D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Lanefan]

One is something I actually want to watch and the second one is something I avoid like the plague? Heck, I LOVE watching NFL games with all the down time removed. Watch the entire game in about 70 minutes? Yes please, give me more of that.

Sorry, not sure what this has to do with your point.

Not sure how to put it, really, but to me the highlights-only version loses something. Maybe it seems too pre-packaged? Maybe it's as if someone else is making the choice for me as to what bits of the game I get to see, instead of giving me the option of watching the whole thing or of choosing what I watch?

If I want the quickie recap then the highlights-only version is fine. But for me it's a poor substitute for having seen the whole game including the bits between the highlights - which in many cases lead to the highlights being what they are. In baseball, for example, the highlight version always has the back-to-back home runs but doesn't show the two preceding ten-pitch at-bats that, while not resulting in hits, tired out the pitcher such that he served up those two home run balls.

Simply removing the down time e.g. commercials and between-play bits in an NFL game is fine if you still get to see every play. Here in Canada they've been rerunning various classic hockey games like this during the lockdown. They do two versions - one's an hour long and skips quite a bit of the actual play; the other is two hours long and you get to see the whole game but without the intermissions and with some play-stoppage downtime skipped, and with fewer commercials than the original broadcast would have had. I far prefer the two-hour version over the one-hour.

The highlights-only baseball shows I'm referring to are 30-minute packages that don't show every pitch by any means; they show only the pitch where a batter strikes out or gets a hit or something odd or contribersial happens - or the last ball if the batter walks. Sometimes they skip entire innings if it's 3-up 3-down.

With D&D it's the same for me: I want the whole experience that makes the highlights what they are, not just the highlights and nothing else.

 

[Hussar]

I remember when hockey games used to push three and sometimes four hours because of fight stoppages. There definitely can be too much of a good thing. But, yeah, it's all about taste. I would rather shove pins into my eyeballs than watch a baseball game anymore. I can't really decide which is more soul deadening - MLB or F1 racing or soccer. Any of the three are a complete non-starter for me anymore. Great if I want to have a nicely timed nap I suppose.

But, yeah, we're not going to agree on this @Lanefan. Your preferred campaign and my preferred campaign are just too different.

 

[Lanefan]

I appreciate the standard procedure in a game. I think we have all fallen into it at one time or another. But what I find, is there are players that always seem to want to break from the procedure. Maybe it's not thorough enough or they feel like they are missing something? Maybe they don't like the repetitiveness of it? Maybe they are antsy because in the procedure set up the bard is the one always rolling? Or a combination of all three. I really don't know, but as much as I have seen standard procedures start, I have seen almost all fall apart. Then it becomes a huge time sink.

Which, if the players are the ones who can't stick to an SOP, the DM kinda just has to live with. And if the players then complain that things are going too slow, show them where the solution lies by holding up a mirror.

For my part, in the end it doesn't matter to me-as-DM whether they finish the adventure in two sessions or thirty...with one exception, that being if I'm running multiple potentially-interacting parties side-along and I have to worry about lining them up in game time, a slow group can cause headaches. (as can a particularly efficient group)

I do appreciate this. A good dungeon crawl, survival, dungeon roleplay. (That sounds naughty, but not intended.) Mapping and random encounters awesome. Field testing magic items - hilarious! All good stuff. But I have two buts to this:

• For most dungeons, the story lies elsewhere. The dungeon may help tell it, but it is hard to have an entire storyline take place in a dungeon. I get it, there are exceptions. But, for the most part, it is a piece of a setting that helps tell the story. So if it just that, I don't understand the need to spend six months on it (if you played twice a month). I feel like the same thing could be accomplished in two sessions.
• I understand that the dungeon is the actual story. But if the characters are travelling through a forest, is that the actual story? If they are finding a pass through the mountains, is that the actual story? If they are hanging out in a city, is that the actual story? Or make it even smaller, if they visit a huge tavern, is the tavern the actual story? Or are these things accomplished in a few sessions?

In order:

1 - Most dungeons are, in one way or another, part of a larger story. An analogy is that a single game is part of a sports team's season, if each game was of an uncertain length and perhaps involving different elements. While the team is playing a game it is, in theory, focused on the game at hand; and only afterwards pays attention to how the game affected their place in the standings and-or their season.

Same for an adventure. In the here-and-now the focus is on the adventure at hand, for as long as that may take. Afterwards, you can worry about how it lines up with other story elements.

2 - A forest, or a mountain pass, or a city - each can be every bit as much the actual story as a dungeon, as each can be (or be part of) an adventure. Put another way, for these purposes I'm defining a "dungeon" as anything done in significant detail, usually because it involves significant risk. A dungeon crawl is almost always done in detail. An adventure in a forest or mountain pass* or city, ditto; as opposed to just passing through or hanging around in one.

* - in the game I play in we had an adventure once that consisted pretty much of just trying to travel through a mountain pass and clear out some dangers. Something like 8 sessions, three PC deaths, and a whole lot of blood-and-guts later we finally made it, only to realize we'd rather missed what we were there for and had to go back. A few more sessions later we'd figured it out, helped immensely by having already dealt with 95% of the risk. Which makes me think - I've no idea now, five years later, what if anything that adventure had to do with any ongoing story; and I'm fine with that. What I remember more clearly (and a bit fondly, even though my PCs spent the trip getting whaled on!) are some key elements and events that happened in the adventure.

I appreciate a DM that just lets the players choose whatever path they want. To let one arc drop and be replaced by another. It takes skill and a lot of work to do it well.

IME the trick is to have more than one in the hopper, and drop hooks for several. Then, if for some reason one story falters, the groundwork's already been done for a few others.

(Side Note: The ones making stuff up off the top of their head always seems to become a cluster after a few months.)

Agreed.

Winging it is fine for a while of one has to, but unless one is far better at on-the-fly notetaking than I am it's a recipe for disaster in the long run.

I have a DM right now that is the best I have ever seen at this style of play. But what I see from the players' side is restlessness. There may be infinite objectives out there for our characters, but if all of them are going to play out with or without us, and our choices only influences one or two, then it always feels like a losing battle or we always feel like we are behind.

It can feel that way, and I'm guilty of this too.

Comes from having too many ideas and not enough nights in the week to play them all out, I guess.

Not saying this is your table, it is just my experiences with this style of play. In the end, it is the reason the thousands of published adventures exist - to complete a story arc.

Published adventure paths, you mean? If so, yes, though they both assume and promote a somewhat different style of play than I'm seeking.

Published individual adventures may or may not have anything to do with a story arc, or may help it, or may hinder it. One example is an adventure-path-like series I embedded into my current campaign. Was going to be five adventures but a sixth got tacked on; the first, second, fourth and sixth were homebrew modules, the third and fifth were published TSR-era classics that just happened to really fit well with what I had in mind.

 

[Lanefan]

I remember when hockey games used to push three and sometimes four hours because of fight stoppages.

I love those games!

I can't really decide which is more soul deadening - MLB or F1 racing or soccer. Any of the three are a complete non-starter for me anymore. Great if I want to have a nicely timed nap I suppose.

Never been an F-1 fan (or car racing of any sort, come to that). I'll watch baseball or gridiron football if it's on, and I'll seek out soccer if a team I care about is playing. And I'll seek out hockey (which starts again on Saturday! ).

If I want a sport to completely switch my mind off there's always golf.

But, yeah, we're not going to agree on this @Lanefan. Your preferred campaign and my preferred campaign are just too different.

Guess not - which is a shame in one way: I suspect you're a pretty good DM and it'd be interesting to sit at your (real-world!) table sometime and see how it went.

 

[Oofta]

The difference between Indiana Jones and a D&D campaign is that an Indy movie has less than three hours to tell its whole story and thus is forced to stick to the highlights, where a D&D campaign has an open-ended amount of time and thus can delve deeper into things.

Same thing, in a way, as watching a baseball game condensed down to 30 minutes of highlights or watching the whole game as it is played.

Our current group can only gets together once a month, so I tend to compress a lot stuff (particularly travel) as well. I generally do the dotted line travel as well with the occasionally "you get ambushed and have to take cover in a cave that ends up being..." side-story.

But different strokes for different folks. I don't remember the last time I ran a traditional dungeon crawl either while I still have a lot of non-combat activity including a mix of investigation/social/problem solving.

 

[Haffrung]

I wonder if there is a negative coordination between players who savor the heroic fantasy* aspect of the game and enjoyment of exploration.

I think that's part of it. Some players want D&D to play like a fantasy novel. Some want it to be more like an exploration expedition or commando strike. D&D is a big tent that supports several playstyles. The expedition pillar is a nod to a particular style.

However, exploration does serve a dramatic purpose too. Even heroic fantasy novels don't just skip from dramatic conflict to dramatic conflict. They feature scenes of suspense, immersion, and travel. If the protagonists set out to reach a fabled site in a remote location, it's dramatically unsatisfying to have them just show up at that locale in the next scene. The author shows that the location is remote and difficult to reach by including scenes of travel, of difficulties the protagonists much overcome, and of the exotic terrain they traverse.

One of complaints about the last two seasons of Game of Thrones is that after spending several seasons demonstrating that Westeros and Essos were vast places where travel was arduous and lengthy, the characters seemed to teleport all over the world.

 

[Lanefan]

Our current group can only gets together once a month, so I tend to compress a lot stuff (particularly travel) as well. I generally do the dotted line travel as well with the occasionally "you get ambushed and have to take cover in a cave that ends up being..." side-story.

Fair enough. I base my thoughts on weekly play, which is what I'm used to.

But different strokes for different folks. I don't remember the last time I ran a traditional dungeon crawl either while I still have a lot of non-combat activity including a mix of investigation/social/problem solving.

I'm running Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth right now, and it don't get much more dungeon-crawly than that! That said, there's certainly a problem-solving element to that module as well...

 

[Lanefan]

One of complaints about the last two seasons of Game of Thrones is that after spending several seasons demonstrating that Westeros and Essos were vast places where travel was arduous and lengthy, the characters seemed to teleport all over the world.

Agreed, though I suspect the real mistake lay in not doing more to indicate how much time had passed between scenes. Even an occasional "2 months later..." at the bottom of the screen in a new scene would have been enough to tell the viewer a bunch of time had passed since the last scene; and we could then assume said time had been spent in travel.

Except for Daenerys, of course, whose Dragons can take her pretty much anywhere in just a few days.

 

[Lanefan]

One other thought I had regarding exploration: if you do individual xp where only the characters that do stuff earn xp for it (like I do), then skipping over the exploration bits risks shortchanging those classes who do their best work in exploring: Rangers, Thieves, Rogues, scouts of any kind, etc.

Just like skipping over the social bits would hose Bards and other face-y types, or skipping over the fighty bits would hose the warriors.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Agreed, though I suspect the real mistake lay in not doing more to indicate how much time had passed between scenes. Even an occasional "2 months later..." at the bottom of the screen in a new scene would have been enough to tell the viewer a bunch of time had passed since the last scene; and we could then assume said time had been spent in travel.

Except for Daenerys, of course, whose Dragons can take her pretty much anywhere in just a few days.

That would have certainly helped.