D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Hussar]

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.

Yeah, just to be clear, I do agree here. I don't necessarily need a Star Fleet Battles level of crunchiness. Like I said, the 4e rules were pretty solid (eventually) and would work perfectly fine in 5e. Heck, I just ran the Chaos Scar campaign in 5e and used all the skill challenges pretty much as written (adjusting the DC's to fit better with bounded accuracy) and they worked perfectly fine. That Adventures in Middle Earth system above is another great example.

Like a lot of discussions, it helps to look at the bigger picture rather than getting bogged down in details of examples. I really don't think anyone on the "Exploration is problematic" side of the fence is looking for a fifteen page set of rules with thirty-seven different reference tables. But, again, there's a lot of space between, as I said, Star Fleet Battles level crunch and the, IMO, very sparse rules that 5e lays out.

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't have issues with Exploration, but I run a tight action-adjudication-results loop no matter what I play, and that takes care of most of the broad strokes in any system provided I have some random tables lying about.

 

[TheSword]

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.

Mystery is a challenge. They may not result in death but they can be succeeded or failed. Holy symbols are clues and signposts because the game has well defined gods. Not all rules involve a dice roll. Though if you want a more defined system than that, Theros has the piety rules.

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.

Speak to your DM and use some common sense.

The absence of rules in one specific part of a theoretically infinite pillar doesn’t mean there is lack of rules in general. The lack of combat stats for platypus doesn’t mean the game lacks combat stats.

 

[tetrasodium]

Mystery is a challenge. They may not result in death but they can be succeeded or failed. Holy symbols are clues and signposts because the game has well defined gods. Not all rules involve a dice roll. Though if you want a more defined system than that, Theros has the piety rules.


Speak to your DM and use some common sense.

The absence of rules in one specific part of a theoretically infinite pillar doesn’t mean there is lack of rules in general. The lack of combat stats for platypus doesn’t mean the game lacks combat stats.

with exploration though, there are rules, the important ones however basically amount to "which is high enough that most characters don’t usually have to worry about it"* & automatically succeed at these other things to ignore any constraints they might impose

* Yes that's an actual quote from the phb.

 

[Eubani]

One thing I would like to raise seeing as it is always put forward as an answer is that time limits can only be used so many times before they feel contrived or an admittance to a lack of other answers. I have played with a DM who put time limits on everything and it got to the point where we took our time just to screw with him and teach a lesson.

 

[TheSword]

with exploration though, there are rules, the important ones however basically amount to "which is high enough that most characters don’t usually have to worry about it"* & automatically succeed at these other things to ignore any constraints they might impose

* Yes that's an actual quote from the phb.

The reference isn’t clear so I can’t really put what youve said into context.

 

[Fanaelialae]

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.

Interesting. "Driving it like a stolen car" seems like a strange choice of phrase to me in that case. I understand that phrase to mean that you don't care whether you total the "car" since it isn't yours; in fact, you might intentionally crash it for fun. But it doesn't sound like either of you intend it that way. That's what threw me off. It sounds like we actually take a fairly similar approach to playing characters. Thanks for taking the time to clarify your meaning.

 

[Hussar]

Mystery is a challenge. They may not result in death but they can be succeeded or failed. Holy symbols are clues and signposts because the game has well defined gods. Not all rules involve a dice roll. Though if you want a more defined system than that, Theros has the piety rules.


Speak to your DM and use some common sense.

The absence of rules in one specific part of a theoretically infinite pillar doesn’t mean there is lack of rules in general. The lack of combat stats for platypus doesn’t mean the game lacks combat stats.

Wow, nice dodge. Did you break anything doing that?

Mystery is a challenge, that's true. However, mystery is mostly a social challenge. The exploration portion of it is generally easily resolved by spells, of which there are many and easily used.

But, that's beside the point. You claimed that the DMG has everything I need to run an exploration pillar. Building a house or a tavern is a pretty basic thing. Why can't you point me to the DMG rules for this?

 

[TheSword]

Wow, nice dodge. Did you break anything doing that?

Mystery is a challenge, that's true. However, mystery is mostly a social challenge. The exploration portion of it is generally easily resolved by spells, of which there are many and easily used.

But, that's beside the point. You claimed that the DMG has everything I need to run an exploration pillar. Building a house or a tavern is a pretty basic thing. Why can't you point me to the DMG rules for this?

I don’t believe mystery does need to be a social challenge. You can have a mystery without engaging with any other people at all. I gave an example of the haunted house earlier in the thread. Magic can help - divination etc, but in the example I gave there was no solution but to go room to room and start investigating.

We had a similar situation in our last adventure session. 3 braziers radiating conjugation magic. Two had small quantities of gem dust around the rim. There was a secret door behind the third. A large black pool of inky liquid surrounded by 3 raised platforms that had a selection of holy symbols of 3 dead gods on them. An elevator that led upwards to a disused part of a mine. There was plenty to explore there without anyone speaking to anyone else.

I claimed no such thing. You said that the rules for 5e had only very minor elements for exploration. I said that exploration made up a huge part of the rule of the game.

I disagree that building a house is a basic thing in the game. I’ve played and DM’d dozens of campaigns in the last 6 years of 5e and building a house came up once… trollskull Manor that had basic rules for running the business.

If that’s what you want though, the great thing about 5e is that there’s a slew of 3pp products - stronghold builders guide by Matt Coleville for instance - that scratch that itch. DMg has a page count. It gives the basics and then future products and 3pp add to that.

The solutions are there, you’d rather just keep entrenching yourself.

 

[Aldarc]

If that’s what you want though, the great thing about 5e is that there’s a slew of 3pp products - stronghold builders guide by Matt Coleville for instance - that scratch that itch. DMg has a page count. It gives the basics and then future products and 3pp add to that.

Obviously, YMMV, but I'm not sure if I would call that a "great thing about 5e."

IMHO, it amazes me how a number of other published games manage to cover more ground with less page count than it seemingly takes 5e D&D to accomplish the same thing in its ever expanding catalog and 3pp products. It may be that WotC has the privilege and luxury of being able to pump out all these books knowing that people will buy them whatever while other TTRPG publishers have to make the most of their limited publishing opportunities.

I'll be honest with you, @TheSword, but my budget is tighter than it once was. Being able to buy the wide range of a game's catalog of books or even the 3pp products is no longer a luxury that I may have once enjoyed, though maybe I have also become more selective. Who knows? So I have really come to appreciate a game that gives me a lot of bang for my buck.