D&D General Why Exploration Is the Worst Pillar

[Retreater]

So the three pillars of play are combat, role-playing, and exploration. Combat we discuss a lot and have many rules to make dynamic and exciting, hordes of monsters, reams of magical spells, and numerous tomes of battle equipment. Role-playing is theatric, and we have seen it done with character arcs, accents, and know how it has been long elevated as the height of good Game-Mastering ("Role-play" NOT "ROLL-play.")
But exploration? It's the neglected middle child of the pillars. Why? I think because it's the in-between of interesting things.
It's the trek through the wilderness listening to the DM trying to use purple prose to describe the forest that exists to waste your time between getting the quest from the haughty noble (role-playing) to the bandit hideout (combat). It's the long, featureless corridors that may contain a ho-hum trap (which is likely going to be less dangerous than a single monster of your party's level), but that trap will be avoided with a Passive Perception check you don't even have to roll. That hallway may connect two exciting combat encounters, but the hallway itself is just a line on a flowchart.
Exploration is the session that you're buying supplies for your journey and making preparations, which can be easily avoided with a die roll. ("Did we bring enough food? Here, let me roll randomly. Good, you have enough food.")
How much game time is wasted on exploration? Would the experience be better by simply asking the players: "Do you want to go to Fight A with the troll barbarian or Fight B in the vampire's crypt?" We could speed through literal sessions of actual games that require wilderness travel from the starting town to the dungeon.
But the only advice I've ever seen for improving exploration mode is to use better descriptive phrases, wandering monsters, or have a few skill checks that are going to ultimately have no impact on the game (maybe you lose some hit dice, maybe have to spend a few spell slots, etc.). But even with most of that advice, it's telling you to make exploration mode better by adding combat (wandering monsters).
So what do you think? Am I wrong on this?

 

[Savage Wombat]

I think it's because it's the hardest of the pillars for a DM to do well. You have to build a world full of interesting things for players to discover, and they have to be things your particular players actually want to discover.

 

[Charlaquin]

I have thoughts on this, but not time to write them all out right now. Short version: I think most DMs tend to think about these three elements of gameplay in ways that are unproductive. The first step to improving your game’s exploration is changing how you think about exploration.

 

[Reynard]

I disagree with essentially everything in the OP but I want to address the idea that "exploration is shopping."

No, it's not.

The degree to which resource management is important during any aspect of play is totally dependent on the preferences of the group. Counting arrows or healing kits is no different than counting rations or rope.

You can totally have an enjoyable exploration pillar without resource management. Exploration is crawling through the dungeon and traveling through the wilds, but it's also learning the layout of the city and finding hidden alcoves in the library and talking to contacts seeking the next adventure.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This is why I use journey rules, with prep rolls, rolls to avoid hazards and keep the path, and rolls behind the screen to determine difficulty and complications.

Complications can be a traveling peddler or bard or troupe of entertainers, an attempted ambush, an opportunity for especially good hunting or foraging, a natural wonder, a lost ruin, or anything else we can think of.

in a journey, each PC has a Role. If the complication that arises relates to their Role, they are basically Team Captain for the scene where we resolve that complication. The lead character of that scene.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Exploration is the interesting part of being in a dungeon. It's deciding which corridors to go down, and which doors to not open. It's deciding whether or not to risk carrying a torch into a room, based on what you think might be in there.

It's also the most difficult pillar to design for, since it's so easy to go overboard one way or the other. If everything is too straightforward, then it's boring, and players are just going to sprint around while looking for whatever jumps out at them. If it's too obtuse, then players feel paralyzed for fear of making a wrong decision, and nothing ever gets done. You really have to know what you're doing, to design a dungeon where exploration feels satisfying.

 

[jgsugden]

D&D is a role playing game. Characters play a role in a story. The combat pillar, generally, is the action scene of the story. The social interaction is the dialogue. Exploration is EVERYTHING ELSE.

Essentially, the premise here is that only the dialogue and action matter in a book. However, novels are mostly the other stuff - and for a good reason. They are the skeleton of the story.

If you only have the dialogue and combat, there is no story, no setting, and no context - just minigames of combat. It is the difference between playing a skirmish game and role playing a campaign, essentially.

If you find the exploration pillar to be lackluster, I suggest looking at ways to make it more exciting. There is a lot of guidance out there.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I personally like the ''Montage'' technique of the 13th Age, and I use it at my table when I want to avoid reducing journeying to a series of rolls.

Each player describes a segment of the journey, and a simple complication. I roll a single d20 and compare it to the challenge/danger rating of the terrain (lets say 4 in this case).

-If I roll over 4, the player to the right of the scene-describing player describes how she resolves the complication in narrative, no rolls.
-If I roll 4 or less on the d20, the complication requires a skill challenge (party requires X success before failing Y times). All players roll a pertinent check or expend resources as necessary. Players can expend HD to reroll a check. If the skill challenge is a success, the party continue and the next player start again with another segment description. On a failed skill challenge, all characters lose an HD or the equivalent in HP.

The journey ends when all players have described a segment. This means that players will generally encounter or face things they are interested in, since they are the one deciding it and give them a little narrative control that removes the workload of the DM.

As for shopping, unless its for a rare or magic item, I just ask the players to tell me what they bring, I tell them the total price and they pay it. Done.

 

[Laurefindel]

I think it's because it's the hardest of the pillars for a DM to do well. You have to build a world full of interesting things for players to discover, and they have to be things your particular players actually want to discover.

To be fair, we are given very few tools to make exploration an interesting segment of the game. AiME has more however.

Also, exploration is the pillar most affected by spells, and become easier and easier as the game progresses and spellcasters gain new spells (to the point of being negligible relatively fast). The range of exploration "encounters" is also pretty narrow atm, and with very little CR amplitude.

I long for an official exploration "module" that can be grafted to D&D.

 

[Campbell]

Exploration is plenty interesting in Classic D&D. You just have to add things like exploration turns, wandering monsters, reaction rolls and the like back in. Also go back to the module designs seen in Keep on the Borderlands, Isle of Dread, and Castle Amber.