Combat usually gets all the focus in games systems, even if you shouldnt be fighting all the time. What are the best mechanics or systems you have seen for just exploring ruins and shit without it being rooms full of encounters or hallways of traps? Is there really any way to do it besides narrate at the players constantly?
Other cool noncombat mechanics can go here too, I guess.
I've honestly never seen a system directly mechanically support exploration well. I'm not sure how you'd even start.
The best you can do is give the players a lot of interesting utility options and then create interesting scenarios where they can use them to discover secrets or traverse an area, which is pretty GM intensive work.
hexcrawl maps with set-piece locations and breadcrumbs that lead to such. plus some decent random encounter tables. sandboxes are map for expoloration.
alternatively a a good city campaign with lots of locations to discover and explore.
other forms of exploration? a complex magical item whose powers need to be understood and unlocked.
or: character exploration. you slowly discover more and more about an allied(?) NPC, his background, what drives him, what predicament he's in, etc.
What about that Ryutama game that Veeky Forums is always talking about? Isnt that supposed to be good at exploration?
I think that there isn't really much to do besides make sure the GM is good at telling stories and keeping the players engaged.
I guess throw travel related problems at the group that are not specifically combat? Like trying to cross a river, or choosing the right pass through the mountains.
I hope you are not playing DnD, though, because like everything DnD will become a shitshow as soon as the wizard gains the spells to invalidate any travel related problem.
"How do you cross the-"
"We rest for 8 hours and the wizard casts fly on everyone again."
"But you didn't let me finish explaining."
"Doesn't matter, we can fly."
I think that's one of the main problems. WOTC talks about the Three Pillars of the game being Combat, Social Interaction, and Exploration, but 90% of the material is geared towards combat. There's an entire book dedicated to monsters. Literally every class is built on combat mechanics.
IF we could flesh out the concept of Exploration more than just "Here's X traps and what they do" or "Here's a map", but actually break down and develop exploration (heck and social interactions) we'd truly have something.
> actually break down and develop exploration (heck and social interactions) we'd truly have something.
Well, that sounds like this thread is for exactly that.
So, what it is the part of exploration we want to bring out in gameplay? RPG combat grew out of wargame mechanics. What should be the spiritual core of Exploration?
Veins of the Earth handles this to an extent with a ton of sample caves the PCs can accidentally spelunk into.
Not exactly. Shared world building and bonding while on a journey, sure. But not explicitly exploration.
This is exactly why the ranger was considered so shit. It tried to focus on exploration, but they didn't commit fully, so it ended up being a halfassed still birth that made nobody happy.
Honestly, the shit design of the ranger goes deeper. The designers gave it exploration utility, sure, but they did so by getting rid of game content, rather than making it more fun.
>you're lost, and have no idea where you are
>yes I do, says so on my character sheet. We head North
Not fun. In a lot of ways the Druid was a better exploration class because it had mechanics that made exploring more fun (you know, right about the time you got to the level where exploration stops mattering... insert "muh balunce" 'tisming here).
I'm actually running into this right now while drafting quests and I'm at a loss. It starts with finding a lead that something of interest may be on an island, but other than that making them "find" clues to the objective's location has me out. I even thought about giving up and just saying you have to go through X encounters before the objective opens up, but I really would like to find a way to make it an experience more based in actual exploration other than "kill things until you kill the big thing and get your reward."
The unfortunate thing is that you really are best off throwing the players a painfully videogamey token like "You find a piece of medallion", because now they will be on the look out for the other pieces. Its dumb, but they will know they have to go looking for things.
Make it so an expedition found the key to the location but was never seen again. Make them search for their remains (or the survivors).
I think one way to expand on that type of thing is to give some classes features that let you do similar things to say, Weather Watcher (Mouseguard) or Circles (Torchbearer).
Maybe you're thinking of Meikyuu Kingdom?
TLDR: Everything is randomly-generate with an absolutely absurd number of random tables. The setting is an impossible infinite "dungeon" where each "room" could be a castle, graveyard, subway tunnel, desert, planet, asteroid field, etc. There's also big tables for randomly generating NPCs, creatures, conflicts, etc.
You start by rolling-up your "kingdom" within the dungeon (could be a school, a planet, etc.). The kingdom drives the characters: it might demand resources, money, territory, morale, protection, etc. And after each dungeon expedition, you can build/upgrade facilities in your kingdom. You also randomly roll to create new problems in your kingdom, which inevitably drives you back to the wilderness. If you failed your mission, bad shit happens in your kingdom (again, roll on random tables!).
Resource management is fairly important, it's centered around time management. It's split up into Turns, with 4 Quarters in each turn. Apart from managing food, you also have to worry about bad shit happening to your kingdom if you spend too long fucking around in the dungeon.
Translated version (no images) is attached. The system goes into some pretty crazy detail, and I'm not sure I would ever consider running the system as-is. However, it's a great source of tables/mechanics that can be grafted onto your RPG of choice.
You're right, really. I mean, they won't complain about tropes, but I really would like to come up with something else. I guess I'm just making it difficult for myself at that point. Having multiple items that make up a "key" is something I've used before(in that instance it was pieces of a map that led to the objective) so I'm not opposed to that.
I'm not sure I completely follow what you're getting at. Are you saying have them find a random object, but then they have to do their own research on it to figure out it's use?
Oh, here's an example of some of the exploration tables for those too lazy to open a PDF.
I think they mean that your starting information all comes from a previous expedition's reports, but that expedition died horrible eventually and their bodies still have all of the useful plot shit you need to proceed.
"There is a black iron door, deep in the tunnels. Beyond it is the safe area we made our camp. The Tragedy began when Silverbell, who was carrying the key to that wretched gate, was dragged into the sewers by a massive slime. Cut off from our supplies and haven, we were forced to retreat back towards the entrance. By the time we realized we had gone in the wrong direction for lack of a map, we were already lost."
Find that note, and you realize you have to go down and fight the slime for the key that was on Silverbell's body to unlock that room. Repeat for other items.
"The swamp is toxic. The alchemists kit carried antidotes for it, but Daren was carried of by some giant bird. Bradley tried to brave the muck anyway, but quickly perished, taking with him the strange jade medal we found in the 3 cornered room."
No, I'm saying they should discover that an older expedition to the island had the key. Now the PCs have to track down this expedition to get it, and likely find some corpses and some hints at the evil shit going on where they can't see.
Does that really encourage exploration, though? Or does it just make it a mystery whats in the next room to everyone involved, even the GM who is doing his best impression of a rougelike?
What this user said
Okay, I get that, and that's a pretty dope premise, but what I'm asking about is past that. That's just initiating the quest and giving the prompt for expiration. How would do you think would be a good way to go about giving them the physical ability to explore to be rewarded other than "traverse location, kill thing, item get?" I'm not even really sure if there is a solid way to get open map/area exploration in without it resorting to the usual to the usual devices. It really does boil down to story telling and preparation like said, but I was def wanting to get some opinions.
So, yeah, I like your idea, it's just what comes next that I'm wondering about.
>Party Y dies on island
>Party X arrives on island
>Party X finds Y's remains and a key with vague info
>Party X decides to explore item
>?????????
That middle part is where I want to find that nice explorative hook baited with something more than "find, kill, get."
The middle part between finding the prompt, and arriving at the objective. FINDING the objective is where I want things to focus on exploration instead of exploration-based combat.
The kingdom-building mechanics are what encourage exploration. The infinite rougelike dungeon provides an outlet for that exploration (and generates resources/NPCs/events that feed back into the kingdom).
Also, an important bit to note is that the dungeon is not one of those "shifts every time you enter" dungeons. You slowly map it out, and can return to previously-visited areas or even annex that room as part of your kingdom. Rooms could also repopulate, change over time or even be captured by rival kingdoms.
That actually sounds like a cool recurring plot thread for a game. Write up a bunch of journal entries, print them off as props. Maybe even have different notes from different members of the expedition leaving helpful messages for each other after they get separated.
"Jenkins, if you find this, I went down the left path. If I come back this way I'll pick up the note. So if you are reading this, it means I never came back."
For added fun, have one of the first journal entries describe 'cave signs' for explorers to write as messages and warnings to each other. Use the SCP field codes as a base. Then you can describe a symbol they find on a wall and they will look it up on their prob sheet, letting the 'oh fuck' moment dawn on them in real time.
I've been considering doing a hexcrawl myself tee bee aich. Any good tips or tricks beyond the obvious?
> Symbols have been Compromised
>goes into cave
>dicks everywhere on walls
"Well fellows, looks like this cave is going to be a real pain in the ass."
>Tom isn't allowed to come to game night anymore.
Atomic Highway has a scavenging system that could be adapted for that. But honestly, exploring needs some kind of purpose or it would be pretty dull. Just the GM reading flavor text and nothing happening.
>Everything is randomly-generate
Not the dungeon.
>thealexandrian.net
This is a great series about hexcrawl design
You can get a lot of inspiration and design ideas from reading OSR games. I would also highly recommend running the game in one of these.
I'm going to give XP for interaction and exploration encounters as if it's a medium combat encounter just to encourage these things. Then I grab the Monster Manual and look for things that could have a conflict that might be solved with non-combat means such as a hungry Ogre or a broken down Warforged with a message. Exploration is more about an object or place that has historical or resource value that you must search or study to get something out of as a reward. Whatever it is, it has to be about the world and what is going on to make it relevant.
If they are smart enough to skip entire pieces of land and ignore all the XP goodies down there, then they should be smart enough to defeat the big bad in combat without relying on high levels. It's trading time and effort for something else.
Atomics Highway have scavenging tables for finding various items, you throw dices to determine what you find and then another dice to determine if it need repair or if it's in pristine condition
Thanks a ton, Satan.
...
So it sounds like the best anyone has for exploration mechanics are to randomly generate as much as possible. Thats kinda disappointing.
Write up a list of important shit about somewhere. Then, players get XP when they uncover those important details. For example, "this used to be the home of an evil wizard but now it's inhabited by his slime experiments."
They don't figure out it belonged to the wizard? No XP. Tada, exploration.
>socialist bananaopolis
>having to use XP as a carrot on a stick for exploration
I feel like there could be a better way to do this.
Well, if exploring aligns with the player and character goals that works better but "get players who want to explore shit and then make some shit to explore" isn't much of a system now is it?
The problem is that the best exploration I can recall was either RL, or vidya where the developers sacrificed 24 months of their life to craft places that felt real. I'm not aware of any table top that's captured that.
Holy shit, I love random tables and this is making me orgasm!
Thanks, loving user!
Skies of Arcadia does this a bit. It's mechanical support, but it's not very good. Shame that their's such a dearth as to make it notable in that regard.
>previous expedition's reports
I like it. It give you short term objectives (find next report) and long term objective (find the expedition/what they found/what they wanted to find).
> 1847, 28 May: "All well"
Sounds like it'd be heavy on the GM.
>I'm not sure how you'd even start.
Well, there are at least some logical prerequisites to exploration.
For one thing there has to be something there to explore. Discovering something and making something aren't the same, so anyone who wants to experience exploration can't be saddled with making the thing. So if you want players to feel like they're exploring, they can't make whatever it is they find (no new-fangled storygame world authorship stuff). If you want the DM to feel that way, too, then they'll need to be supplied with the material somehow. Either a module or perhaps randomly generated from tables.
Exploring things is basically about learning - you're finding new stuff that possibly nobody has ever found before. So a good exploration mechanic has to provide some kind of status, access, power, or even out-of-game stuff for anyone who explores something successfully (whatever "successful exploring" may entail).
So, pretty much you would want mechanics for making what is to be explored (hopefully in a way as to maximize the feeling of novelty for all involved) and you would want mechanics that reward actually exploring at least. Mechanics for HOW you explore are technically not necessary, but probably helpful.
If you don't care about the DM getting exploration fun then he can just make whatever is to be explored. Then, you could do something like for every location a player visits they tack a title onto the end of their name. You can invoke the number of titles you possess for some kind of charisma bonus or whatever ("Oh, he's the conqueror of shattered falls?! Absolutely we will do what he wants!").
Stuff like narrative interaction ("I pull the lever") backed by skill checks when the player is at a loss ("I don't know myself but my character would know where to look") has been around for a while and serves pretty alright.
I'm sure you could get cleverer or deeper with it but that seems like a start to me.
West Marches work well, have a hexcrawl, discover shit, map it back.
Next session, or several sessions after, other PCs explore the same mine shaft because now Kobolds infest it, and they need purging.
The old PCs places marks and tips on the bounty board that helps the new PCs explore and purge nasties from locations.
This makes PCs wanna explore and leave tips/knowledge onward to the next band of friendly PCs. Also interesting locations, far away from homebase and chance of treasure also works.
If you're exploring ruins, go into discussions with your players, such as "why's this room huge with benches, like a church would be" or "there's a a narrow bridge with no railing, perfect for dwarven halberdier chokepoints, or a secret escape"? See how players think about architecture, and craft a dungeon together, room by room.
What the hell is West Marches anyway? I've heard it a few times and from the reactions it sounds like the same meme tier as Strike! I could go look it up but I want to hear opinions from Veeky Forums so I can better frame the context.
Worst pun ever.
It's not a system or setting, it's just a style of running a campaign.
It's a hexcrawl game, but the party is not allowed to travel East (thus, the name). The map is vague or blank to the West, and nobody knows what's out there. No overarching plot, you just explore the wilderness.
You organize a fairly large pool of players/characters. The players form parties among themselves and figure out a meeting time. Then the GM just has to show up and run it.
That's it. That's literally all there is.
make terrain and distances meaningful
have conflicts and puzzles with natural exploration, e.g a river.
enforce food, fluids, temperature, disease rules
have stuff that can be returned to, identified etc: minerals can be identified by a miner or alchemist, for example
have multiple dungeons connected as a megadungeon, with stuff like this stonehenge and obelisks indicating stuff in the area
when they leave the megadungeon they may be soemwhere else and need to go another way, too
actual war
various tomes and legends give clues about a dungeon but finding it requires you to learn about the geography of the land (by exploration or mapping) to identify possible locations
other stuff found exploring, like magic lakes
other things looking for or following you. if humanoids this may stop you accessing villages etc without a conflict.
mysterious shit like nazca lines
if they want, pcs can ask some wizard dude about them
using resources of the land to build a hut, village, stronghold etc
Generate an interesting place to explore, maybe take strides of something like Dark Souls.
In an exploration based game:
>make it so people can find interesting items and paths by thinking laterally
>make combat undesirable, this is possible by either having limited fighting capability, limited healing capability or best yet, have it make exploration harder, with enemies cutting ropes that shut off portcullises, shut doors etc
>also remember to reward the players with shortcuts because combat is undesirable, and let them make their own shortcuts
>make clearing places a temporary thing: oh you killed those goblins when you last passed through? Now there's ghouls eating their corpses. Make this happen especially when players use something like a long rest. Not infinitely of course, but roll a die and have it happen one third of the time to keep them on their toes.
>enviromental puzzles that are optional but award things ensure that players will either try to solve it, bash through it or come back later. Make bashing an option, but penalize it every now and then.
>exploration is not always just a dungeon, a mystical forest can be equally good for it
>put in the remains of previous adventurers and have some select places without loot. Always include hidden stuff the previous adventurers missed though.
>create nodes, which are just spots for RNG items you roll and fluff on the fly so you don't need to make everything yourself
>STORY CUES, WEAVED INTO THE PLACE, either as history, heirlooms or hidden stuff. Then sometimes drop a hint at one of the players' backstory with the syory cues, either as a character they might have known or an item they recognize, your players will love it.
Not all of the examples are Dark Souls, but the general jist is to just emphasize making combat and resting not optimal. That's already something.
Have you ever heard about West Marches type of hexcrawl?
The idea is very simple: the party starts in titular West March. Civilization boils down to the "central" outpost (usually a very small town or a large village) with the seat of a baron or anyone like that. There is a mine or two, another village and a small hamlet. There is also a navigable, but uncharted river in the area. And complete wilderness.
The map itself is usually representing a SMALL area, something akin to a circle with a radius of 20 km. Starting out, players only know location of the other village and are informed there is a mining camp somewhere in the mountains. Not counting 3-4 hexes from the starting point and mountain hexes (but not the hill ones), they don't have anything else uncovered.
Sounds simplistic, but it's one of the greatest exploration-themed games imaginable without going for modules or anything like that.
As for tables, there is always 2d6 table, with values from 11 to 66 in it. My advice about randomisation, thou:
If you roll for something, don't instantly declare what happend/was discovered/whatever else. Give yourself a minute or two to think how to make it work with current situation, rather than jumping directly in the middle of it. Thus - roll in slight advance.
Damn, forget to upload (rather large) map for WM. It's not the best example of WM map, but I've spend with my group over a year of regular games on it and everyone had their fun with unraveling new tiles and just walking around the wilderness.
I still remember how extatic they were when they've managed to get a mule wagon
Man, I remember this map. Good times. But it really works best if you make the hexes larger, merging together each 4 hexes into one for your players.
This.
Played a lot of Cthulhu, it helps for this kind of skills as you don't have many combat encounters. A really important thing, in my opinion, when you design an exploration sequence, is to give a story to the place that can be uncovered, even if it's not needed for the plot. It gives life, but also help a lot when improvising additionnal elements (well, this is definitely really dark soul-ish, but game like metroid prime, fez or fallout 1 and 2 did it really well).
>But honestly, exploring needs some kind of purpose or it would be pretty dull.
Bethesda games seem pretty popular.
That's video game, user. It's a completely different beast and desu the fastest way of getting dull, boring game for your group is to play exploration as if it was video game.
You can always explore for the sake of it. You know, where you are send on a quest about exploring the land. And a fuckload is going to happen if you prepare for your game as a GM, rather than doing this:
youtube.com
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>>make clearing places a temporary thing: oh you killed those goblins when you last passed through? Now there's ghouls eating their corpses. Make this happen especially when players use something like a long rest. Not infinitely of course, but roll a die and have it happen one third of the time to keep them on their toes.
I think this should be taken on a spin. Depending on what exactly players did during "cleaning", the place can stay safe or get infested even more than it was initially.
Like for example finding an abandoned keep that had the entrance covered in rubble, so it was "sealed". The players left it open when leaving for further journey, but upon returning find there a small group of bandits, now having a safe haven to look on nearby river and prepar an ambush around ford area. Ended up fighting with the bandits, but leaving their corps? Congrats, a carrion-eating animals or monsters now have new burrow. Always make sure that the cleaning IS possible, but not guaranteed. After all, all players had to do was burrying the corpses or blocking the entrance or sending a pidgeon back "home" that there is a still semi-intact outpost to be manned.
Go read the blog posts about it: arsludi.lamemage.com
Word of advice: the original concept has been completely distorted because one of those e-celeb DMs did a show loosely inspired by it and now everyone thinks that version is the real one. So read the blog posts and don't listen to anyone else because they're all wrong.
ITT on this thread that think that exploration equals random content. Having good exploration mechanics helps, but the GM and players attitude to the game is what makes or breaks and exploration game.
Man, imagine being the first dude following the symbols and you didn't know that the symbols had been compromised.
Not that I really have experience with this, but just doing guesswork:
> Make exploration rewarding.
Players need incentives, so show them that exploration can be worthwhile. There's a bunch of things you can give them: New allies, lost relics, natural resources, pathways for fast-travel, locations to inhabit, information, etc. Make it something that they happen upon naturally, not something that they set out to achieve out of existing information.
> Use your setting as a method of storytelling
Use smaller parts of your settings to make the players buy into larger set pieces. Their discovery of a new race with a unique culture gets them invested into a plot about their struggle with neighboring factions, unraveling the tomes in an abandoned wizard's tower uncovers dark secrets about the world, learning how to use a new magic weapon takes your party through the history of its previous owner. Don't just give them loot sticks, give them potential stories. Use natural storytelling and let your players piece together puzzles.
> Give your setting a sense of wonder
This might just be a personal thing, and mostly comes down to "Be a good GM." Don't say "You meet some dryads in a forest". Rely on descriptions, and don't confirm or deny their assertions about what they meet. Try to prevent your players from seeing creatures as stat-blocks, and instead make them parts of the world. Sometimes, people in my group blurt out things like "Do I know that this is an ___, and therefore does ___?", and it just kills any pretense of immersion, as someone who hasn't memorized the monster books. If you can pull it off, then try to make the world seem divorced from the game; let your players make judgment about what they can and can't defeat, although this can be difficult and end poorly very easily.
Increase immersion by describing things through other senses than just sight, give places a sense of motions, use music if you can, etc.
When you explore you just find places and things, and the way you convey those places and things is narration. I suppose you could introduce some element of randomness to keep yourself entertained as a GM, but ultimately exploration is best left to videogames. Being entertained as a GM is all about experiencing novelty through your players as they experience it through the world. Unless the area they are exploring is just chockablock with fantastic shit, its going to get very dull very fast if it becomes the focus.
One of the best things I ever did in a homebrew setting once was making all well, almost all fey and intelligent monsters have a human form visually indistinguishable from humans, which happened for unimportant backstory reasons.
An unintended consequence of this was that it forced me to actually describe characters and rely on visual or social cues to show what they were. I couldn't get away with saying "You meet a dryad in the forest." And if such a character didn't immediately introduce themselves by what they were, players ended up having to speculate, which turned out to be really good for immersion and led to some interesting story bits down the line.
Point is, you're right about relying on descriptions, sometimes having a quick and easy way to confirm or deny what an NPC is just makes them less interesting. We, IRL, don't usually deduce someone's identity at a glance, so why should PCs?
>Unless the area they are exploring is just chockablock with fantastic shit, its going to get very dull very fast if it becomes the focus.
This is because RPGs are ultimately about what the players do. Do, not see or hear. Exploration can come up with all the wondrous shit in the world as a narration, but the instant it stops and the players are faced with the implicit or explicit question of "So what do you do?" it becomes about action - be that interaction and roleplay, puzzle-solving, combat, whatever the base gameplay is about.
There are games that focus more on exploration, but they're either pretty close to straight up freeform, or go the opposite route and end up more like strategy/management games than PnP roleplaying.
Im just not sure WHY he wants to focus on exploration. Its like going to a restaurant that focuses on having as many types of salt as possible. Exploration is such a minor part of pnp games, and emphasizing it seems bizarre from the perspective of an experienced GM.
The trick is giving players something to do through exploring.
OSR games do this a lot by doing lots of "I search under the bed" or "I pull the lever" type shit - forcing the player to take specific in-world actions in order to locate the treasure they need to get their experience points.
At that point you're playing Extreme Mother-May-I, and encouraging players to act like looting murderhobos
I think the automatic foraging is even worse than never getting lost. If you can't run out of food, then wilderness survival never truly becomes a challenge. Which means there's no meaningful choices to make besides when you get bored of derping around in the wilderness.
Go to the OSR general if you want a justification, I'm just saying they do the thing you wanted.
Sound in movies used to just be the guy playing live accompaniment on a piano, too. Doesn't mean people were wrong to ask "how can we use sound better in our movies?"
I wouldnt liken exploration to sound, Id liken it to what it is: set dressing. It gives context and shape to a scene.
Honestly, best advice, just map out a basic area and if your player go looking for something interesting and roll high enough, just quantum ogre either it, or some permutation of it in there. You cant expect your players to check under every rock or your game will devolve into this findit book shit. That'd be my only piece of advice: dont force players to look for specific things, and be willing to change things around if they have a logical expectation and roll high enough.
>OSR games do this a lot by doing lots of "I search under the bed" or "I pull the lever" type shit - forcing the player to take specific in-world actions in order to locate the treasure they need to get their experience points.
Meh, I consider that the worst form of exploration. It invariably devolves into a brainstorming session of "What is every conceivable hiding place in the room as described?" or maybe "How can we bullshit the GM into hinting at what he wants us to say before we get our reward?"
I allow my players to simply say they search the room and assume the PCs, being at least somewhat experienced at this sort of thing, searches every place one might reasonably search in a reasonable span of time. Likewise, I assume PCs are reasonably cautious and observant especially in hostile areas when not being rushed, and don't ask them to specifically declare they look for anything unusual, out of place, or traps every time they enter an area. If something is more hidden than that, they might have to do more (like, if they're pulling up floorboards and knocking out drywall, it's going to take more time and make more noise) or if it's hidden particularly well or by some unusual technique (illusion, very hard to spot switch behind bookshelf, etc) maybe ask for a single, appropriate roll to see if anyone notices.
Point is, that's usually not what people in my experience others can vary really mean or want when they say "exploration." At least, I associate the concept less with examining every object in the room like Adrian Monk on crack and more with the idea of entering a new town for the first time, learning secrets, seeing new things, finding something that hasn't been seen before, shit like that.
cont
Problem is, those things are a lot of work for the GM, especially in a more sandbox style game where the GM can't necessarily know for certain where the players intend to go, or at least where the GM needs to abuse some fiat in order to ensure the players go in the direction of actually-developed content.
Yes, in the small scale you can get away with relatively shallow palette swaps. Oh, you went into the haunted forest instead of the tomb - this isn't an underground passage, it's a forest trail that conveniently follows the exact same map I already made!
But that only works for that sort of thing - you can't thoroughly flesh out, say, a city or a small kingdom or whatever, giving it any kind of actual depth and connectedness to the setting, while also making it so interchangeable that it can be picked up and dropped in front of wherever the players happen to go. Especially not if the setting is collaborative or made in advance.
Point is, macro-scale exploration is hard to enable because it's creativity-intensive for the GM relative to the payoff.
Hard doesn't mean worthless, though. Quite a few people do earnestly enjoy the feeling of seeing new things and directing where they want to go in an RPG, and many games and many groups would hardly consider it minor.
Id say then that they're playing the wrong thing then. Go play a procedurally generated videogame or something which generates endless novel content.
Procedural generation is shit and you damn well know it. No algorithm short of self-aware AIs will ever be able to match the spontaneous creativity of even an average GM, and while the permutations of a procedural-generation algorithm are essentially endless, once you see the undoubtedly few factors that are actually used, you feel like you've seen it all and seeing it in a slightly altered but otherwise visually identical form holds zero further appeal.
>Id liken it to what it is: set dressing
I don't think that's what OP is talking about when they say "exploration". I'd interpret that to mean something like "how do you have good Lewis and Clark adventures," not "how can I describe this room in an interesting way?"
>Meh, I consider that the worst form of exploration.
Well, apparently a lot of people think it's pretty alright and there are lots of OSR blogs out there debating the merits and demerits of Zorking it up in a dungeon.
Note that I'm not taking sides. I just used it as the most obvious example of a time you do something while exploring to demonstrate that "you don't do anything while you explore" guy's point of view reflected his own table more than reality in general.
>Point is, macro-scale exploration is hard to enable because it's creativity-intensive for the GM relative to the payoff.
You can mitigate this a little if you get players who tell you the direction they're headed next time in advance. That way you know where to put your stuff, at least.
What I interpreted it as is granular agency in how they learn about their environment. In a traditional paradigm I would just give players a rough area layout. Were I prioritizing exploration, I would force them to specifically tell me where they wanted to go, and where they looked once they were there. By me, thats a waste of time because they're going to find out about the area anyway. If you're exploring an area thats novel to the setting, then a branching approach akin to old text adventures tends to work best: nodal landmarks which connect to others.
Personally I think OSR shit is over-regressive. I dont even understand the point of those games other than being difficult. OSR fans seem like they are just too high and mighty to play a boardgame.
Players don't always know where they want to go before uncovering the factors involved in making the decision. Which can help a GM, like, if you happen to know the party will find evidence that the plot leads to City X it's a safe bet you can spend time developing things for City X, but every now and then the party gets a random-ass idea and goes to City Y instead.
Web your hexcrawls. Each location of interest should "connect" to at least two locations, and there should be clues and hints about connected locations at each one. E.g., the Thieves' Camp is connected to the Quaint Town because they've been raiding it, and is connected to the Goblin Cave because they've been having to avoid roving goblins recently. So if the players find the Thieves' Camp first, they'll be able to find out that the Quaint Town exists by reading over the chieftan's logs, and also maybe find out from a diary that some of them have been killed by goblins to the west. On the other hand, if they hit the Goblin Cave first, they might find the corpse of a thief who was shot in the back while he was running towards the Camp. And then the Goblin Cave hints towards the Orc Stronghold, because they've been getting enslaved. And so on. Dead end locations should be avoided unless there's a very good reason.
Also, if you're going to make some areas more dangerous than others, which you should totally do, make sure there are escalating areas as you move close. If the Dragon's Lair is a quick death for a novice party, don't put it next to the Peaceful Meadow. Put it in the Deadly Mountains, which are adjacent to the Cliffs of Peril, then the Foothills of Danger, and finally the Peaceful Meadow. Players should learn that going too deep will escalate things in a way they're not ready for, rather than suddenly going from sleepy bears to fire-breathing reptiles.
>By me, thats a waste of time because they're going to find out about the area anyway.
I feel like this is an important disjunction between traditional character-focused drama as we know it and exploration play. Something tells me that exploring is partially about the sheer possibility of missing things.
Like in DOOM there's secrets and shit to encourage exploring the levels, but if you assume "players are going to find these no matter what" then that's more like a guided tour than exploring, you know?
Sure, but as a GM, if you've really worked hard on something interesting, they're going to find it one way or another, or you've wasted your time. Being a GM takes enough time as is without waste, as such Id deem the entire enterprise of exploration based gameplay to be a waste.
Taking your DOOM comparison, I could easily tease hidden areas with interesting formations, but then my players would seek all of them out just to get interesting vignettes rather than progressing the intrigue linearly. If anything, you're just rewarding players for being distracted. A game like DOOM has secrets and collectibles to encourage a second playthrough, not lingering in the level your first time through.
Donjon. It's relatively rules-light and has a group narrative system where every check is a test of die rolls you vs GM.
Short version: for every die by which you win, you can declare one fact or add one die as a bonus to something else. The GM or the players can do this.
As a group, the exploration gets narrated together, whether tracking orcs through the badlands, exploring ancient ruins and translating the arcane mysteries within, traversing dangerous environments, or just good old fashioned dungeon crawling.
Well if you really think anyone finds it fun to sit there examining every item in the room and searching every nook and cranny, then they can go and do that, then. Every group should do what works for them regardless of what others think. Personally, I hate that form of "exploration" and see it as little more than time wasting.
As a broader question, how can a GM work on improving themselves in the area of consistently coming up with new things to see, find, and do? Frankly, random tables are shit at this, whatever they come up with is inevitably random (duh) and thus disconnected.
>you can declare one fact
I love systems where you can do this. It was the best part of Fate Core, too, especially since that game's systems encouraged both give and take since declaring events, actions, or setting details that are detrimental was worth a Fate Point. Too bad it has to be so extensively houseruled to be playable for more than two hours, but, eh, I still like the concept.
Really makes a game feel collaborative, and it's fun to GM when you have to flexibly adapt to ideas from players. It keeps at bay a sense of already knowing everything and thus having nothing to look forward to.
It really does require players to not be shit though.
>Sure, but as a GM, if you've really worked hard on something interesting, they're going to find it one way or another, or you've wasted your time.
That's the thing, though. The time isn't wasted if you value exploration. This guy mentioned that exploration gameplay is time-intensive for the GM, and that's true, but the time isn't wasted - it's necessary to get the effect you want.
In that respect I agree there is definitely lower-hanging fruit in terms of effort:reward ratio, but if you care about the taste of exploration in particular then no amount of oranges is going to substitute effectively.
> , I could easily tease hidden areas with interesting formations, but then my players would seek all of them out just to get interesting vignettes rather than progressing the intrigue linearly.
Yeah, that's kind of the point. Players find exploring like that to be fun.
How exactly is saying "I check under the bed for clues" a case of "extreme mother-may-I?"
Also, how does it inspire murderhoboism when the generic murderhobo would rather dump points into Perception (or its equivalent) and roll to see EVERYTHING in the room?
imo, you cannot design a game so good it can make up for shit players. So I don't really see the point in bothering. Past what's needed for structure, more rules just hold good players back to support the fantasy that bad players can be legislated into being good players.
I haven't played Fate Core before, I'll have to look into that, and I agree with your reasons for why it can be fun.
I agree, but if the players are shit to begin with, they're not MY players.
>How exactly is saying "I check under the bed for clues" a case of "extreme mother-may-I?"
Because it's inevitably never just the bed.
It's the bed.
And the chair.
And the desk.
And the bookshelf.
And the chamberpot.
And the closet.
And the floorboard.
And the end table.
And the clock.
And the dresser.
And the window.
And the rug.
And the candleholder.
So, this thread really has the gears in my head grinding for a hexcrawl campaign.
Idea: The party, down on its luck and its money, inherits a tiny business from an old friend at death's doors. He doesn't have any living relatives to leave his property to, so he chooses the PCs because they helped him recover it in the past. With no murderhoboing work to be done in the relatively peaceful surrounding areas, the party must take up the old man's occupation to feed themselves: archeology.
The system revolves around traveling from the central town and choosing hexes to go artifact diving for. I'd have a set of notes detailing what areas have what potential items based upon what previous civilization inhabited the area. (i.e., the lost elf clan area would have a bow made from ivory wood or pieces of jewelry with old elvish runes on them as potential artifacts). And of course the potential for uncovering useful magic items, hidden dungeons, world shattering capital-A Artifacts, ect. It will also have normal exploration features on top of that. So the occasional goblin camp or ork raiding party must be cleared out before you start digging.
I'm also going to have subplot for the local baron trying to strongarm ownership of the business, claiming that the old man had no right to pass it on to the party and all the wealth accumulated from artifact diving belongs to the state.
So, like this idea, Veeky Forums? Any suggestions?
...Are those bitcoins?
Different guy, but don't think about "Aspects are always true" too hard. Fate is a great game but it kind of stops making sense if you stop to think about it too hard because it's meant to emulate story tropes instead of simulate reality.
Why would you possibly think dwarves of all people would have a hard time taking to bitcoin mining?