D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[jayoungr]

Exploration includes puzzles, which I personally enjoy.

It also includes things like searching the room of a suspected spy for clues and evidence.

 

[Li Shenron]

So what do you think? Am I wrong on this?

Yes.

Exploration is my favorite pillar. But if you reduce it to a single roll every now and then, or (the horror!) passive perception, or if you bottleneck every challenge like "you either pick this lock or your quest is impossible" then yes you have failed the Exploration pillar.

The truth is, Exploration should be always run more like social interaction i.e. mostly descriptive but with the dice rolls to provide only partial randomness to intermediate outcomes or success/failure magnitude or additional unexpected consequences.

Now, try to think what would happen to the Combat pillar if you resolved everything with a "passive fighting" skill... you would be essentially skipping the combat pillar as a whole, which is perhaps one reason why they have setup certain exploration rules as well as passive skills, to let people who hate exploration to bypass it.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So the three pillars of play are combat, role-playing, and exploration. Combat we discuss a lot and have many rules to make dynamic and exciting, hordes of monsters, reams of magical spells, and numerous tomes of battle equipment. Role-playing is theatric, and we have seen it done with character arcs, accents, and know how it has been long elevated as the height of good Game-Mastering ("Role-play" NOT "ROLL-play.")
But exploration? It's the neglected middle child of the pillars. Why? I think because it's the in-between of interesting things.
It's the trek through the wilderness listening to the DM trying to use purple prose to describe the forest that exists to waste your time between getting the quest from the haughty noble (role-playing) to the bandit hideout (combat). It's the long, featureless corridors that may contain a ho-hum trap (which is likely going to be less dangerous than a single monster of your party's level), but that trap will be avoided with a Passive Perception check you don't even have to roll. That hallway may connect two exciting combat encounters, but the hallway itself is just a line on a flowchart.
Exploration is the session that you're buying supplies for your journey and making preparations, which can be easily avoided with a die roll. ("Did we bring enough food? Here, let me roll randomly. Good, you have enough food.")
How much game time is wasted on exploration? Would the experience be better by simply asking the players: "Do you want to go to Fight A with the troll barbarian or Fight B in the vampire's crypt?" We could speed through literal sessions of actual games that require wilderness travel from the starting town to the dungeon.
But the only advice I've ever seen for improving exploration mode is to use better descriptive phrases, wandering monsters, or have a few skill checks that are going to ultimately have no impact on the game (maybe you lose some hit dice, maybe have to spend a few spell slots, etc.). But even with most of that advice, it's telling you to make exploration mode better by adding combat (wandering monsters).
So what do you think? Am I wrong on this?

I see good exploration as the heart of a great campaign. For a lot of people preparation, planning, that stuff is fun. I think the problem is seeing any aspect of gaming, whether it is described as a pillar or something else, as necessary for every campaign or every playgroup is the problem. A group that wants to focus on drama, might have little use for that kind of exploration detail. But a group that is deep into exploration might care less about drama. Also Role Play and Exploration are two things that go very well together in my experience. Roleplaying isn't just speaking in character, it is also choosing how you character interacts with the world.

 

[reelo]

For those who say exploration —and the ressource management that goes with it— is boring, here's a nice blog post to show the implications and in-game consequences that arise from properly-run exploration:

If Your Torches Burn for only One Hour your NPCs will be More Important

In the Seaward campaign the PCs formed an adventuring company, got a charter from the King, bought an old inn as a home base and, most rec...

harbingergames.blogspot.com

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Now I prefer the system from Into The Unknown, and that has worked even better for me.

What are those?

 

[Fanaelialae]

I think this is the line that divides us. I see nothing with things being wrecked. Like walking away, it's an interesting outcome that opens up repercussions in the game world and consequences that other groups playing in the campaign can exploit.

Just as combat comes with deadly risk, so should exploration. The Deck of Many Things does just that. Adventure at one's own peril.

I don't think that's it.

I love the DoMT for it's chaos factor. It (or a variant) has made an appearance in most of the campaigns I have run, and many of the campaigns I have most enjoyed as a player. (Though, as I've said, I have also seen some promising campaigns that were ended by its introduction.)

Our difference, as far as I can tell, is that you think the vats are a good illustration of what an exploration encounter should be. To the extent that they are fairly open ended (not on rails) I would even agree.

However, although I think it's a perfectly fine encounter, I do not consider it a good example because I think that kind of exploration encounter should be used with discretion. I certainly wouldn't want every other exploration encounter to be a run in with a DoMT-variant, would you?

 

[Bedrockgames]

But the only advice I've ever seen for improving exploration mode is to use better descriptive phrases, wandering monsters, or have a few skill checks that are going to ultimately have no impact on the game (maybe you lose some hit dice, maybe have to spend a few spell slots, etc.). But even with most of that advice, it's telling you to make exploration mode better by adding combat (wandering monsters).

You might try reading Robert Conley's blog entries on running a sandbox campaign. He goes into some great detail in the expanded links at the bottom of the article: How to make a Fantasy Sandbox

 

[Fanaelialae]

What are those?

It's essentially Basic D&D rebuilt using the 5e ruleset. You can find it on DriveThruRPG. If you're just interested in the rules for running exploration, all you need is booklet 4 (Running the Game).

 

[HomegrownHydra]

I agree with those that have said that exploration can be great fun, and that if it isn't it's likely because it was done poorly. I think that some DMs tend to mostly skip over it because they aren't good at it, but by doing so they never get better at it. It becomes a feedback loop.

I used the rules from AiME for a while, and they worked fairly well. Now I prefer the system from Into The Unknown, and that has worked even better for me.

That said, the best DM I know is very good at running exploration, and he pretty much uses just the 5e rules (although he's incorporated the use of a dice oracle of his own devising).

In order to make exploration interesting, you have to provide interesting things for the players to explore/find. If your social encounters were all with the same bland, monotone NPC, they wouldn't be very fun. If every combat is against the same 4 goblins, it would get old in no time.

There needs to be variety, purpose, and challenge to exploration encounters to make them worthwhile. Not every exploration scene needs to feature all three, but without at least one of them it's just pointless filler.

What's the system from Into the Unknown like? What are it's strengths?

 

[Fanaelialae]

What's the system from Into the Unknown like? What are it's strengths?

I'm not necessarily the best person to ask, as I just lifted the exploration rules for use in my 5e game.

That said, it's essentially B/E D&D using the more modern 5e chassis. Demihumans are classes. I think subclasses were removed and the options baked right into the classes themselves. Basically, if you're feeling nostalgic for B/X D&D but don't miss Thac0, it might be for you.

Book 4 is the real gem, IMO. It basically is a how to for procedural play and sandboxing. It's one of the better guides I've seen - reasonably detailed without getting lost in the weeds.

For example, rather than having a simple check for wandering monsters, it has an event die check each watch (period of time) that might result in a wandering monsters, some difficulty that befalls you, or even an offscreen change (ex, the DM might decide that monsters in room C move to room F). It's generated some surprising and interesting outcomes in my games that surprised me, though obviously it does require improvisation on the part of the DM.