D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Bill Zebub]

In my nearly 25 years of playing D&D before discovering ENWorld I'd never heard the term and really hadn't encountered the concept.

Ah, to be able to go back to those days...

I don't think I heard the term before reading internet forums, either, but discovering it really just put terminology and a framework around unresolved issues that had been lurking. I certainly had discussions/debates about how certain choices, by both players and DMs, impacted the game for better or worse. But a lot of it was instinctive, and lacked well-thought-out explanations for why certain things felt wrong. And certainly we weren't using terms like "metagaming" and "player agency".

 

[Lanefan]

I don't think I heard the term before reading internet forums, either, but discovering it really just put terminology and a framework around unresolved issues that had been lurking. I certainly had discussions/debates about how certain choices, by both players and DMs, impacted the game for better or worse. But a lot of it was instinctive, and lacked well-thought-out explanations for why certain things felt wrong. And certainly we weren't using terms like "metagaming" and "player agency".

We had metagame as a concept since very early on - many arguments were fought (and, thankfully, mostly won) to reinforce the idea that the player shouldn't act upon (or better yet, shouldn't even know) information that player's PC didn't and couldn't know. The term itself came later, but still well before any ENWorld contact.

And we had loads of rules discussions back in the day (and still do, now) as we slowly rebuilt 1e D&D to our liking; but player agency as a concept never really entered into it all that much.

 

[Aldarc]

In my nearly 25 years of playing D&D before discovering ENWorld I'd never heard the term and really hadn't encountered the concept.

Ah, to be able to go back to those days...

No surprises there. A lot of this came out of or around video game discussions, which is far more articulate about its game design principles than TTRPGs. But I definitely heard discussiosn of player agency about TTRPGs at my table often surrounding the illusion of player choice, GM coersion/force, etc.

 

[mrpopstar]

No surprises there. A lot of this came out of or around video game discussions, which is far more articulate about its game design principles than TTRPGs. But I definitely heard discussiosn of player agency about TTRPGs at my table often surrounding the illusion of player choice, GM coersion/force, etc.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Okay. That this stuff comes from video games makes a lot of sense.

I don't play video games.

 

[Aldarc]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Okay. That this stuff comes from video games makes a lot of sense.

I don't play video games.

Even the term "sandbox" apparently was borrowed by TTRPG writers from video game jargon to describe a style of TTRPG game.

 

[mrpopstar]

Even the term "sandbox" apparently was borrowed by TTRPG writers from video game jargon to describe a style of TTRPG game.

Interesting.

 

[Lanefan]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Okay. That this stuff comes from video games makes a lot of sense.

I don't play video games.

Ditto. Video-game discussions are foreign territory for me.

Though, @Aldarc , the term "sandbox" as a campaign or setting style has been around for ages, if not so formally defined as now. I certainly remember running across it - and even using it - back in the 1980s.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Fair enough.

Although I think I would still file it under "puzzle-solving" not "exploration". Unless "exploration" is, by definition, everything that isn't combat or social interaction.

P.S. Although, still, I would prefer to be given some reason to investigate the vats, such as there doesn't seem to be any other exit, or we found a hint somewhere that the vats are the key to our mission. If I'm in a spooky, dangerous place trying to achieve some goal, I would play most of my characters as focused on getting to an objective and not messing about with potentially dangerous kit. I could imagine a character concept that just can't help themselves with stuff like that, but it would be the exception not the rule.

I think it's different people playing for different reasons. My current group of players argue about these things quite a lot.

"The evil cult is going to sacrifice the innocent villagers any minute now! We have to move!"
"But the DM mentioned there's a thing in the corner! We have to go and poke it and see if anything happens!"

 

[Lanefan]

But I definitely heard discussiosn of player agency about TTRPGs at my table often surrounding the illusion of player choice, GM coersion/force, etc.

The nearest we ever really got to this was players and DMs occasionally discussing "lead-'em-by-the-nose" adventures or series - more a discussion around railroading, really.

 

[Aldarc]

Ditto. Video-game discussions are foreign territory for me.

Though, @Aldarc , the term "sandbox" as a campaign or setting style has been around for ages, if not so formally defined as now. I certainly remember running across it - and even using it - back in the 1980s.

Sometimes we have false memories about the past. There were records of older TTRPG discussions from that time where "sandbox" was more analogous to "campaign setting" rather than the style of play that forms its current usage, which came later.