way for those moon hills, isn't even something new. We've seen those sort of rules for planar locations and legendary monster effects, the hills are even explicitly connected to three different planes of existence, so a forest or set of hills without that influence wouldn't have them, and we have no idea on what kinds of regional effects would be appropriate.
I get it, if it is simply "I appreciate they are looking at rules for exploration, because that is an area under-explored by WoTC", but... couldn't we get some actual rules and guidelines?