I'm trying to identify the main themes of RPG adventures, and the practical challenges these involve for the characters.
>Combat
- Fighting enemies with varying tactics and skillset, offering a diverse spectrum of challenges within the framework of hitting stuff until it decides to stop being an issue.
- Managing healing and recovery times, provided magic doesn't knit together wounds within a matter of seconds.
>Exploration
- Clearing up terra incognita on the game map, involving rolls for correctly guessing which way is north every day.
- Surviving in the wild, involving rolls for finding shelter, finding water, hunting for meat and foraging for nuts, berries, roots and herbs.
- Resource and inventory space management, involving planning for the duration of journeys and finding the sweet spot between not starving and not being bogged down by cartloads of rations.
- Maneuvering through difficult terrain, involving rolls for climbing, swimming, and possibly jumping.
- Exploring more confined systems of tunnels and chambers (i.e. dungeons and caverns).
>Socialisation
- Haggling and bartering, both to get cheap consumables and to get a good price on found loot.
- Influencing other social situations in your favour. Preferably by roleplaying the interaction, but at the very least by selecting either an appeal to reason or an appeal to emotion, and indicating the attempted mode of communication (e.g. intimidation, convincing, deceipt, etc.)
Is there an aspect of RPG adventures I'm missing? Something you find particularly rewarding?