D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Lanefan]

The idea of playing your character like your driving a stolen car isn't really about being reckless per se, it's more about leaning hard into whomever your character is without worrying overmuch about 'winning' or surviving. Play the character with integrity and let the chips fall where they may.

Which is about how I generally approach it, except survival is goal one (despite my frequent lack of success at it).

As for playing the character with integrity: despite its unpopularity in these forums, "because it's what the character would do" is ample justification round here for pretty much anything that fits in with a character's established pattern/personality/previous actions.

 

[Fenris-77]

Which is about how I generally approach it, except survival is goal one (despite my frequent lack of success at it).

As for playing the character with integrity: despite its unpopularity in these forums, "because it's what the character would do" is ample justification round here for pretty much anything that fits in with a character's established pattern/personality/previous actions.

I should have been clearer. Survival as a character goal is fine, but that's a very different thing from survival as a player goal. It just needs to be filtered through the character, rather than being a default, cautious, "I want to win" player approach. Even in OSR play, which kind of indexes the latter, it still needs some filtering IMO. YMMV.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

* - I suspect this is why there's frequent complaints about too many PC-playable creatures having darkvision; it too-easily negates this vision challenge at night and-or indoors.

Bingo. Now you're seeing what we're talking about. Just calling out this specific line because it's so on point.

 

[Hussar]

Because it doesn't need detailed mechanical hard-coding. Yes it's abstracted, in that the players themselves aren't trying to cross a flooded river, but as no two situations are the same it only makes sense to leave it to the DM to adjudicate case by case. Mechanical hard-coding would make this process harder, not easier.

For you maybe. Which means you are free to ignore the mechanics. I'm telling you right now, that without that mechanical framework, I simply ignore 99% of exploration in games. And, frankly, most of the players I've played with are perfectly happy to ignore it as well. Any time I've tried to make exploration important, either as a player or a DM, it's been pretty much entirely rejected in favor of simply using class abilities that make exploration a non-issue.

Social interactions don't need detailed mechanical hard-coding either. That "entire abstract system" is only there to replace actual role-playing at the table, and is almost completely unnecessary.

And yet, funnily enough, 5e has them. D&D has had hard coded social mechanics since 3e. Again, you are free to ignore them, but, that doesn't mean that they aren't there.

Combat, on the other hand, does need detailed mechanical hard-coding as - unless you're at a most unusual table - combat has to be completely abstracted.

You're - very wrongly - assuming that popularity and-or importance directly maps to page-count or word-count in the rulebooks.

Which makes me wonder whether people in general are tending toward a similar - and similarly wrong - stance of "Oh, the rules don't bother much with it so it can't be important". This is in error, since about half of the game (the social pillar and a large chunk of the exploration pillar) works better when there aren't detailed rules getting in the way.

Ron Wick once made an excellent point about game design. He asked a designer of a new RPG what his game was about, and the designer replied with this or that thing that you do during the game. To which Ron Wick replied, "No, what is your game ABOUT?" "Hope" was the answer. "Now, where is your "Hope" mechanic" was his advice. To me, if your game doesn't have mechanics to deal with something, then your game isn't about that thing. "Mechanic absent" game design is just free form play by another name. And it should come as zero surprise that when you try to free form, it doesn't work far more often than it does.

 

[Hussar]

Thing is, whenever someone suggests changing the rules as a fix you jump on that too.

Can't have it both ways

Not quite. Every time we say there is a problem, we get told that no problem exists. So, we have to bring up issues to show that the problem exists. To which the goalposts get shifted fifteen feet further on and we're told that no problem exists and if we were just better DM's, we'd have no problems.

Heck, I actually took the time to explain, in pretty good detail how I would fix the issue and got told to basically sit down and shut up because the problem doesn't even exist.

If we could ever get past the "Oh, this problem doesn't really exist" stage, we'd actually be able to move forward. But, instead, we have to faff about endlessly.

 

[Hussar]

The gods have temples, creeds, factions, they have domains. A temple of Chauntea will be different to a temple of Helm. You can find out information about the gods of a campaign in order to better understand the services they can provide or the disciplines they oversee. If you are investigating a murder of a priest of Sune you may find different clues to a priest of Malar. It’s world building. When you find the Spire of the Morning in Myth Drannor you know the priests of Lathander are less likely to screw your than the priests of Cyric you met on the road. If you find a holy symbol of Loviatar in someone’s belt purse it means something different to a holy symbol of Tymora.

Sorry, I might have missed your answer the last time you brought something like this up, but, @TheSword, what of this is an actual challenge?

Remember, when we talk about the Exploration pillar of the game, we're not simply talking about walking around the town, looking at the front of a temple and recognizing that it's a temple of Chauntea. There's no challenge there. There's no game there. That's just DM exposition. Knowing what or who Chauntea is and what she's about is also just exposition. I doubt in a Forgotten Realms game if the DM would even ask for a Religion check for that. It's pretty much just general knowledge.

Note, when @Chaosmancer talked about setting up a settlement, he didn't mean as a DM (I don't think anyway, would seem very strange in context), he means as a player. If the player wants to build a settlement, of some sort. Be it a castle, a town, a port, whatever. Hell, a house. The game has virtually nothing to help you there. There are downtime guidelines for building a home of some sort, but, it's extremely rudimentary.

To give you an idea, in Dragon Heist, the party is intended to gain a house in Waterdeep. It's a major reward for an adventure and most people who've played the module knows what I'm talking about. There's an entire chapter of a five chapter adventure, devoted to fixing up the house. Virtually none of it is from the DMG. There's nearly nothing about building that home that comes from the actual mechanics of D&D. And the rules for running the business are specific to that module too.

If I want to open an inn in Baldur's Gate, for example, where in the DMG should I look for guidance and what guidance does it give me? After all, you are claiming that everything I need is right there in the DMG, if only I'd read it. So, prove it. I want to open an inn in Baldur's Gate. Not a terribly unreasonable thing for an adventuring party to do. So, let's see what you got. Show me how it's done. You may ONLY reference what is in the DMG. No homebrew, no house rules, although, of course, interpretation of rules is perfectly reasonable.

 

[Azzy]

What would I actually want? Well, to be honest, 4e does do this a lot better than 5e with it's skill challenge mechanics.

It's a shame that 5e didn't bring over 4e's skill challenges. I keep hoping that in the next Xanathar's equivalent, the DM section will have more meaty content like that and other goodies.

I guess what would make me happy would be either of the following two things, or, even better, both:

1. Advice in the DMG that is actually concrete about creating exploration challenges that takes into consideration the abilities that a group can easily have. Many of the challenges in the DMG are so easily trivialized by very basic character options.

This would be excellent.

2. A skill system that is actually more than just simple pass/fail. One system I recall from a game I used to play (Sufficiently Advanced - an SF game) gave characters a pool of resources to draw upon when attempting something. If you failed, your pool was reduced. Run out of the resource pool and you can't try to do that thing any more. So, in D&D terms, I'd base it on your stats. You want to climb a mountain? Ok, here's your pool based on your Str score (modified by athletics skill). Every time you fail, you do not make progress and your pool is reduced. Fail too many times, or simply give up before you run out of resources, and you have to wait until those resources replenish over time to attempt again. The system that that game used gave the challenge it's own dice pool and modifiers, so it was always contested rolls to win each attempt. Deplete the challenge's pool and you succeed.

To me, even a very simple system like that would go SO far towards making exploration actually interesting in the game. Instead of pass/fail rolls or just bypassing the challenge entirely, you have to actually leverage your character resources each time. Additionally, put it on the player to narrate events. You know how big the pool of the opposition is. You know how much you've depleted it. Tell me how close you are to completion. Or, conversely, let the DM narrate. I'm not terribly fussy on that part. I just like the idea of engaging the player that way.

While I know you want an official system, it does seem you've got something you can easily houserule in for now that does the job until (if?) such a time that some sort of official rules appear.

 

[Aldarc]

Snarky answer aside, I would point out that it's certainly not a zero sum game. Me getting an abstract system for resolving this sort of thing (as 4e did quite nicely) does not take anything away from anyone else. For those who want to freeform things and not get bogged down in mechanics, you are most certainly free to do so. For me, I get a nice crunchy system that makes an aspect of the game more interesting to me.

I differ in that I don't think exploration necessarily needs to be a "nice crunchy system." This admittedly may be splitting hairs, but I do think that it's worth considering whether exploration and social pillars should be more structured.

For example, there is a chapter in AiME on Journeys that basically takes you through the steps: (1) Embarkation, (2) Journey Events and Task Rolls, and (3) The Arrival Phase. It also includes a helpful summary of the rules:

• Players assign tasks and plan route.
• Loremaster determines Peril Rating of the journey.
• The Guide makes an Embarkation Roll: modified by the Guide’s Survival proficiency bonus plus half their Wisdom bonus minus the Peril Rating.
• The Loremaster either relays the result, or optionally hints at it
• Determine the number of Journey Events.
• Events are created by rolling a d12, potentially modified by the Embarkation result.
• Events are played through, noting down the result for reference.
• The Arrival roll (d8) is made, and results are applied.

That's what I think too. Exploration might not be the "worst pillar" but it's by far the one that demands the most from the DM.

This exact point was made much earlier in the thread, and I agree with it here like I did earlier.

The issue is, however, that some people are happy with how it is (or see no wrong with it) while others wish it was more structured and/or less demanding of the DM. However, I would also add that from the player side, it also helps in establishing play expectations. It's easier, for example, for me to make more informed play decisions if I know there is a play process than if the DM is just winging-it.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, I'm with @Aldarc , I don't think it needs to be crunchy. It just needs a rigorous and well thought out play loop. Other games have managed it fine, it's not rocket science. Unless we're talking Spelljammer, at which point it might be rocket science.

 

[Hussar]

For example, there is a chapter in AiME on Journeys that basically takes you through the steps: (1) Embarkation, (2) Journey Events and Task Rolls, and (3) The Arrival Phase. It also includes a helpful summary of the rules:

That actually looks pretty nice. Something like that would make me a happy camper.