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<blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 8046960" data-attributes="member: 6796661">For me exploration IS the game.&nbsp; You could just replace &quot;adventurers&quot; with &quot;explorers.&quot;&nbsp; I think it was easier in more old-school dungeon crawling.&nbsp; Especially the fun-house style dungeons that seemed more common in the 80s.&nbsp; They were full of traps, hidden areas, puzzles, and other exploration-based challenges. Also, when XP was earned for gold, combat was not the reason and goal, it was challenge and obstacle to maybe be defeated, but often to be avoided through sneaking or role play. Outside the dungeon it is more challenging. In one sense, the whole world is a dungeon in D&amp;D, but you generally are not going to be able to have a wilderness area or city as detailed out as a dungeon. What has helped me is to realize that travelling =/= exploration.&nbsp; Just because the party is going from A to B doesn't mean that I have to shoe horn exploration.&nbsp; I use montage scenes, sometime using 4e-style skill challenges (based on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvOeqDpkBm8" target="_blank">Matt Coleville's advice</a>) to make the &quot;getting there&quot; more interesting. Sometimes I just handwave it and you are there.&nbsp; I think of it like the old Indiana Jones movies. The dotted line moving across the world map is not exploration, that's just travel. But when you get to exotic, foreign location, the exploration starts. The exploration will lead to encounters and those encounters may be social encounters or combat encounters. Between those encounters there is research to do, sneaking around, staking out an antagonists lair, traps to avoid, and so forth. Even the most rail-roady campaigns need the illusion of exploration to stitch encounters together, but the best games have at least portions that are sandboxes. Exploration is where players have the most agency. Where players decide to go and what they decide to do during their explorations is what makes running games fun for me. I very much am along for the ride.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="MNblockhead, post: 8046960, member: 6796661"] For me exploration IS the game. You could just replace "adventurers" with "explorers." I think it was easier in more old-school dungeon crawling. Especially the fun-house style dungeons that seemed more common in the 80s. They were full of traps, hidden areas, puzzles, and other exploration-based challenges. Also, when XP was earned for gold, combat was not the reason and goal, it was challenge and obstacle to maybe be defeated, but often to be avoided through sneaking or role play. Outside the dungeon it is more challenging. In one sense, the whole world is a dungeon in D&D, but you generally are not going to be able to have a wilderness area or city as detailed out as a dungeon. What has helped me is to realize that travelling =/= exploration. Just because the party is going from A to B doesn't mean that I have to shoe horn exploration. I use montage scenes, sometime using 4e-style skill challenges (based on [URL='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvOeqDpkBm8']Matt Coleville's advice[/URL]) to make the "getting there" more interesting. Sometimes I just handwave it and you are there. I think of it like the old Indiana Jones movies. The dotted line moving across the world map is not exploration, that's just travel. But when you get to exotic, foreign location, the exploration starts. The exploration will lead to encounters and those encounters may be social encounters or combat encounters. Between those encounters there is research to do, sneaking around, staking out an antagonists lair, traps to avoid, and so forth. Even the most rail-roady campaigns need the illusion of exploration to stitch encounters together, but the best games have at least portions that are sandboxes. Exploration is where players have the most agency. Where players decide to go and what they decide to do during their explorations is what makes running games fun for me. I very much am along for the ride. [/QUOTE]

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