As a #dnd DM, how do you make exploration fun and interesting? As a player, what is the best way to handle exploration? And, come to think of it, what is exploration anyway?! @shawnmerwin and @Alphastream talk about it here: https://t.co/XbeKTjax97
— Down with D&D (@downwithdnd) August 7, 2020
There are players who will abuse their DMs. They will take a called shot to blind something, and if that works, will do it every time for ever, and won’t stop until the DM quits.
— Alphastream – Staying At Home (@Alphastream) August 7, 2020
For me, it’s because monsters are assigned a Challenge Rating based on the amount of damage they’re expected to do over a series of rounds, and those expected rounds are calculated based on hp, AC, etc. If you make it possible to change those numbers, then the math goes poof. And yes, for some players D&D is about finding the most efficient way to kill monsters. For other players it's about creating the most fun stories while killing monsters inefficiently. So part of "exploration" can be "let's find out how to do this based on this situation."
— Shawn Merwin, dreaming of the frigid cold (@shawnmerwin) August 7, 2020
Exploration is always a form of puzzle solving.
Each “room” is a clue of sorts. Some of them might be red herrings. Others you can tell are useful / important, but you can’t tell HOW immediately and need to think about how it might fit with other areas. Many are just ordinary puzzle pieces that aren’t challenging in themselves, but exist to give structure to the rest.
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For example, the party enters an old stone ruin buried in the earth.
Main entry room gives first impressions of what to expect of the entire dungeon – high ceiling, ringed by statues, ornate carvings, draconic runes, a massive stone tablet with cryptic engravings which hint at esoteric myth and legend…
…move on to a grand hall, still ornate, but mostly exists to present options – two doors along each side wall leading to other areas; a massive double door at the far end, sealed by magic upon inspection; a high ceiling and a balcony one story above ringing the edges of the room, making it clear that there’s another level of the dungeon to reach, but it must be accessed somewhere else, as there are no stairs in the hallway to reach it…
…one side door leads to a small collection of interconnected rooms that make up a study, library, laboratory, etc, with some old scraps of disjointed notes that have something to do with strange experiments, forbidden magic, alchemical transformations, and disgruntled ramblings about the researcher being annoyed at how he is being treated by “The Archpriest” and his “zealots”…
…another door leads to a collection of rooms including a sizeable dormitory in ruin and disarray, where clearly some sort of fight or struggle took place…
…yet another door simply leads to a pair of staircases, one going up (presumably to the level above), one going down into who knows what… but in being explored, expands the navigation options of the party and gives them choices to make…
…still another door leads to a storage area, where the players can perhaps find useful resources, as well as other strange objects of no immediate use that paint a picture and offer clues as to what happened in this dungeon…
That’s just one floor, and the players have done zero fighting, zero social interaction, and gathered only the smallest amount of loot, but already there’s clearly something going on in this place, and they’re piecing together the pieces and getting a sense for the larger picture, while simultaneously wanting to keep searching and learning more about everything… and also lowering their guard a bit as the place seems empty, until the right moment for something to show up…
Exploration, properly handled, can do a heck of a lot of heavy lifting and be a lot of fun for both the players and the DM.