D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Scott Christian]

Part of it is (and may have been the case in the adventure I referenced, I don't recall now) that I-as-DM will often set things up such that while a party think their perfectly legitimate goal is A their actual goal is B, which they may or may not come to realize (or stumble upon) while working on A.

As an example: first as player then later as DM I've been in/run a wonderful series of homebrew adventures for whose existence I cannot claim credit. They way this series starts is that a party is sent into a deserted valley in search of something or other that makes sense to the campaign (when I ran it, it was a set of books; when I played it, I forget what it was as it was over 35 years ago - we may even have just been sandboxing). BUT, what they're really there to find is a previously-unknown-of item and a poem; the item is the first of a set and the poem is a cryptic clue how to find the rest and what to then do with them.

Following up on the poem sets off a series of five or so linked-yet-discrete adventures, of which exploring the valley is/was the first. (when I played it the second adventure was modified from a canned module and the rest were homebrew; when I ran it the first adventure hewed fairly close to the version I'd played, the second, fourth and fifth were my own, and the third was a canned module - but all five each kinda kept the same general themes I'd played through)

Edit to add: and the risk, of course, is they miss goal B entirely; so I have to be prepared to can the idea on short-ish notice (or maybe recycle it later) and go with something else.

Absolutely like the sound of this!

It sometimes takes some fancy dancing, I'll freely admit that.

I am stealing that fancy dancing phrase!

By sheer coincidence, the only thing I've ever done with Saltmarsh was steal its map for use in a homebrew adventure, 'cause it worked and I was too lazy to draw my own.

I honestly think that map may have been used for other's people campaigns more than any other map in history. Everyone I know uses it!

 

[Monayuris]

You don't need to be top level competitive to play Poker with more than just luck. That's a ludicrous statement. I've played Poker less than ten times in my life and even I can tell it's not pure luck.

Sure, re-rolling doesn't take away luck, that's not what 'push-your-luck' means, it means that you CHOOSE to risk more for the chance to win more. The CHOICE is what matters.

Binary results are not fun because they cannot be influenced by the choice you make.

Games where your choice don't matter are not games at all, they're just a series of random number being generated, it's just gambling, not playing a game.

Sure, there's thrill to be have with gambling, I guess that might disprove my position that binary results are not fun. It's just not the same kind of fun.

I'm just not playing DnD to gamble, I'm playing DnD to make choices and have those choice impact what happens in the story. I'm playing DnD to play a GAME.

And yeah, that's my opinion, it's my opinion on why Exploration in DnD suck.

Sounds like you have had some really bad experiences with the Exploration pillar of the game.

Which is fair. Modern D&D does not support Exploration well, and modern adventures written for modern D&D do not use it correctly. Which is why it seems to suck so much.

Exploration works best when the journey is more important than the destination. Which is not what modern D&D adventure design does.

Modern adventure design is more plot-based and story-based. WoTC literally refers to their major adventures as story-lines. Modern adventure design asks the Exploration pillar to be the transport from one plot point/story beat to the next. But that creates a false expectation because Exploration implies that there is meaning and purpose to interacting with the world around you. In reality, it is just treated as the filler between the chapters of the story( or as they call it, adventure).

Modern D&D treats the Exploration pillar as roll a skill check to experience the next part of the plot. When presented in this manner, I agree, that it is very unsatisfying.

When implemented and executed well, Exploration is my favorite part of D&D Discovering a fantastic world, and dealing with the challenge of interacting with a compelling dungeon and wilderness environment is what makes D&D special to me.

 

[Monayuris]

double post

 

[Undrave]

Sounds like you have had some really bad experiences with the Exploration pillar of the game.

Can't say I've had particularly interesting experiences with it yeah. I think the best bit was probably when we went around the barn of a hoarder vampire that was just chock full of insane stuff, including a magical ice box with a portal to a tundra... But that exploration was soured when the DM decided to send a re-skinned Clay Golem at us, despite its CR being WAY too high and it having one of the most BS mechanic I can think of. Because he felt he couldn't challenge us otherwise (when he was the one who wanted us to roll for stats...). Maybe you could count meeting some quirky shop keepers in various cities as 'Exploration' but that feels more Social to me, even if you're 'exploring' the city.

Exploration works best when the journey is more important than the destination. Which is not what modern D&D adventure design does.

I think it also works best if you're not pushed for time and have enough to go where your interest is piqued and not just have to push on to the next plot point at all cost.

Drawing from my experience in something else, a good Exploration experience has to be the Hoenn games in Pokémon. For exemple, north of Mossdeep City is Shoal Cave. The place is completely optional, you don't need to go in there to complete the game, but doing so will you find Snorunt and Spheal, two rare Ice Types. Furthermore, if you visit at low tide AND high tide you can collect items to have a Shell Bell made for you, a held item that allows Pokémon to recover a little HP whenever they inflict damage. Shoal Cave is tucked away in a corner of the map, in the water heavy portion of the game. The game also has a completely option town that, on its own, doesn't actually give you much, but it's an unusual location with its own special sprites and lore associated with it.

 

[Oofta]

Sounds like you have had some really bad experiences with the Exploration pillar of the game.

Which is fair. Modern D&D does not support Exploration well, and modern adventures written for modern D&D do not use it correctly. Which is why it seems to suck so much.

Exploration works best when the journey is more important than the destination. Which is not what modern D&D adventure design does.

Modern adventure design is more plot-based and story-based. WoTC literally refers to their major adventures as story-lines. Modern adventure design asks the Exploration pillar to be the transport from one plot point/story beat to the next. But that creates a false expectation because Exploration implies that there is meaning and purpose to interacting with the world around you. In reality, it is just treated as the filler between the chapters of the story( or as they call it, adventure).

Modern D&D treats the Exploration pillar as roll a skill check to experience the next part of the plot. When presented in this manner, I agree, that it is very unsatisfying.

When implemented and executed well, Exploration is my favorite part of D&D Discovering a fantastic world, and dealing with the challenge of interacting with a compelling dungeon and wilderness environment is what makes D&D special to me.

I would agree that the DMG doesn't give a lot of concrete guidance on how to run exploration, it leaves it in the hands of the DM and the group. I think that makes sense, I don't want rules telling me in detail how to run my out of combat encounters. I understood what they were trying to do with skill challenges in 4E, but in too many games it really did just become finding the right button to push to get the X skill check successes before Y failures. Decent in theory and as one way of resolving certain obstacles, but not something I want hard-coded into the game.

If you have suggestions on how to run exploration encounters more than "run it like GameZ" because I've never played GameZ fee free to share.

 

[Undrave]

but in too many games it really did just become finding the right button to push

And if you leave too much to the DM it can devolve into "let's go down a list of keywords until the DM says something".

 

[Oofta]

And if you leave too much to the DM it can devolve into "let's go down a list of keywords until the DM says something".

So what's the alternative? What would you tell people to improve it? They give general advice in the DMG, what other option is there?

If you've played other games that did it better, what did they do that makes you think it was better? Because all I hear is "it sucks" with no concrete alternatives.

 

[Undrave]

So what's the alternative? What would you tell people to improve it? They give general advice in the DMG, what other option is there?

If you've played other games that did it better, what did they do that makes you think it was better? Because all I hear is "it sucks" with no concrete alternatives.

I honestly don't know...

 

[Oofta]

I honestly don't know...

I think there are multiple "types" of exploration which is part of the problem. For example, I don't do hex crawls. Not really sure how to make it exciting or interesting so I wouldn't know where to start with a set of rules. On the other hand, my non-combat, non-social encounters are very reactive based on what the PCs are doing.

So I don't have a way of doing guidelines. I know enough about who's who (from organizations down to special individuals) but there's no mechanical rules that I could share. It would more general advice on how to structure challenges not generalized rules.

But I'm not sure D&D has ever had any real "rules" on exploration that worked for everyone. It's just not that type of game. So, like I said, I'd be open to suggestions because I think every DM including myself has room for improvement.

 

[Li Shenron]

Exploration works best when the journey is more important than the destination. Which is not what modern D&D adventure design does.

Very good point.

I also think that I have personal reasons for exploration being potentially my favourite pillar: real-life experiences.

When we were kids in the 80s, exploration was one of our primary ways of having fun. Not on a daily basis for sure, but damn often we got ourselves around exploring unknown and (especially) forbidden places. We lived on the outskirts of a city, on one side of our neighborhood we had the countryside. Not a very wild kind of countryside unfortunately (no forests where I lived), but we still did things like going into farm fields to steal corn cobs, rally-biking in mining sites, infiltrating abandoned factories and even a giant villa... But the other side of the neighborhood was just as good! There were underground garages, warehouses, once summer we even infiltrated a skyscraper under construction and went up to the helicopter port on top of it! One of my friends who had already been up there a few days before, and knew there was a lowered (and safe) platform all around the heliport but being a meter lower it was invisible from just a few meters away, went close to the edge and pretended to slip and fall over, only to land harmlessly just below. The s.o.a.b nearly had me a heart attack! Last but not least, there was a huge apartment complex in our neighborhood with interconnected cellars basements, which we used to call (wait for it...) the "dungeon"! You could really get lost in it

Certainly most of the things we did were safe, but we liked believing we were brave. Others probably could have killed us (entering constructions sites... not recommended!) and we didn't even realize. But... combat? Fighting? Physical confrontation? No way! It did happen on very rare circumstances but nobody wanted to be part of it, much less look for it, we would all run!

Looking at the kind of media entertainment today, TV/movies and videogames, I can imagine that people are used to the idea that combat is the main deal. There are of course also exploration-based games, but the majority I see have fighting as the main theme. But I grew up with Lucasfilm and Sierra point-and-click adventures and I cannot erase that part of my education! Even in my short stint at World of Warcraft I ended up avoiding monsters and just looking around in weird places