D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Vaalingrade]

This entire discussion is about... challenges and how to increase, better present, create them for the exploration tier...

Which has nothing to do with 'durr durr durr, you're not playing a tax collector, are you?'.

 

[Imaro]

@Imaro - I've explained it as well as I can. I'm sorry, I don't know what else to say. If you cannot see the difference here, I cannot help you.

You haven't explained it at all. You're willing to create specific challenges for combat but not the exploration tier because... reasons??

 

[Imaro]

Which has nothing to do with 'durr durr durr, you're not playing a tax collector, are you?'.

But it does have something to do with actually engaging the tropes and expectations of the game... mainly heroic adventure... durr, durr, durr....

If your players consistently choose not to and you as a DM choose not too... well yeah the game isn't going to work for you...durr...durr..durr

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think you're missing the point though. @Ovinomancer is pointing out that the changes that your DM made were done by the DM, and the verbiage surrounding D&D Exploration Pillar basically was zero help. And, the reason the DM made these changes is because of what the DM realized needed changing in order to make the campaign work better. Just like we should not credit games for being rules absent, we can't really credit games for helping your make these changes when the wording of the game doesn't actually tell you to make these changes.

IOW, it is not a strength of the system that these changes can be made. It's that your DM was a bright enough spark to recognize, probably through play experience, that these baseline elements in the game are going to play silly buggers with the campaign he (sorry, presuming he) wanted to run.

AFAIK, there aren't any rules options in 5e that say, "Hey, the following spells/powers/class abilities are going to play merry hell with your campaign if you what to do X. These are the main culprits you're going to want to strip out of the game before play starts."

It was a minor tweak, because he wanted the survival elements surrounding food and water to be important, rather than being able to be opted out of like the baseline game allows.

I don't think that a game needs to explain to me that if you want food and water to be more important, then magic which removes that concern is not an ideal fit. Any more than you'd need to tell me that running across a busy highway is a bad idea.

If you think the game is deficient for not holding your hand, fair enough. Though I'd say that most games are deficient by that metric, so I'm not convinced it tells us anything useful.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I'm not assigning "credit". Why do you (or anyone for that matter) care who gets the "credit"?

It seems to me that this is true for basically every game out there, whenever you deviate from the baseline. If I decide that the survival rules in Forbidden Lands are too harsh and tweak them to be easier, then the same applies there. I don't hear you criticizing Forbidden Lands for getting all the "credit".

That said, I don't think it really matters. What matters is what you can do with the rules and how easy it is to do. In my friend's case it was barring a few spells and magic items (he didn't even list them individually, just broadly said that magic that creates or summons food/water doesn't work on that world). He also made rations and water quite expensive. It doubt it took him more than five minutes to come up with the changes and write them down.

You go ahead and assign the "credit" however you please. I'm going to continue discussing what can be done and how one can go about it.

You're claiming that 5e does survival stuff pretty well, and pointing to your friends game, where they alter 5e by deleting the parts of 5e that actively fight against survival stuff. This is what I'm getting at. You are crediting 5e for having survival challenges that are good because your friend put in effort and choose parts to create a game that did what he wanted. I'm saying 5e gets no credit for this -- 5e was actively fighting against this concept, and had to be modified. 5e, in fact, by your story, does survival challenges poorly.

You then go on to continue to credit 5e for making GM's have to put in their own work and creativity to solve the problems 5e creates. You point this out as a feature -- that 5e makes you put in the work, and that it should be praised for doing so, because some people find it easy to modify the game. This is a failing argument -- you're acknowledging the charges against 5e but saying that those very charges prove 5e is good at this because you can just change 5e and fix them. I don't understand why 5e has to beyond criticism to the point that we're saying that individual GM's altering the system to fix things is actually a feature of 5e and shows it does those things well.

 

[iserith]

Which has nothing to do with 'durr durr durr, you're not playing a tax collector, are you?'.

"Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils." - PHB, pg. 5.

^ That's the game. One doesn't have to be a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils, I suppose, but then one shouldn't be surprised if the game doesn't support whatever it is they are trying to be. Of course, a former tax collector could certainly be an adventurer now, paying visits to monsters in dungeons who are in arrears on their property taxes to the king...

 

[FrozenNorth]

For my part, I often create a roll table for foraging that has on it valuable herbs, spices, flowers, animals, and whatnot. This creates more incentive to forage since it means gold or trade goods in the PCs' pockets or potentially things that can deal with poisons or disease. The forager might just find food and water and that's often good enough, but sometimes they hit upon a score! The question is - is it worth letting your guard down to find these things? The players must make this meaningful choice themselves.

I really like this idea that while foraging for food and water you might come across something else of value.

 

[Fanaelialae]

You're claiming that 5e does survival stuff pretty well, and pointing to your friends game, where they alter 5e by deleting the parts of 5e that actively fight against survival stuff. This is what I'm getting at. You are crediting 5e for having survival challenges that are good because your friend put in effort and choose parts to create a game that did what he wanted. I'm saying 5e gets no credit for this -- 5e was actively fighting against this concept, and had to be modified. 5e, in fact, by your story, does survival challenges poorly.

You then go on to continue to credit 5e for making GM's have to put in their own work and creativity to solve the problems 5e creates. You point this out as a feature -- that 5e makes you put in the work, and that it should be praised for doing so, because some people find it easy to modify the game. This is a failing argument -- you're acknowledging the charges against 5e but saying that those very charges prove 5e is good at this because you can just change 5e and fix them. I don't understand why 5e has to beyond criticism to the point that we're saying that individual GM's altering the system to fix things is actually a feature of 5e and shows it does those things well.

Again, I'm not "crediting" anything. I don't care about your concept of "credit". Sorry, but I think it's wrongheaded. Perhaps a good way to "win" a philosophical argument on a message board, but absolutely useless for a DM who is actually interested in running a good game. I'm only concerned about results.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But it does have something to do with actually engaging the tropes and expectations of the game

And still has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

No one is talking about no challenges here. Or not being heroic or any other made up arguments being attacked.

No, it's about NPC 'hooks' being burdensome instead of fun, the need for more motivation than 'there's monsters there'. Mocking that is what's really the point if people are being honest about wanting to improve the implementation of any challenges, much less the exploration pillar.

 

[Vaalingrade]

"Together, the DM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils." - PHB, pg. 5.

^ That's the game. One doesn't have to be a bold adventurer confronting deadly perils, I suppose, but then one shouldn't be surprised if the game doesn't support whatever it is they are trying to be. Of course, a former tax collector could certainly be an adventurer now, paying visits to monsters in dungeons who are in arrears on their property taxes to the king...

Friendly Reminder:

NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT ACTUALLY PLAYING A TAX COLLECTOR. THAT'S THE DUMB INSULT BEING TOSSED AROUND AT PEOPLE.