D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Asisreo]

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.

When it comes to time skips, I avoid forgetting downtime since characters aren't just sitting on their arse for 2 whole months with absolutely nothing going on.

 

[Scott Christian]

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)

That is a tough thing to accomplish and make it not seemed force. (Ever see the ending of Game of Thrones? ) If you pull it off, more power to you. Great work.

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.

I hear you. I thought when you said it is the styory, you meant that's what you were doing - a dungeon crawl for a campaign.

* - 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 have had games like this too. Memory is a powerful tool. I do find it more memorable when there is a story attached. And the weaker the story, the weaker the meaning of all the trials of the adventure. But, that's just me (and probably just me at this stage of my gaming life).
There is something in your quote, the bolded part, that has always made me wonder; like since I was 15 and playing wonder. With combats so often or long (a recent thread btw), when players forget their actual objective, why doesn't the DM recognize that as the litmus test for a problem in the story? If someone is in a campaign and they have no idea why they are at a specific place or why they are killing something, that seems like there is a storytelling issue. I mean, I love a good fight scene as much as the next person, but I wouldn't only read the fight scenes out of a book. I need to know the characters motives. (Again, just for a campaign, not a solo one-shot.)

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.

Sounds good. If it works for you - !

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.

I feel you. Too many ideas sounds great, but man can it become overwhelming.

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.

Yes, a piece of Saltmarsh was just used by our DM. He uses snippets as well. I'd imagine it's great to do so. Strange that I have always been an all or nothing person; I either create the whole thing from scratch or run a premade adventure. I ran part of Hoard not too long ago. It was for people who had never played D&D before. They enjoyed it. Then I let one of the players take over. That tanked really quickly - partly because they never did their homework.

 

[Undrave]

Had some more time to think on it and...

I'm gonna say Exploration sucks because Skill Checks are boring. You find a way to apply you best score, ask the DM if you can roll for this or that, then you roll and maybe you do it... maybe you don't. Who knows!

Using strategy in combat? Fun!

Being clever in roleplaying section? Hamming it up with your acting? Fun!

Rolling for skills to not get lost? BORING! Choose wich door to open first? BORING. Checking the walls for secret door? BORING. Blindly choosing between two tunnels in a cave with no clue as to where they lead and encountering a monster? BORING. Choosing between lock picking or breaking down the door, but eventually doing both because your thievery tools roll was a 1 and then nothing happens anyway? BORING.

Exploration sucks when there's no choice to weight out or choice that matter. If your choice don't matter, it's not exploration, it's tedium and it's BORING. And if there's only one obvious choice then it's not a choice at all. It's like playing rock-paper-scissor, but you always know what your opponent is doing. You COULD choose the wrong thing but it'd be stupid... and that's not fun.

There.

You can spice up the tedium with some role playing but in general it's not that exciting.

 

[Lanefan]

That is a tough thing to accomplish and make it not seemed force. (Ever see the ending of Game of Thrones? ) If you pull it off, more power to you. Great work.

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

I have had games like this too. Memory is a powerful tool. I do find it more memorable when there is a story attached. And the weaker the story, the weaker the meaning of all the trials of the adventure. But, that's just me (and probably just me at this stage of my gaming life).
There is something in your quote, the bolded part, that has always made me wonder; like since I was 15 and playing wonder. With combats so often or long (a recent thread btw), when players forget their actual objective, why doesn't the DM recognize that as the litmus test for a problem in the story? If someone is in a campaign and they have no idea why they are at a specific place or why they are killing something, that seems like there is a storytelling issue. I mean, I love a good fight scene as much as the next person, but I wouldn't only read the fight scenes out of a book. I need to know the characters motives. (Again, just for a campaign, not a solo one-shot.)

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.

Yes, a piece of Saltmarsh was just used by our DM. He uses snippets as well. I'd imagine it's great to do so. Strange that I have always been an all or nothing person; I either create the whole thing from scratch or run a premade adventure. I ran part of Hoard not too long ago. It was for people who had never played D&D before. They enjoyed it. Then I let one of the players take over. That tanked really quickly - partly because they never did their homework.

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.

 

[Lanefan]

When it comes to time skips, I avoid forgetting downtime since characters aren't just sitting on their arse for 2 whole months with absolutely nothing going on.

Of course; and same here.

The show, however, didn't have that option as it had a limited running time.

 

[Asisreo]

Had some more time to think on it and...

I'm gonna say Exploration sucks because Skill Checks are boring. You find a way to apply you best score, ask the DM if you can roll for this or that, then you roll and maybe you do it... maybe you don't. Who knows!

Using strategy in combat? Fun!

Being clever in roleplaying section? Hamming it up with your acting? Fun!

Rolling for skills to not get lost? BORING! Choose wich door to open first? BORING. Checking the walls for secret door? BORING. Blindly choosing between two tunnels in a cave with no clue as to where they lead and encountering a monster? BORING. Choosing between lock picking or breaking down the door, but eventually doing both because your thievery tools roll was a 1 and then nothing happens anyway? BORING.

Exploration sucks when there's no choice to weight out or choice that matter. If your choice don't matter, it's not exploration, it's tedium and it's BORING. And if there's only one obvious choice then it's not a choice at all. It's like playing rock-paper-scissor, but you always know what your opponent is doing. You COULD choose the wrong thing but it'd be stupid... and that's not fun.

There.

You can spice up the tedium with some role playing but in general it's not that exciting.

Subjectively incorrect. I don't know how many times I have to tell people that thinking isn't really as fun for alot of people. Some people think because they have to to live and want to put no further effort into their mind.

Also, some people love having stuff at the roll of dice. That's why people will literally play games with random chance as the premise like dice or poker.

 

[Undrave]

Subjectively incorrect. I don't know how many times I have to tell people that thinking isn't really as fun for alot of people. Some people think because they have to to live and want to put no further effort into their mind.

Also, some people love having stuff at the roll of dice. That's why people will literally play games with random chance as the premise like dice or poker.

I dunno what kind of Poker you're playing, but Poker isn't purely random chance, there's strategy and bluffing involved.

Most dice games worth playing (i.e. not Chutes and Ladders or Candyland) will have an element of push-your-luck where you can reroll certain dice. Yahtzee for exemple... Combat in DnD is also about pushing your luck, and you rarely lose everything on a single die roll, meaning you can manipulate outcomes by using your abilities or the right strategy.

A skill check in DnD is not actually a fun dice roll because it's a binary yes-no result. Boiled down to it, it's just a flip of a coin with different odds because of your stats and proficiency.

Ironically, I actually LIKE my characters to have skill. I like what they say about that character.

Also, the character who is supposed to be the best at Exploration, the Ranger, is SO good at it... that you don't actually have to interface with that pillar at all. If you're in your favored terrain you're basically pressing 'Auto Win' and you don't have to make any decision and there's no risk.

 

[Asisreo]

I dunno what kind of Poker you're playing, but Poker isn't purely random chance, there's strategy and bluffing involved.

Not top-level competitive poker, that's for sure. There's strategy, sure, but you aren't getting anywhere with bluffs and strats if your luck isn't there in casual poker.

Most dice games worth playing (i.e. not Chutes and Ladders or Candyland) will have an element of push-your-luck where you can reroll certain dice. Yahtzee for exemple... Combat in DnD is also about pushing your luck, and you rarely lose everything on a single die roll, meaning you can manipulate outcomes by using your abilities or the right strategy.

I assume you're the expert on what games are worth playing and what aren't? Re-rolling doesn't take away luck, it just increases your success.

A skill check in DnD is not actually a fun dice roll because it's a binary yes-no result. Boiled down to it, it's just a flip of a coin with different odds because of your stats and proficiency.

You didn't provide why binary results are not fun. You gave your opinion in the form of a fact.

 

[Undrave]

Not top-level competitive poker, that's for sure. There's strategy, sure, but you aren't getting anywhere with bluffs and strats if your luck isn't there in casual poker.


I assume you're the expert on what games are worth playing and what aren't? Re-rolling doesn't take away luck, it just increases your success.


You didn't provide why binary results are not fun. You gave your opinion in the form of a fact.

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.

 

[Asisreo]

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.

Never said it was pure luck, but it's primarily luck. Something of pure luck would be slot machines or pachinko.

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.

You make the choice to play the game. In terms of D&D, you made the choice to attempt the action, that's the influence you've made.

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.

Cool, but you should understand some people are playing D&D to gamble and that's the type of fun they ever want to have. Some people suck at strategizing and have conniptions hearing the word "chess" because they hate having to think hard to win.