The 5th Edition of D&D identified Three Pillars of Adventure:
- Exploration
- Social Interaction
- Combat
Of these, nobody seems to have been particularly confused by social interaction (those are the talky-talky bits) or combat (there’s a whole combat system hardwired to an action economy, tactical movement, and hit point depletion).
Exploration, though?
Rivers of digital ink have been metaphorically spilt over it. So let’s take a moment to summarize two key points from all that discussion:
Yes, exploration is the least mechanically supported pillar. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say it is the least structurally supported pillar. Combat has that whole combat system we mentioned and an entire core rulebook dedicated to monsters you can fight. Social interaction is naturally supported by the fundamental structure of an RPG as a conversation of meaningful choices. Exploration simply lacks those clear, core structures.
Second: No, the “exploration” pillar is not just about wilderness exploration. Exploration is much more than that and – like the other pillars – should ideally permeate every facet of your D&D experience. Exploration is about discovering your environment, analyzing what you’ve learned about it, and then enjoying the pay-off of using that knowledge.
I was initially baffled by why so many people make the false assumption that “exploration = wilderness exploration,” because the pervasive nature of the pillar seems very clearly explained in the core rulebook (PHB, p. 8). But I think the problem goes back to the lack of structure: Exploration doesn’t have a clear-cut structure in the core rulebooks. D&D used to have a very clear-cut structure for wilderness exploration (the hexcrawl). If D&D still had that clear-cut structure, it would solve the problem! Therefore, wilderness exploration would solve the problem of the missing exploration pillar, which means that the exploration pillar is wilderness exploration.
But here’s the thing. Even when groups reach out, grab that structure, and plug it back into 5th Edition, they often find that there’s something missing. They’re running the hexcrawl, but it doesn’t feel as if they’re exploring the world.
So there’s something more fundamentally amiss here. What does it really mean to be an explorer? And how can we capture that experience at the game table?
EXPLORING EXPLORATION
Exploration takes place in an environment. That environment might be a vast wilderness, a dungeon, or a specific room within that dungeon — it’s a fractal concept that can (and should!) apply to the game world at all scales – but regardless of the environment being explored, there are, broadly speaking, a few different kinds of exploration.
- Curiosity: You’re just randomly looking around to see what you can find in an area.
- Searching: You’re trying to find something specific that you know or suspect is in a particular area.
- Trailblazing: You’re figuring out how to get between two known locations. (Think Northwest Passage, but this can also apply metaphorically to non-geographic exploration.)
There are probably other broad categories I’m overlooking here, but this is a good start.
One key thing to take away from this list, though, is that travel is NOT exploration. I wrote an article called Thinking About Wilderness Travel which looks at the issue of wilderness travel specifically, but what it boils down to is this: In travel, you know the route. In exploration, you’re trying to figure out the route.
Using the word “travel” sort of narrows our scope to moving from one location to another, but the same principle applies more broadly. For example, visiting and exploration aren’t the same thing, either. When the PCs visit a tavern, for example, you usually won’t run that the same way you’d run a dungeon. Even if they’ve never been to a particular inn before, when they go up to their rooms for the night, you don’t break out the battlemaps or have them start navigating hallway by hallway.
When you’re going along a known route to a known place – either literally or metaphorically – that’s travel; not exploration.
(Vague treasure maps totally count, though. “Okay, the map says head south from the mountain.” But which mountain? That’s not really a known route. You still need to find the route, and that’s either searching or trailblazing or both. The same basic principle applies to a mystery scenario, for example.)
DISCOVERING EXPLORATION
Okay, but how do you make it FEEL like exploration? Well, if we describe it in terms of a hexcrawl, there are three core requirements:
First, you have to give the players a structure in which they can make meaningful navigational choices.
Second, it has to be possible for the players to FAIL to find something they’re looking for.
Third, the players have to either have information or be able to get information about an area so that the choices they make aren’t just random.
The first of these is generally not a problem in true wilderness exploration (although navigational systems can sometimes be a little anemic), but what will kill it dead as a doornail is any kind of linear plot.
I’m not just talking about railroading. (That’s always bad.) In this case, it’s any linear plotting that kills exploration dead. If you imagine the beginning of an adventure as Point A and the end of the adventure as a known Point B with a linear sequence of planned events connecting those two points, then what you’re imagining, from a structural point of view, is a road. It’s a known route that the PCs are traveling along, and that’s why the linear plot is antithetical to exploration.
(If you’d like to explore how to prep adventures that aren’t based on linear plots, check out Don’t Prep Plots.)
What about our second requirement? How can that one go awry? Returning to a hexcrawl, for example, it’s not unusual to see systems in which players choose which hex to enter and then automatically find whatever is in the hex. That can be OK (they can still fail to go to the right hex, so there’s a little bit of exploration there), but it’s pretty weak. It’s kind of like a dungeon with no secret doors in which the boxed text for every room completely describes everything in the room, with further investigation or examination never revealing anything more. The players simply move through the dungeon and the DM reads each room description to them. And that’s it. It should hopefully be pretty obvious why that would make for a lackluster dungeon experience.
When it comes to failure in exploration, explorers can also:
- Fail to look in the right place.
- Get lost (and possibly only think they’re looking in the right place).
- Be prevented by danger from reaching their goal (being captured or killed or forced to flee).
- Be forced to withdraw due to limited logistics. (The logistics of a wilderness expedition, for example, creates a time limit: Can you find it / what can you find / how much can you find before you need to return home?)
Another way of looking at this is that if you want to feel as if you’ve truly accomplished something, then you must be challenged in accomplishing it. And if the challenge is to be meaningful, then failure has to be possible (even if it’s only a temporary failure or a cost you didn’t want to pay).
(We’re kind of dancing around a broader principle here: It’s not just combat where the players should feel challenged by the game. All three Pillars of Adventure are made meaningful by overcoming challenges! That includes both exploration and social interactions.)
It’s really our third requirement, though, where I think things can often go wrong even when it seems like we’re doing everything right.
It’s all right to wander aimlessly and just kind of randomly look for something interesting. That’s curiosity. It counts as exploration. But it’s a shallow experience; it’s not going to engage the players, so they won’t FEEL like they’re exploring.
Once the players start getting information, though, they can start making meaningful choices.
So where does that meaningful information come from? Well, once again limiting ourselves specifically to hexcrawls, we can consider specific techniques like:
- Information in one keyed location can indicate other keyed locations, giving the PCs the opportunity to seek those locations out. (This changes curiosity into searching. See Hexcrawl Addendum: Connecting Your Hexes.)
- Treasure maps can be discovered. (A specific variant of the same technique.)
- Rumors can be gleaned from tavern talks, befriended NPCs, interrogated enemies, and the like. (See Hexcrawl Tool: Rumors.)
- Tracks or similar “monster sign” can be followed, as described in Hexcrawl Tool: Tracks. (This changes curiosity into a form of trailblazing.)
And so forth.
The more general principles here, of course, aren’t just limited to wilderness exploration. In other forms of adventure, for example, clues can often be pursued (see the Three Clue Rule), similarly changing curiosity into trailblazing.
SUMMING UP
Exploration requires freedom. It also requires an environment or a structure of play in which players can make meaningful choices in order to navigate, inspect, and take action in their surroundings.
At the most basic level, players should be able to satisfy their curiosity. This becomes a kind of default action. In a dungeon it’s examining and interacting with a room. In a mystery, it’s investigating a crime scene. In the wilderness it’s venturing forth into the unknown.
But because exploration at random is a shallow experience, that default action of random exploration should ideally provide information which allows the players to set goals and then make meaningful choices to pursue those goals though exploration – either by seeking something specific (searching) or figuring out how to get from where they are to where they want to be (trailblazing).
These can be quite literal (searching a room or a dungeon or a forest; seeking a physical path from one point to another), but can also be thought of as principles for guiding exploration in other contexts: Figuring out how the Mad Alchemist hid the key to his cypher in the statuary; how to prove that Old Man Roberts murdered his wife; or how to bypass a particularly nefarious trap.
There are many ways you can leverage simple curiosity into deeper exploration experiences in your scenario design (placing treasure maps, clues, node-based scenario design, etc.), but you can also use matryoshka techniques (like matryoshka searches and matryoshka hexes) to easily do this at the table during actual play, too: Instead of framing the resolution of curiosity-driven actions to an answer, simply frame those actions to the method (or methods) the PCs might choose to find their answers.
Hopefully this article has whetted your curiosity when it comes to exploration-based play. Good luck in searching out your own answers for how to incorporate exploration into your adventures, and I wish you the greatest success in blazing a trail into exciting new styles of play!
(You see what I did there?)
Hi,
I was reading this post and it helped clear up some confusion for me when running a hex crawl, but there was one point where I would appreciate input from others (including Justin if you read this). The post states that any linear story kills exploration because it makes a de facto road. The argument makes sense and that has raised a personal concern.
I am currently running a Westmarch game and as part of that game we utilize the Alexandrian Hexcrawl rules. Because the Westmarch style of play is meant to accommodate those with busy schedules we always try to have an entire adventure completed in 2.5 to 5 hours. I am constantly concerned that the players may not get to have the adventure they requested if I implement full and robust wilderness exploration that includes getting lost or not finding what you are looking for. I understand these can easily result in fun and memorable adventures, but I feel that the players asked to do X and part of the deal in a Westmarch game is that they will at least get to attempt to do X.
Is this a tradeoff I have to accept based on the style of play? As the world becomes more fleshed out and the players more familiar with the Westmarch style should I reduce the linearity of players request X, travel to X, and attempt to resolve the scenario at X in whatever way they see fit?
I know this is alot but I would really appreciate input.
Now you have me wanting to run a game where ALL travel is exploration….
“The innkeeper gives you the key to your room, telling you it is #4. The key also has a small tag that has the number 4 on it. What do you do?”
“You walk up the stairs – they are narrow and confined. The stairs creak under your armored weight. What do you do?”
“You open the door to room 4. You see a freshly made bed in the left corner of the room. There is an open chest at it’s foot. There is a round wooden table on the right side of the room, with two wooden arm-chairs next to it. There is a candle on the table, unlit. The window is directly across from the door – its drapes pulled aside showing the outside world. What do you do?”
With respect to the possibility of failure, one idea I have been playing with (but have not had opportunity to test) is treating hexes like rooms or corridors. It is usually true in the wilderness that going come directions is easier than going others, even within the same terrain, whether you encounter a boggy area, or a steep hill or cliff, or particularly dense scrub, or a river or chasm. I feel that hexes should have easy ways to enter and exit, and hard ways to enter and exit, and even hidden ways to enter and exit.
So the thought is to place these “soft” barriers on the map to make travelling choices more interesting, and make some places more difficult to find if you stick to the easy path. I plan to signify them with different coloured lines drawn on the hex borders (green for a vegetative barrier, blue for water, blue-green for wetlands, brown for hills of rough country, hash marks for cliffs, etc.).
I expect I will procedurally generate them much of the time, but haven’t taken the time yet to figure out just how common these obstacles should be for certain types of terrain. It could probably be rolled simply enough that it could be determined each time the party enters a hex for the first time.
@Sean,
although the players may be seeking X that should not mean X is all there is. If they get lost they should be able to easily stumble on Y. This requires you have adequately populated your terrain.
As an example I run open tables twice a month. There are multiple DMs at our club and we each have a realm 100 – 120 miles across. Players drift from table to table between sessions.
My 120 mile realm is a jungle with 12 mile hexes at the top level. I have developed the trading port and 2 adjacent hexes at a scale of 2 miles per sub hex. That’s a total of 108 hexes. I have currently populated 30 of those sub hexes with tribe villages, lizard folk, kobold and Yaun-Ti settlements and a half dozen ancient temple sites (each a 5 to 10 room dungeon). I only put about 4 hours effort into prep so far and the rest is developing on the fly as players forge into the unprepared spaces. I have random tables, some Story Cubes and the large scale context to support rapid improvisation as I go.
The players last session heard a rumour of a fab treasure in an unexplored part of the jungle. The previous session players had stumbled across a dangerous and encounterful bridge across a chasm. By encountering and clearing the bridge (somewhat) the new part of the jungle became accessible. The players at the second session happened to find a temple that they thought was the one they were looking for, but although they had a grand ol’ adventure it turned out not to be the place rumoured. They went home with the undiscovered temple still “out there” in the jungle shadows. I now have about 8 more hexes worth of improv notes to consolidate a bit. Also lots of re-usable material for whatever the next batch of players set out to achieve, including some new rumours about an evil tribal shaman, some Hill Giant pirates and a “Snake God”.
@Sean
It feels you have some what misunderstood west marches I feel. The adventure in the wilderness is the default action or the hook to get the players exploring, but the actual game is what happens when they try to explore. Whether they get to the place or not is not really the point.
It sounds to me it would be better for you to just telephone them to the adventure and play it as a one shot, or embrace the west marches exploring ethos which means the players might not get there but the getting there is still fun.
Damn no edit button so sorry that was confusing.
I meant that the adventures deciding on where they want to go is the hook or default action, but the point is to play out the exploration of getting there. If you feel it is better to play the adventure, just have the players at the gates of it straight away.
West marches is about the exploration.
@DanDare2050
Thank you for your response. Fortunately, we are about 8 sessions in and over that time gameplay, random tables, and the other DM (we only have 2 at this time) have populated a fair number of hexes. So what began as a concern about what was and was not prepped morphed into a concern about taking away agency. Admittedly I have become very wary about “railroading” after a group of players said I railroaded them because one of the group found actionable information and I reminded the other players of that. (Basically, one player played a situation well and rolled high and found tracks leading to the objective of the adventure, then the other players promptly ignored this and engaged in shenanigans after a few minutes I reminded them of the information their companion found. This was railroading to them.) These players left the game shortly after and I have felt like I failed as a DM since.
I plan to talk to the players and get their impressions to a more robust and risky exploraiton game. The prep is there so running it wont be difficult so long as we get buy in.
Thanks again for the comment! Good luck in all your gaming!
@Xercies
Thank you for the comment. It is entriely possible that I am not running a proper Westmarch, this is my first go round with this style of play. I think you are right when you say I could just fast travel the players to the adventure and run a one-shot, while that would not be inherently bad, we have successfully used travel and the encounters/scenarios it generates to communicate things about the world and region, so I do not want to cut travel. I will speak with the players and gauge their response to travel that carries risks like getting lost, or as Justin and you correctly state “exploration.” I am playing with a fair number of new players who only know 5e and the more narativist tendencies of the play culture. But I really do want to run a robust and exciting game where the DM is surprised as much as the players are.
Thank you again for your response! Good luck in all your gaming!
@Sean: Just wanted to step in and say that (a) those players are wrong and (b) you should not feel like a failure. Part of your job as a GM is to make sure the game world is being clearly communicated to the players, and making sure that information hasn’t been missed or misunderstood is an important part of that.
You might recognize some of their behavior from this article.
Re: The exploration vs. adventure issue. I think you do want to shift your thinking towards “exploration is the adventure.” In much the same way that you wouldn’t think of a mystery scenario as being difficult because they have to spend all that time looking for clues, an exploration scenario doesn’t start when you find the thing you’re looking for.
The key thing is to recognize that “I’m going to enter the Caves of Black Doom” is not a valid statement for an intended adventure if you haven’t actually found the Caves of Black Doom yet. You first have to declare (or, rather, your declaration ACTUALLY IS) that you’re going to look for the Caves of Black Doom.
From a practical standpoint, in my experience, once the players have found a location they’re interested in, they will quickly turn the journey to and from that location into TRAVEL instead of exploration.
This is partly the location becoming a familiar location, as described here. But it’s also because the path they take to get there will either formally or informally become a route, as described here.
And routes can often be resolved very quickly, taking up just a tiny fraction of a session (unless something goes drastically wrong). This actually becomes part of the reward for your exploration adventure! Now you know how to efficiently get to the place you want to get to!
I have a West Marches style in mind, too. But because I work with kids and my sessions are at best two hours long, I have in mind a City of Adventure for the setting, where the players are members of an amorphous City Guard and are sent all over the city whenever danger or excitement appears. One day a dragon tries to nest in the city gates, another the princess tries to run away with her lover, a third a leviathan is attacking the dockyards. Whatever I can think up while the players are rolling up their characters. There’s less exploration in this simply because the players (and the GM) are newbies with straightforward and basic challenges to meet. Because I can’t expect to have the same players two weeks running, the closest I’ll come to exploration is describing a new area of town every session, and perhaps eventually will be able to ask the players where they want to go today.
@Sean: concur with Justin and others re: that’s not railroading. Railroading would be “you remember that your buddy found some tracks in the wilderness before you all started faffing about” and then no matter what they say they want to do, you force them to follow those tracks, or if they balk at that, you just have them encounter whatever the tracks lead to regardless of what they do. Providing information is not railroading; it doesn’t prevent or restrict actions by the players. [You might make the case that withholding information about other possible actions starts to stray into railroading territory: “if I tell them about the smoke rising on the horizon, they’ll want to investigate it; but I want them to follow the tracks, so I won’t mention the smoke.”]
It may be that the players reacted in the way they did because of bad experiences in the past — “oh, the GM reminded us of this fact; that must mean he wants us to go there and if we don’t he’ll force us to.” That’s mainly on them, but I guess it’s possible you weren’t clear that you were just reminding them of information they had rather than saying “you must go here and engage with this content.”
In my current game (not an open table) I have had to summarize the various leads/hooks the players know about a few times when they feel lost/stumped, because the players (not the characters) have forgotten them or lost track. Some players have missed sessions, and even when they don’t, what with spouses, jobs, mortgages, kids, and, oh, a global pandemic, finding a receipt for a safe that was installed in some place they haven’t been to doesn’t seem quite as *immediate* to the players as it would to the characters, particularly when it’s been a month for them and only a day or two for the characters.
Providing that “lead recap” cuts past a lot of frankly boring and time-consuming discussion about “What do we do now?” “I don’t remember. Wasn’t there something in China we were supposed to investigate?” “Should we do that now? That’s a long way to go and we don’t know anything except something’s going on in a city.” Not to say that discussion and weighing options can’t be interesting and fun; but when the players feel they don’t have information (and you as GM know that they do) I think it’s better to cut to the chase and tell them: “look, here’s stuff you know” just as a reminder to guide that discussion. They still have agency to decide what to do with that information, you all just don’t have to sit through them racking their brains trying to remember it on their own.
@Jennifer: Make sure to check out the Open Table Manifesto if you’re not familiar with it already.
You might also check out Magical Kitties Save the Day. It lends itself very well to the sort of improvisation and short, tight sessions that you’re describing. Each player’s kitty will also have a human with specific Problems they need to solve, giving perfect fodder for focused play that builds towards a long-term goal.
Definitely agree on the distinction between exploration and travel.
For me, “exploration” is all about player curiosity – as you say – and that curiosity being satisfied in terms of getting somewhere, finding something, including information, or solving a problem. Etc.
It’s hard to explore outside of what’s been prepped in this context, which is why I think mechanically it often boils down to wilderness travel but I think it applies equally to e.g. mystery adventures too.
@Justin: I developed what I call The Queen’s Own Troubleshooters long before I discovered West Marches, but it’s very like Open Table. Whoever shows up for further sessions gets to spend their xp; the rest are clearly on guard duty, in hospital, under arrest, Kitchen Patrol, on other adventures, etc. The Guard Captain walks into the break room, informs the players he finds that a giant mantis-thing is attacking the nearby farms, and orders them to handle it.
We do have a weekly tabletop period, but most patrons end up playing what’s easy to learn or is already familiar. My usual DnD-esque games, instead, are entirely on the fly, and often start by switching off the computers of the loudest kids in the lab. I’ve had success in the past with ongoing, scheduled games, and the teen tech lab at my branch has asked me to try it again. We’ll see if it takes off.
I did pick up Magical Kitties, and it’s very appealing given that I’m more likely to have younger kids to play with. Still absorbing the rules, but even just the theme is awesome and I hope to use it even if all I have to run with is a D6 and a pack of 3×5 cards.
I think that the reason people are unhappy with the exploration pillar is that they don’t understand what it is. They think it is (or is supposed to be) some sort of mini game to make travel more interesting. It is not.
When you play DnD you are doing one of three things – engaging in combat, interacting with NPCs ooooooooooooooooooor…. looking around the game world to try to find information and figure out what to do next. That last bit is exploration. We don’t see it because we do it all the time. Pretty much every time you are not in combat or a social scene you are exploring. Perception check? Exploring. Checking out a shop? Exploring. Searching for the head of the thieves guild? Exploring.
To put it another way, the ‘pillar of exploration’ can also be called ‘the adventure’ or ‘the campaign’. It is what your characters are doing. It is the quest they are on that takes them out into the great unknown.
After all, another world for ‘exploring’ is ‘adventuring’.
@Daniel
I would say that even in interacting with NPC’s there can be a significant element of exploration. FREX: Exploring a cult is potentially very much an exploration easily handled through a robust series of RP and skill rolls.
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“Exploration is about discovering your environment, analyzing what you’ve learned about it, and then enjoying the pay-off of using that knowledge.” Man I have run into so many DM’s who by not being consistent have spoiled that pay-off. Often a Dm will do a McGuffin Trick (amazing thing done by an NPC wielding a magical item) and then either shunt the item away, walk back the ability or otherwise deny they players the joy of using that same ability. It’s like making fireballs an NPC only ability. It robs the joy of the players of finally getting the ability of having suffered a fireball (discovery: people can do this!) Finding the spell (analysis: we need a 5th level mage who can learn this spell) then Pay off (the 5th level mage Roasting some baddies).