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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8381417" data-attributes="member: 16814">Honestly, given this thread, exploration appears to be an amorphous form that is exactly what it needs to be this moment to counter an argument, and then can be whatever else the next.  I mean, this line has gone from someone stating exploration has little to no teeth that aren't just moving to combat to someone pointing out that if you track rations and water it gets real fast to pointing out how easy it is to sidestep that and make it trivial to now exploration doesn't need to be about food at all.  Which leaves the starting statement still open.Exploration in 5e is entirely on the shoulders of the GM.  There's almost nothing the system offers the GM by way of advice or suggestion that it doesn't almost immediately snatch back with class and racial features or spells.  Do some GMs make do anyway?  Sure, but not because of the system but because that GM has a table that aligns well with the way they deal with this issue, or, sometimes, they're ignoring it and believing that cool, evocative descriptions is doing that job (it's not).  The problem with 5e is the lack of any real threat for exploration that the system doesn't negate with reasonably easy access.  It's why they note that adding aarakocra racial flying ability is called out as a strong potential issue because it so easily negates low level exploration challenges.  And exploration is really a low level challenge, for the most part.This is the D&D forum, so I've very much avoided pointing out other systems that do this well.  Some are very 5e adjacent -- AiME, for instance, does exploration very well but it does so largely by stripping out all of the things 5e has to circumvent exploration.  There's no create water or flying in AiME, not without serious effort and usually out of reach of the PCs.  So, travel is dangerous, but also rewarding.  Dungeon World's Perilous Journey move does very well here as well.  Ironsworn, a free game, has an exploration mechanic that is brilliant and well integrated with the whole game -- explorations can result is very good or very bad inputs into the next phase of the game through momentum.  It's very possible to do exploration well, but not when the system itself is hamstringing you and then taking the mess it made and dumping it on the GM's shoulders to make the best of it.  Some of us do, but, frankly, I'm quite tired of it.EDIT:  I forgot to put 4e on my list of RPGs that did exploration well.</blockquote>

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