D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[iserith]

It was an idea from the Angry GM. The idea is that, as time passes in the game world, the GM adds dice into a bowl. If I remember the idea right, when there a six dice, the GM rolls them, and any show up a 1, you get a complication, like a wandering monster.

Basically, if players are more likely to run into monsters or whatever the more time they spend mucking about, you want a visceral way for them to understand how much time they're spending on different tasks. It's a tool to create tension and drive them to action when there is a time pressure.

I'm not sure it's the right tool for encouraging exploration, since it's whole purpose is to get the players moving, and spend less time poking at things.

Tools like this encourage smart play during exploration by introducing urgency, just like the threat of death encourages smart play in combat. Incentivizing exploration is done through other means like the opportunity to find important or necessary clues, fantastical places, treasure, secret doors to safety or shortcuts, and so on. (It might also be incentivized via non-combat challenge XP or milestone XP.)

 

[iserith]

My contributions here have taken the form of, "hm, actually there's guidance for that," to which the response is, "no, that's up to the Dungeon Master!" And if I say, "as the DM, this is what I do," the response is, "well there is no guidance!"



There's a great deal of dissonance between "rulings not rules" and "exploration is the worst because rulings."

It's really very strange to me. The rules are there. We've shown this over and over. Some people have even said "They should have a rule like X" and in many cases we've shown there already is one!

I think there's also some kind of conflict regarding the existence of a rule and the DM's right to employ it or not. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I sense a disconnect with some posters. That the DM may not use the rule doesn't mean there isn't one or that it isn't a rule. For example, I'm likely not going to make the rules for starvation a thing in my city-based adventure since food is just wrapped up into lifestyle expenses and (in this example) the PCs have plenty of gold to cover it. So that's handwaved - it's never going to come up. But there are, in fact, rules for starvation.

 

[Ovinomancer]

My contributions here have taken the form of, "hm, actually there's guidance for that," to which the response is, "no, that's up to the Dungeon Master!" And if I say, "as the DM, this is what I do," the response is, "well there is no guidance!"



There's a great deal of dissonance between "rulings not rules" and "exploration is the worst because rulings."

This is an extremely poor restatement of various posts. The actual response is you saying that it's in the rules, but that the rules either provide multiple options for that thing or give some suggestions but then directly leave it to the GM. The point being that "in the rules" actually encompasses a pretty broad range of possibility and not just the one you have selected for your table as the GM. The next table over can have a completely different approach and still ve just as RAW as you.

 

[Aldarc]

It's really very strange to me. The rules are there. We've shown this over and over. Some people have even said "They should have a rule like X" and in many cases we've shown there already is one!

I think there's also some kind of conflict regarding the existence of a rule and the DM's right to employ it or not. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I sense a disconnect with some posters. That the DM may not use the rule doesn't mean there isn't one or that it isn't a rule. For example, I'm likely not going to make the rules for starvation a thing in my city-based adventure since food is just wrapped up into lifestyle expenses and (in this example) the PCs have plenty of gold to cover it. So that's handwaved - it's never going to come up. But there are, in fact, rules for starvation.

I would add one caveat though: the existence of a rule doesn't say anything about the quality of the rule. So the "suckiness" may not just be about "does a rule exist?" but also "is the rule good for its purpose?"

 

[Ovinomancer]

I don’t recall anyone saying “iron clad.” All I recall seeing are people saying there are rules that cover it. We both showed you rules.

Thar rule being "the GM decides."

 

[Ovinomancer]

I would add one caveat though: the existence of a rule doesn't say anything about the quality of the rule. So the "suckiness" may not just be about "does a rule exist?" but also "is the rule good for its purpose?"

And thus the exquisite agony and terrible beauty of "the GM decides."

 

[iserith]

I would add one caveat though: the existence of a rule doesn't say anything about the quality of the rule. So the "suckiness" may not just be about "does a rule exist?" but also "is the rule good for its purpose?"

I'll add one more to that: A lot of people play RPGs a certain way, game to game, rarely changing. That's particularly true of D&D in my experience. Lots of people I know tried to run each edition the same to varying levels of success. So when they encounter certain rules, those rules "suck" because while it may fit perfectly well with the game system if the game is played according to the way that game is pushing play, it doesn't work well with how they're choosing to play the game. Rather than examine how they are designing and running or playing games, they point to the rules as the problem.

Having run afoul of this in my own games when converting from 3e to 4e, I took a different approach: I design my adventures and games according to what the rules say. And voila everything works. My exploration pillar is based around what is in the 5e PHB and DMG, so I have no issues. (One more caveat: Just because the adventure or campaign works well when designed with the rules in mind, doesn't mean it is necessarily a fun game experience for all players. Some folks have a visceral reaction to resource tracking during travel, for example. No rule is likely to change that.)

 

[robus]

What's a time pool? Can't find this term appearing before in this thread.

He’s got his issues, but there’s no denying the elegance of this: It Cannot Be Seen, Cannot Be Smelt: Hacking Time in D&D

 

[iserith]

He’s got his issues, but there’s no denying the elegance of this: It Cannot Be Seen, Cannot Be Smelt: Hacking Time in D&D

I personally use a very complicated system involving hashmarks on a piece of paper, each one representing 10 minutes of game time passed. When I get to the sixth one, rather than just another vertical line, I use a special flourish in which I draw a diagonal line across the five vertical lines, meaning that an hour has passed.

 

[mrpopstar]

This is an extremely poor restatement of various posts. The actual response is you saying that it's in the rules, but that the rules either provide multiple options for that thing or give some suggestions but then directly leave it to the GM. The point being that "in the rules" actually encompasses a pretty broad range of possibility and not just the one you have selected for your table as the GM. The next table over can have a completely different approach and still ve just as RAW as you.

I'm not trying to out-rules as written anybody. That's the thing. It's confusing as to why these conversations have to be adversarial.