Exploration and social - the two pillars that have no mechanics

[Vahnavoi]

On your second paragraph, bad rules are subjective. If you subjectively feel the rule is bad, then you can objectively ignore it and do your own thing (which presumably you will be able to do since you know the rule is bad). You could even choose to not buy a product again from that source if you feel it is rife with such rules. However, if the rule does not exist in the first place then we have literally no choice but to do our thing, no matter if we desire such a thing, when we paid to not do that. This is not a boon.

You are looking at this from quite a narrow, individualist viewpoint.

In actual reality, game rules are subject to logical and mathematical scrutiny. Even if you, for some reason, want to maintain that failure on logical-mathematical grounds is not "objective", it nonetheless stands that vast groups of people are capable of following the same methods to arrive at the same subjective conclusions. But arriving at such conclusions isn't necessarily trivial - it is not, in fact, safe to presume anyone will know a rule is bad, before playing with those rules. The simple corollary is that most of the initial players will learn a rule is bad through experiencing bad effects.

What kind of bad effects? Well, tabletop games aren't typically a physical exercise, so injuries are rare. Social and creative difficulties, on the other hand, are common: arguments over ambiguous rules, time wasted on convoluted mechanics, lost interest because the game does not live up to its narrative promises, etc.. These have undesireable second order effects, most common of these combining negativity bias (the tendency of people to remember and give weight to perceived bad experiences over perceived good ones) with basic inductive logic to arrive at an unfortunate conclusion: "all past instances of X in a game have been bad, therefore, X is bad for gaming". It can be something as simple as mathematically shoddy psionics rules souring the idea of psionics for an entire generation of players, which arguably really did happen in D&D history. The ramifications of bad rules are not limited to "people will ignore these rules or this game". It can be as strong as "people will ignore any game with rules on this topic" or "people will actively ignore developing better rules for this topic out of the belief that it can't be done".

If the above is too obscure, consider: a car sold with no tires is safer than a car sold with defective tires. In the former case, you can see what is missing and can act accordingly. In the latter case, you might not realize anything is amiss before the thing literally blows on your face. So be careful with this odd line of reasoning "because I paid to have a thing, therefore, any thing isbbetter than no thing". It wouldn't be wise to apply it to physical devices, it doesn't become wise in context of games even if physical injury isn't on the table.

[Sorinth]

I've run several hexcrawl-style games, which take place on a hexmap with each hex representing a few square miles of wilderness. I made up the following rules (for context, each of these games centered around the players following a trail of somesort).

1) Each day, the players may make 2 travel rolls, with each roll moving the party one hex. This takes 2 forms
1) a) following the trail. If the characters are aware of the trail, they may follow it to the adjacent hex with a Survival roll vs DC 9 + 1d6. Success, you the party moves to the adjacent hex and keeps the trail
1) b) cardinal direction. The party may pick a direction and move to the adjacent hex by making a Survival roll vs DC 12. Using this method moves the party, but they must re-find the trail

Failing the Survival roll for navigation cause the party to move to a random adjacent hex and lose the trail

The party may opt to make a 3rd navigation roll, but doing so incurs a DC 10 Constitution check or everyone gains a level of exhaustion

Many hexes have encounters in them of one sort or another. If the party entered a hex intentionally (that is, succeeded on their Survival roll to get there), they will have forewarning of the encounter and may opt to immediately navigate out of the hex to avoid the encounter. If they wandered into the hex, they do not get a chance to avoid the encounter.

Once per day per hex, the party may search for the trial by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 9 + 1d6. Failure may be because they rolled too low or because the hex does not contain the trail (I do not specify which).

2) At the end of each day (after the party has made 2 travel rolls and an optional 3rd), they must look for shelter. This may be done by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 10+1d6. Succeed, and the party finds a suitable encampment and may short rest. Fail, and the party is exposed to the elements, taking 5d8 damage distributed as they want and do no get a rest.

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This is the kind of rules I wish the game had more of. Yes there's disparate list of modifiers, conditions, and special circumstances (spread across many locations I might add). But there's no core framework for what wilderness travel looks like. "Make a survival check" is not a framework. Some absolutely basic questions like

- DC's for navigating various types of terrain (like, lush forest = DC 8. Dense jungle = DC 17. Artic tundra = DC 15. Or, just split it up by difficulty - easy terrain = 5, moderate = 8, hard = 11, very hard = 14. Something!!)
- Getting lost
- Getting unlost
- Finding food (with a similar list of DCs like navigation does)

I don't understand, they have all those things in the DMG Foraging for Food with a DC list is on page 111, becoming lost and how to resolve it is on page 111-112, navigation DC table is on page 112. There's even a bunch of stuff about creating a hex map starting on page 14 and which gets referenced in travel pace sections even though the default assumption is theatre of the mind.

[Schwann145]

Do we really need 5 different statblocks for forests, jungles, swamps, marshlands, bogs, plains, grasslands, deserts, tundra, boreal forests, mountains, hills, cliffs, shores, beaches, etc etc etc, each? We have several books for monsters, do we really want a book for terrain exploration? Or is it enough that a module contains the information about the terrain in the module?

I, for one, would love to see something like that. There's a reason that terrain tends to get overlooked by the vast majority of games, and that's because there is nothing to interact with.
It's boring and overlooked gameplay because it's overlooked game design.
Give it some teeth, some handles and levers to pull, and it might just stop being so boring!

If you want that for social encounters then I suggest you look at Burning Wheel and discover why it's a bad idea. A rock paper scissor minigame for talking to people? Oh god please no.

I'm a particular fan of both the Green Ronin Song of Ice and Fire social rules, and the FFG Legend of the Five Rings social rules. Not all social rules are poorly designed or bad to use.

[Skrum]

I don't understand, they have all those things in the DMG Foraging for Food with a DC list is on page 111, becoming lost and how to resolve it is on page 111-112, navigation DC table is on page 112. There's even a bunch of stuff about creating a hex map starting on page 14 and which gets referenced in travel pace sections even though the default assumption is theatre of the mind.

I suppose. It would be churlish of me to continue to bang the same drum, but idk, these rules are pretty underwhelming. Maybe I don't know exactly what would satisfy, but this ain't it.

[Aimeryan]

What kind of bad effects? Well, tabletop games aren't typically a physical exercise, so injuries are rare. Social and creative difficulties, on the other hand, are common: arguments over ambiguous rules, time wasted on convoluted mechanics, lost interest because the game does not live up to its narrative promises, etc...

Rules can be badly presented, schu as sthi entsnece. If you find that the writing is poorly constructed, and therefore the rules are difficult to parse and use, then you should probably avoid the product. What you shouldn't do is demand the sentences be removed or never written for everyone. Again, if you find any rules problematic to understand, for whatever reason, just ignore them and do your own thing* - which is literally what you would do without the rule being written. It would be like you got what you wanted. For everyone else, they can use the rule.

*Feel free to provide feedback to the developers when possible in order to prompt them to clear up the wording, of course.

[Kane0]

So would open ocean count as clear terrain? I assume you'd be using navigators tools instead of the usual survival checks to stay on-course, but there isnt much food to be gathered besides the odd chance to do some fishing. Besides getting blown off course I'd wager ship travel would be the counting-arrows problem writ large with the odd random encounter thrown in.

[Blatant Beast]

I suppose. It would be churlish of me to continue to bang the same drum, but idk, these rules are pretty underwhelming. Maybe I don't know exactly what would satisfy, but this ain't it.

This would only strike me as churlish if you were to continue to deny that Exploration and Social rules did not exist, especially after schm0’s excellent Post #53.

Acknowledging that the game indeed does have Exploration and Social rules, but you find those rules lacking, that is just offering a churl-free opinion. 😀

[NichG]

So would open ocean count as clear terrain? I assume you'd be using navigators tools instead of the usual survival checks to stay on-course, but there isnt much food to be gathered besides the odd chance to do some fishing. Besides getting blown off course I'd wager ship travel would be the counting-arrows problem writ large with the odd random encounter thrown in.

Writing rules from scratch for something like ship travel in a semi-realistic age of discovery setting (e.g. no motors or ships powered primarily by magic), I'd probably have things be on a 2-week or even monthly interval on open ocean, with the major hazards being weather events and possibly stuff based on condition bands at different latitudes. E.g. each month there might be a weather event, a possibility of a random encounter of some kind, a quick evaluation of 'what's going on with the crew?' (mostly nothing, unless morale is in a danger zone) and 'what's going on with the ships?' (possible equipment breakages/etc), and a general 'okay, mark off a month of supplies and adjust morale modulo consequences and decisions involved with the previous things'. Navigation would mostly be about whether you can find favorable winds or currents without going too far out of your way, with 'are you on-course?' being mostly things that would come up due to specific weather results (persistent fogs, very violent storms).

Close to shore, I'd perhaps use a 1 week interval, with extreme weather events having their odds reduced by 1/4 per roll (so equivalent overall probability) but other kinds of random encounters becoming significantly more common. Navigation would also be more relevant there especially if you're not traversing a known route but you're specifically looking for things - signs of civilization, major rivers, places with resources, whatever.

So like, Columbus' first voyage, the jaunt to the Canary islands would be one 'round', the entire Atlantic crossing would also be say two 'rounds', then local exploration (from October to January) would be like 12 'rounds', and then finally something like a 2-4 round return home.

[Merlecory]

I suppose. It would be churlish of me to continue to bang the same drum, but idk, these rules are pretty underwhelming. Maybe I don't know exactly what would satisfy, but this ain't it.

Just bring someone with an outlander background, and avoid the scavanging rules entirely. Or a ranger. Or a Druid with goodberry. Or a 5th level cleric. Really, what I am trying to say is, who's hungry?

More seriously, the rules are discordant and scattered. Looking through these, I get the sense that several people wrote these rules, mostly seperatly of each other, with no clear shared vision.

Actually looking at the rules here, Page 111 of the DMG will give you some DCs for foraging, how much food you find, and how much creatures need. You'll need to go to PHB 185, which will also tell you how much you need to eat, to find out that 3+CON mod days without food causes a level of exhaustion.

There's a hunter's trap in the PHB, though that doesn't have rules related to helping a hunter, you know, trap food. Same with the fishing tackle. There are rations that don't expire though!

DMG 111 has rules for navigation, although this is probably much easier than the designer may have intended. PHB 183 says that any character can map the path they have taken, and it explicitly says that no ability check is required. You'll have to look at XGtE 80 to see that cartographer's tools let you make a map.

There are no rules for finding/making shelter outdoors that I can find, so roughing it is as good a night's sleep as a bed in your own home.

I also don't see anything about setting up any sort of hunting camp, although I kind of hope that the Bastion system coming in 5.5 might be useable in this way.

[Skrum]

This would only strike me as churlish if you, were to continue to deny that Exploration and Social rules did not exist, especially after schm0’s excellent Post #53.

Acknowledging that the game indeed does have Exploration and Social rules, but you find those rules lacking, that is just offering a churl-free opinion. 😀

The existing rules just really remind me of the "we have that home" meme. I'm just entirely unimpressed, and unimpressed generally with how light the rules for skills are.

But yes, they exist. Apparently lol.

And also yes, Schm0's post was excellent. Impressive bit of cataloguing

[Pex]

I've run several hexcrawl-style games, which take place on a hexmap with each hex representing a few square miles of wilderness. I made up the following rules (for context, each of these games centered around the players following a trail of somesort).

1) Each day, the players may make 2 travel rolls, with each roll moving the party one hex. This takes 2 forms
1) a) following the trail. If the characters are aware of the trail, they may follow it to the adjacent hex with a Survival roll vs DC 9 + 1d6. Success, you the party moves to the adjacent hex and keeps the trail
1) b) cardinal direction. The party may pick a direction and move to the adjacent hex by making a Survival roll vs DC 12. Using this method moves the party, but they must re-find the trail

Failing the Survival roll for navigation cause the party to move to a random adjacent hex and lose the trail

The party may opt to make a 3rd navigation roll, but doing so incurs a DC 10 Constitution check or everyone gains a level of exhaustion

Many hexes have encounters in them of one sort or another. If the party entered a hex intentionally (that is, succeeded on their Survival roll to get there), they will have forewarning of the encounter and may opt to immediately navigate out of the hex to avoid the encounter. If they wandered into the hex, they do not get a chance to avoid the encounter.

Once per day per hex, the party may search for the trial by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 9 + 1d6. Failure may be because they rolled too low or because the hex does not contain the trail (I do not specify which).

2) At the end of each day (after the party has made 2 travel rolls and an optional 3rd), they must look for shelter. This may be done by making a Survival, Perception, or Investigation check vs DC 10+1d6. Succeed, and the party finds a suitable encampment and may short rest. Fail, and the party is exposed to the elements, taking 5d8 damage distributed as they want and do no get a rest.

---------

This is the kind of rules I wish the game had more of. Yes there's disparate list of modifiers, conditions, and special circumstances (spread across many locations I might add). But there's no core framework for what wilderness travel looks like. "Make a survival check" is not a framework. Some absolutely basic questions like

- DC's for navigating various types of terrain (like, lush forest = DC 8. Dense jungle = DC 17. Artic tundra = DC 15. Or, just split it up by difficulty - easy terrain = 5, moderate = 8, hard = 11, very hard = 14. Something!!)
- Getting lost
- Getting unlost
- Finding food (with a similar list of DCs like navigation does)

Careful. Asking for defined DCs of things is considered anathema by some. They enjoy making everything up to mold the game world in their image. Anyone who disagrees with their interpretation of how something works is playing the game wrong. Any DM who needs defined rules should instead get good. I've been told this many times. Lack of consistency is a wonderful feature in their eyes, not a frustrating bug.

Many argue the rules do give guidance - DC 5 for very easy, 10 for easy, 15 of medium etc. Of course that is not enough because there is no guidance on what makes something easy or hard. What is easy for one DM is hard for another, and they think that's hunky dory or the DM who disagrees with their interpretation of the difficulty of a thing is playing the game wrong, depending on the person. In the hypocritical view, they think it's horrendous for two trees in different campaigns should have the same climb DC by a given example in a climb table but have no issue with all non-magical plate mail in every campaign everywhere is AC 18.

To 5E's credit there are defined DCs for things. The problem is they're not in a conveniently located place and easily overlooked in the DMG - NPC reactions, object AC hardness and hit points, sample DCs for traps, tracking DC based on surface. DCs for tool use are in a separate splat book. Except perhaps for traps I doubt the casual DM even knows the others exist and make stuff up anyway. As a player I've had occasions to tell the DM there are rules for object hardness and tracking as their relevance came up in games.

I remember way back when before Xanathar was published people were adamantly opposed to the idea of a given formula to identify a spell being cast. It was an infringement on DM power. With Xanathar now an official DC formula exists, DC = 10 + spell level which was the same thing proposed as a house rule at the time people vehemently refused to accept as worthy of consideration. Xanathar made it a Reaction to avoid Counterspell abuse. Now the rule exists. DMs have not lost their adjudication powers.

[TrueAlphaGamer]

I disagree somewhat. If I was just interested in inhabiting a character, I would be better served by joining an improv group or writing short stories. But that's not all I'm after; I also want to play a game. And that means rules, objectives, and even "winning."

When I think of the best DND has to offer me as a player, I think of these elements:
1) create a character concept
2) build that concept
3) play that character in an immersive world full of believable NPCs and interesting stakes
4) live out the fantasy of the character concept via combat and other challenges
5) possibly win the day, but dying a glorious death can also be great

2, 4, and 5 can't really happen in satisfying ways without rules. I could make up a character concept of The Most Interesting Guy in the World and then make up all kinds of crazy things he's done that show he's The Most Interesting Guy in the World, but that's just sketch comedy. That's not a game.

That's why I said that the system fills in the gaps. You don't need rules for any of that, but we ascribe rules to create an abstraction of certain things to make it easier or faster or more dramatic or more random or whatever else. Without a system the rules just become reason, intuition, and good manners. The objective is the story, whatever that is. If you genuinely cannot conceptualize a fulfilling and interesting character who does novel and heroic things without being boxed in by a set of rules then I don't know what to say - maybe just that I feel bad for you.

No. Everything is roleplaying. The talky talky, the looky looky, and the stabby stabby. Individual players may prefer one over the others. Some people enjoying talking in character, saying "I" instead of character name, with or without speaking in a different accent, engaging in conversations with NPCs. Other people want to see what's over the next hill. They want to find out more about the game world. They care about geography, history, and politics. Still more want to play glorified chess. They're excited about terrain features, tactical placement of miniatures, line of site, the mathematics of dice and probabilities.

I think it's a bit inefficient to play a ttrpg if you desire a war game, or vice versa. My point is more that the mechanics are secondary to the experience of being a character.

[Vahnavoi]

Rules can be badly presented, schu as sthi entsnece. If you find that the writing is poorly constructed, and therefore the rules are difficult to parse and use, then you should probably avoid the product. What you shouldn't do is demand the sentences be removed or never written for everyone. Again, if you find any rules problematic to understand, for whatever reason, just ignore them and do your own thing* - which is literally what you would do without the rule being written. It would be like you got what you wanted. For everyone else, they can use the rule.

*Feel free to provide feedback to the developers when possible in order to prompt them to clear up the wording, of course.

You rather neatly left the larger point entirely unaddressed. Leaving it unaddressed means your advice to me ends up being self-contradictory: "you should remove this sentence" is everyday feedback to game designers, on the grounds that a wrong sentence in a wrong place is detrimental to goals of the game designer and their players. It is, in principle, no different from telling a car salesman they should remove defective tires from a car. Why shouldn't I do it? Again, your line of argument ends up assuming a bad rule cannot be worse than no rule.

That's different from arguing something should be never written. It's rather relevant to my criticism that we don't have a way to always determine if a rule is bad before the fact - the corollary being that there is no good standard for which kind of rules should never be written. But after the fact is different - after the fact, after trial and error, it is possible we can deem the rule was worse than useless. But you cannot test a rule by "just ignoring it". Our ability to find out if rules are bad is heavily reliant on someone playing with those rules and suffering the consequences.

---

More seriously, the rules are discordant and scattered. Looking through these, I get the sense that several people wrote these rules, mostly seperatly of each other, with no clear shared vision.

That's because they were written in that exact way.

More generally, people who clamor for more rules often have a bogus ideas of what professionalism means in context of tabletop roleplaying games. They effectively think that WotC (or some other company) has a dwarf in their basement with no other job than to fine tune target numbers... sorry, DCs... so they are just right for simulating whatever the game is about. This is pretty much never the case. They're thinking of Dwarf Fortress or Unreal World or some other single-author or two-author passion project. D&D hasn't been that since it left the hands of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

[Kane0]

Chiming in here to point out that there are indeed mechanics for social and exploration, it's just that most people are unaware, forget they exist, or choose to ignore them. And to be fair, some of these sections are less heavy on the rules and mechanics side, and lean more on the guidance side.

-Snip-

The bottom line is that rules, mechanics and guidance for these pillars do exist. Whether you choose to use them/care to enjoy them or not is another matter altogether.

I say pick and choose as you see fit, create or alter what you feel is lacking, but don't lament their absence.

Most excellent good sir.

Now let's hope that the coming revised DMG has all this consolidated and well presented.

[Skrum]

That's why I said that the system fills in the gaps. You don't need rules for any of that, but we ascribe rules to create an abstraction of certain things to make it easier or faster or more dramatic or more random or whatever else. Without a system the rules just become reason, intuition, and good manners. The objective is the story, whatever that is. If you genuinely cannot conceptualize a fulfilling and interesting character who does novel and heroic things without being boxed in by a set of rules then I don't know what to say - maybe just that I feel bad for you.

I'm going to reiterate again my desire to NOT simply write a short story, or daydream about a cool character and the wild things they could get up to. I want to make a character that has "real" hurdles to overcome in the form of objectively-decided outcomes. Think of the difference between writing a story about Kratos and playing God of War. Or, writing a story about Astarion, Shadowheart, Karlach, and Minthara, and playing BG3. Playing the game comes with success and failure that aren't simply my personal whims or the whims of the DM. If I succeed, I want it to be because I was clever about the mechanics governing the game, and if I fail I want it to be because the challenge proved too hard to overcome and in that failure, maybe my character becomes heroic.

[Sorinth]

I suppose. It would be churlish of me to continue to bang the same drum, but idk, these rules are pretty underwhelming. Maybe I don't know exactly what would satisfy, but this ain't it.

Which is fair, but at the same time I don't really fault them either since my expectations are that the adventure at hand is supposed to do a lot of the heavy lifting in making things interesting. Like for sure the rules for getting lost are pretty mild, in many travel sequences it's basically meaningless. However if you're escorting the princess across some wilderness while being hunted by a BBEG then those rolls for getting lost do take on importance and meaning, and choosing the travel pace becomes a real choice because there's actual tradeoffs that matter, even things like whether it's a clear day or an overcast day start to have an influence on the decisions.

Now having said all that I 100% agree that the DMG should do a better job in the advice that it gives. Especially in regards to wilderness exploration it's mostly here's a bunch of rules for things that will come up and very little how to use those rules to get the style of game that I want. I don't want the system to force or even default a specific style of play, but if it's going to support multiple styles it would be really helpful it gave advice on how to get the most out of it, what pitfalls to avoid, etc...

[KorvinStarmast]

That whole stove analogy is a cute little setup for the false dichotomy. 5e is not unavoidably a game of tactical combat, nor is it unavoidably a game of narrative structures. {snip} Gloomhaven is unavoidably a game of tactical combat, FATE and burning wheel are unavoidably games built on narrative drives. Ten sessions of no combat in D&D easily remains D&D that’s progressing all fine and happy. Ten sessions of no narrative queries being forced or addressed also sees D&D remaining D&D.

That covers it well.

Now let's hope that the coming revised DMG has all this consolidated and well presented.

At this point the Beach Boys sing "Wouldn't it be Nice..."

[Aimeryan]

Why shouldn't I do it? Again, your line of argument ends up assuming a bad rule cannot be worse than no rule.

The analogy doesn't fit; you must acquit.
Tires can be objectively defective, and cause actual danger by being so. Rules are subjective and no one is losing life nor limb for them being found wanting. You can also ignore a rule you don't like by just breathing out - literally, you just say 'no' to the rule. Replacing tires that fail while you are on a journey, even if without injury from which, is considerably more inconvenient and costly.

[sandmote]

Probably the place where I would have preferred no rule to having a rule the most would be 4e's table for improvised damage. In that situation I would have vastly preferred something in the following ballpark:

Figure out if the improvised action works most like an At-Will, Encounter, or Daily Power and give it comparable effects to one of the those for the party's level. If performing the action requires a skill check in addition to the attack roll, increase the damage to compensate the additional risk. If the players find a way to use some improvised attack consistently, consider if it is causing a balance or tone problem. If so, talk to the players about your concern and see if you can change future uses of this improvised attack's effects to something both you and they find comfortable.

Out of what I recall at the moment, that's the only case where I can recall having preferring no rule to a bad rule.

Often, even a bad rule lets me ask a more detailed question of the situation in the game than having no rule, allowing me to make a functional decision faster.

If I say "I want to find food," I'm going to have a much harder time figuring out what my character is improving than if I say "I want to catch fish." So I homebrewed rules for fishing. And sports. And herbalism. If a player at my table doesn't want to interact with them, no harm to me. Having rules for these shrinks the scope of where the "Improve" button is required, so it is easier and faster to do this stuff at the table, but it doesn't get rid of the button.

The scout's expertise in nature is nothing more than a ribbon.
But is it though? Is it possible to use that skill to find natural poisons, or find caves, or figure out what kind of creatures live in a wilderness based on the local flora or trails?

Often no, the nature skill isn't possible to use for those things. With experienced and/or skilled DMs it should be available, but a list of things the skill could theoretically be used for isn't automatically a list of things the table can figure out during play.

The point of having pre-prepared rules is to reduce the rate at which the DM needs to figure things out on the fly. If I have to ask myself at a table I'm DMing "could a player find natural poisons or not," there's insufficient rules, at least compared to 5e's combat system. "Which of the poisons listed could be found in this environment" would be a much better question to ask, because answering it will give me all the information of the previous question and more information on top of that. But to answer the second question, the DM needs an idea of the following:

• What sorts of poisons exist?
• Where would you find them?
• Does that include anywhere in traveling distance?

The 3rd portion can only be answered by the DM, but the more detail the rules give on the first two, the faster the DM can answer the 3rd. Poison rules show up on pages 257 & 258 of the DMG, and the provided rules for obtaining poisons yourself consist of a single paragraph which gives the time and DC to milk venomous creatures.

But nobody ever seems to use it even though it gives absolute freedom.

Setting up situations where the surrounding environment makes doing something clever a viable option for a player takes work from the DM's side, and I've never had a harder time doing so in rules-light systems than ones with detailed rules. But I've often had it the other way around, where the system giving me basic principles and a few examples lets me hit the ground running in setting up a better encounter. It doesn't always work out (especially if I need a PC to fail at something to reveal it) but its much faster to set up.

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If the above is too obscure, consider: a car sold with no tires is safer than a car sold with defective tires.

Which car is safer and which car is better are two different considerations. There are situations where the safer car is also the worse option. If you're doing the in-game equivalent of borrowing the car for 5 minutes, a car with defective tires might be able to get you where you need to go and a car with no tires definitely can't.

So would open ocean count as clear terrain? I assume you'd be using navigators tools instead of the usual survival checks to stay on-course, but there isnt much food to be gathered besides the odd chance to do some fishing. Besides getting blown off course I'd wager ship travel would be the counting-arrows problem writ large with the odd random encounter thrown in.

More to show something as a positive example than to claim any knowledge of Skrum's system or complaints, but Ghosts of Saltmarsh details ideas for events the party needs to deal with while sailing from pages 200 through 208, then gives ideas for random encounters (at varying levels of detail) through page 229. The passage has the limitations inherent to making random tables (they can't fit for every area), but I like them and I they give DMs a solid footing to work off of when the party goes to sea.

[Vahnavoi]

The analogy doesn't fit; you must acquit.
Tires can be objectively defective, and cause actual danger by being so. Rules are subjective and no one is losing life nor limb for them being found wanting. You can also ignore a rule you don't like by just breathing out - literally, you just say 'no' to the rule. Replacing tires that fail while you are on a journey, even if without injury from which, is considerably more inconvenient and costly.

The analogy isn't necessary to the point, it only exist to make the point easier to understand. Rules can be objectively defective in the same way as car tires, even if their defectiveness poses no risk of physical injury - you are confusing degree of risk with objectivity of risk.

Your insistence that "you can just ignore a rule" continues to be fallacious for reasons already explained. You have not, at any point, actually addressed my criticism - you go right back to making the same suspect assumptions. Right here, right now, you are assuming that having to adjust a dysfunctional rule cannot be more difficult, more time consuming, etc.. than having to invent a new rule. You are assuming being exposed to a dysfunctional rule has no effect over being exposed to no rules. That's not how any of this works.

Consider trying to program the dysfunctional rule to a computer. Failure on logical-mathematical grounds can mean the whole computer crashes, or does something unwanted. Just because human brains don't fail the same way as a computer would when facing these things, does not make the failure itself less objective.

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Which car is safer and which car is better are two different considerations. There are situations where the safer car is also the worse option. If you're doing the in-game equivalent of borrowing the car for 5 minutes, a car with defective tires might be able to get you where you need to go and a car with no tires definitely can't.

Nitpicking the analogy is pointless. Safer is better in enough common scenarios to establish the point that it's unwise to assume something cannot be worse than nothing. If you want to dismantle my criticism, deal with the non-analogous versio.

Meanwhile, your extension of my analogy only establishes that sometimes, rules that will fail in the long term can be serviceable in the short term. That is neat and correct, but it does not rebuke my arguments nor does it strenghten Aimeryan's. Why? Because when you make a statement such as "this rule might get you where you want", you are making a prediction and proposing a test. The results of the test - namely playing with the rule - can reveal that you never really had a chance to get where you wanted and you wasted time figuring this out over another method. This determination is no less objective than showing a method for pursuing a solution to logic or math problem is a dead end.

[sandmote]

The results of the test - namely playing with the rule - can reveal that you never really had a chance to get where you wanted and you wasted time figuring this out over another method. This determination is no less objective than showing a method for pursuing a solution to logic or math problem is a dead end.

Both your analogy and the point the analogy was supposed to support consist only of checking whether downsides to having a rule can exist. The full comparison needs to include four categories:

• The downsides of having a rule provided.
• The upsides of having no rule.
• The downsides of having no rule.
• The upsides of having a rule provided.

While it is possible for any (or all) of these four categories to be a null set, exclusively looking at the first one isn't enough to reach any conclusion on which is going to work out better as a general principle. Neither is noting that items in the first category exist enough to conclude its the worse option. At an absolute minimum you can have the situation where one option in such a comparison between two options has all of the downsides of one and more on top of that.

Even if you only want to consider degree of risk, the situation of having no rule has a 100% chance of failing to provide a given table with a useable rule. A bad rule that fails to work for 99% of tables is still going to have a higher success rate than no rule at all.

Two corollaries to that:

• Somewhere past the point you have enough detail in your rules for them to stand on their own, the benefits of adding details can become outweighed by the unforeseen interactions created (where it gats "gamey").
• Adding rules takes up space in both the rulebook and in the amount of material the players need to track. If the rules get too detailed more effort needs to be spent on organization and the additional effort of making and organizing these rules takes up limited resources.

You're specifically comparing having rules to having no rules, so I don't consider either of these relevant to your previously stated conclusion, but I want them stated in general.

Because when you make a statement such as "this rule might get you where you want", you are making a prediction and proposing a test.

The same applies when you make a statement such as "you wasted time figuring this out over another method." That starting with nothing will get you to a conclusion faster than starting with a bad rule is a prediction, and you are assuming a particular outcome to that prediction. At minimum, such assumptions should always be examined through empirical cross-examination. More practically, making a bad rule is fundamentally the first step to make a workable rule in a TTRPG.

It reminds me of the "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work," quote I've always seen attributed to Thomas Edison. Sure, trying carbonized paper as the filament in lightbulbs first would have been faster than what was actually done. That doesn't mean it would have been faster for no one to have tried making any kind of lightbulb before trying them with carbon filament. There is no mythological "Edison" who could show up and design a long lasting, affordable bulb ex nihilo. Even the historical Edison's team didn't manage that. The false starts and failed attempts are an inherent part of the process to getting something that works. Taking these steps is inherently going to get you better results than not taking them. Not in every individual instance, but very much so when treated as the rule.

[Aimeryan]

The analogy isn't necessary to the point, it only exist to make the point easier to understand. Rules can be objectively defective in the same way as car tires...

In common English we would use 'defective' to mean objectively prone to failure, and we would use 'bad' to mean subjectively poor in quality. Nethertheless, I do take the point that defective (and bad) can be used for both; we would then need to add objective/subjective to distinguish between the meanings. Thus, lets proceed as such.

Rules can only be deemed objectively defective if the developer states the rule is meant to do X and it does not do X. I do find WotC to be really bad at fixing rules that don't do what WotC say they should do (usually in the Sage Advice Compendium, unless you deem JC tweets reliable), but that is a whole different topic. Meanwhile, if the developer ships a rule that you deem subjectively defective (aka, bad) then you can ignore the rule and bridge the gap with a ruling, if necessary*. Alternatively, if this is a frequent issue in the product then you should consider whether you want to purchase further products from that source (and pursue a refund if possible).

...even if their defectiveness poses no risk of physical injury - you are confusing degree of risk with objectivity of risk.

There are (at least) two failure points with the analogy:

1. The objective vs subjective distinction made above. WotC don't usually add comments to rules saying what they are meant to do, so we don't usually know the rule is objectively defective.
2. 5e rules do not present actual danger by being non-functional. Defective tires (whereby, defective here means to prone to failure under standard conditions, possibly due to wear and tear) on the other hand very much do.

Therefore, 5e rule discussions need not worry about defective tires on cars.


*This is another topic, but tangential; some rules when removed/not presented leave a gap that needs to bridged over with a ruling, while some just leave less playable space without a ruling to fill in. While 5e makes sure the former rules are present for combat, and a number of the latter too, it does not do so for Exploration and Social - leaving rulings compulsory if those pillars are not completely avoided, and arguably (for we are doing so) made lesser by consequence.

Your insistence that "you can just ignore a rule" continues to be fallacious for reasons already explained.

Your insistence of my insistence continues to be fallacious for reasons already explained.

What reasons? You literally can ignore a rule, unless someone is forcing you against your will. These are not national laws with potential legal consequences if you don't follow them.

[greenstone]

I think "pillars" is a bad way to think about the game. I prefer the term "encounters".

An encounter is an obstacle or barrier to the forward motion of the characters, something stopping them from achieving a goal.

It could be an ogre trying to kill them. It could be a trap on a tresure chest. It could be a massive chasm with a river at the bottom halting their travel. It could be a toady court funcionary refusing to grant them an audience with the empress. It could be 100km of nasty jungle or 1000km of unexplored ocean.

In every case, the game should treat it the same way: Here is an obstancle. Players, which of your characters abilities and/or gear are you going to use to overcome it?

This way, using some social activities (persuasion, bribery, deception, whatever) on the court functionary is no different to using some sneaky activites (lockpicks, mage hand, "10 foot pole lockpicking", whatever) on the trapped chest or using some travel activities (rope bridge, climb, fly, teleport, whatever) on the chasm or using some fighting activites (melee, ranged, magic, crowd control, whatever) on the ogre. No "pillars" needed.

[Goobahfish]

Ok, maybe I will try an interesting take here.

Consider combat. When in doubt, the rules of combat are pretty fixed. That is to say, I attack, they lose HP. I cast spell X, they are affected by condition Y.

But combat in D&D isn't always that simple.

"I knock over the table."
"I push a barrel full of oil off a balcony."

Now the DM is in "DM-ing" territory.

"The table counts as half-cover and requires an Athletics check to 'vault'."
"The guard must make a Dexterity saving throw."

This is Combat++. I will refer to it as this from now on. You have Combat++ and Combat. These are separate ideas.

D&D, has:
Exploration++ and Social++.

It doesn't actually have much Exploration or Social.

When designing a character, you interact with Combat, Exploration and Social. You don't interact with Combat++, Exploration++ or Social++.

Having Combat does not preclude Combat++. Likewise Exploration does not preclude Exploration++. The big problem with D&D, is that when there is no Exploration, you either need an experienced DM (and an 'on-board' party) or it just evaporates into unsatisfying skill checks.

That said, I think there is a strong argument to be made for having 'Social' be an optional rule and Social++ being the default. For Exploration, I am far less convinced.

[Aimeryan]

This is Combat++. I will refer to it as this from now on. You have Combat++ and Combat. These are separate ideas.

D&D, has:
Exploration++ and Social++.

It doesn't actually have much Exploration or Social.

Good take, although the ++ side does not need to be ruling only. There is naturally only so much the book could physically cover, and probably for fatigue's sake should cover - so anything else would have to be rulings. I would probably refer to this myself as Core and Peripheral, or Skeleton and Flesh. The Core/Skeleton provides necessary rules for making the pillar functional in a meaningful way, while the Peripheral/Flesh provides rules (and rulings) to makes them more complete.

I deem 5e low value in this respect even for Combat, with it only having a little flesh on the skeleton - being enough to be meaningfully functional but left quite basic. More so for martials, since Spells at least are somewhat fleshed out (Wizards of the Coast indeed). You can, of course, add to this - but that isn't exactly value on 5e's part, is it?

Exploration and Social, meanwhile, are sort of puddles of vague flesh on the ground that DMs have to stitch together to make something of, as well as add wholesale to on their own time and efforts - or avoid. The lack of support here is very noticeable.

[Goobahfish]

Good take, although the ++ side does not need to be ruling only. There is naturally only so much the book could physically cover, and probably for fatigue's sake should cover - so anything else would have to be rulings. I would probably refer to this myself as Core and Peripheral, or Skeleton and Flesh. The Core/Skeleton provides necessary rules for making the pillar functional in a meaningful way, while the Peripheral/Flesh provides rules (and rulings) to makes them more complete.

I deem 5e low value in this respect even for Combat, with it only having a little flesh on the skeleton - being enough to be meaningfully functional but left quite basic. More so for martials, since Spells at least are somewhat fleshed out (Wizards of the Coast indeed). You can, of course, add to this - but that isn't exactly value on 5e's part, is it?

Exploration and Social, meanwhile, are sort of puddles of vague flesh on the ground that DMs have to stitch together to make something of, as well as add wholesale to on their own time and efforts - or avoid. The lack of support here is very noticeable.

This analogy I like. 5e social and exploration do feel like 'blobs of flesh writhing on the ground'. The only bone is 'make a check'. Spellbooks are filled with a few de-facto bones which can be used in combat or exploration/social circumstances.

The thing I found (having built my own system from scratch) that unless there is a pseudo-mechanical interaction with exploration/social, players basically can't build those kinds of characters. They can build those kinds of 'personalities', but not actual 'characters' so to speak. This has a kind of vicious feedback cycle where players start thinking of actions in terms of 'in character' and the character sheet really doesn't... have anything on it (or at least any tools).

[Sorinth]

Ok, maybe I will try an interesting take here.

Consider combat. When in doubt, the rules of combat are pretty fixed. That is to say, I attack, they lose HP. I cast spell X, they are affected by condition Y.

But combat in D&D isn't always that simple.

"I knock over the table."
"I push a barrel full of oil off a balcony."

Now the DM is in "DM-ing" territory.

"The table counts as half-cover and requires an Athletics check to 'vault'."
"The guard must make a Dexterity saving throw."

This is Combat++. I will refer to it as this from now on. You have Combat++ and Combat. These are separate ideas.

D&D, has:
Exploration++ and Social++.

It doesn't actually have much Exploration or Social.

When designing a character, you interact with Combat, Exploration and Social. You don't interact with Combat++, Exploration++ or Social++.

Having Combat does not preclude Combat++. Likewise Exploration does not preclude Exploration++. The big problem with D&D, is that when there is no Exploration, you either need an experienced DM (and an 'on-board' party) or it just evaporates into unsatisfying skill checks.

That said, I think there is a strong argument to be made for having 'Social' be an optional rule and Social++ being the default. For Exploration, I am far less convinced.

I can completely agree with the idea that exploration can easily end up being a series of unsatisfying skill checks, but I'm not sure what kind of defined Exploration vs Exploration++ things you'd actually want to see in the rulebooks.

There's actually quite a lot clearly defined exploration/travel rules, but I feel the satisfaction in using them comes from the plot/adventure and not the rules themselves. Which incidentally is true for combat as well, combat from random encounters is often seen as being unsatisfying because it's not the combat rules that make it satisfying it's the impact/progress on the plot. And that's where I feel exploration gets hurt, a lot of times the exploration related choices don't advance/impact the plot in any meaningful way, and even when they do you might not know/understand how.

[NichG]

I can completely agree with the idea that exploration can easily end up being a series of unsatisfying skill checks, but I'm not sure what kind of defined Exploration vs Exploration++ things you'd actually want to see in the rulebooks.

There's actually quite a lot clearly defined exploration/travel rules, but I feel the satisfaction in using them comes from the plot/adventure and not the rules themselves. Which incidentally is true for combat as well, combat from random encounters is often seen as being unsatisfying because it's not the combat rules that make it satisfying it's the impact/progress on the plot. And that's where I feel exploration gets hurt, a lot of times the exploration related choices don't advance/impact the plot in any meaningful way, and even when they do you might not know/understand how.

For a general campaign I think its a bit tricky, but for specific kinds of campaigns it seems easier to design for. Like, if your campaign is a hexcrawl into a true wilderness aiming to capture things like the journeys of historical explorers, I can think of all sorts of stuff involving the ability to blaze trails, build roads and outposts, engage the local governments to create supply lines, etc that would directly translate into 'because we played this minigame well and cleverly, we can make it to the temple we've been seeking or whatever'.

For a very military game with armies and their movements and logistics (even from a character-level viewpoint) where its not just about you going in with your elite skirmish squad and assassinating the enemy, but you really do need to do things like hold territory or perform sieges or whatever, it also seems straightforward to understand what the rules need to provide and how they'd be engaged with.

Or in a game that is very dungeon-crawl centered, it doesn't seem hard to imagine sophisticated dungeon environment/tricks and traps sorts of rules along with things that help characters deal with them in smaller chunks than 'I roll to detect traps'. Or even in a heist game, which is kind of similar.

But in general I think exploration works best when 'the plot' comes from the players and what things they know or believe they can or cannot do from their current position'. When you have that, then having rules that tell you how to figure out on your own 'what would you need to first achieve before you can complete your ultimate goal' are useful.

[schm0]

I'm of two minds:

1. Exploration encounters don't necessarily need to tie in the plot or the adventure. The wilderness is simply another obstacle that you can put in the players way. Maybe there's just a road to the dungeon. That's fine, too. But if not, well, the treasure that's buried in that crypt is a few days journey away, and to get there you have to travel through the haunted forest/barren tundra/desert of despair. The encounters in the wilderness should be tied to the environment, not necessarily the adventure. The wilderness is the obstacle, and overcoming it should be part of your quest. It's not "find the dungeon and complete the objective" it's "survive the wilderness, find the dungeon, complete the objective, and survive the trip back".
   
2. That being said, if you prefer to tie them to the adventure, you are free to do so. Maybe when the party gets closer to the dungeon many of the humanoid creatures you face are wearing stone jewelry from the ancient civilization that built the crypt, or maybe someone in the crypt is controlling some monstrous beasts that protect the surrounding land, or you stumble across stirges feasting on a previous party that was looking for the same thing, you find captured humanoids that can give you more information about the crypt if you set them free, etc.

I think the larger problem, which has been exacerbated by the scattered and lackluster support for the exploration pillar in all but a handful of adventures, is that modern players are spoiled by CRPGs, specifically "fast travel" mechanics. (There's even official guidance for a "travel montage" approach listed out in the DMG, which seems strange considering the PHB Ranger existed at the time.) Attention spans are low because expectations are set by traditional CRPGs. The players end up focused on the end goal of where they want to go, and not the journey to those goals, so they want to get there and get it over with as soon as possible.

Other problems are largely solvable by the DM.*

We can fix mechanics we don't like.

We can re-assemble scattered mechanics to be more cohesive.

We can add mechanics we feel are missing.

But skipping them altogether, either because an adventure is written that way, or the players/DM expect them to be, is a fundamental problem in and of itself that can only be addressed by the designers.

* - Many here may lament having to provide these solutions, or endlessly debate the subjectivity of their value/implementation; nonetheless, solutions they remain.

[Sorinth]

For a general campaign I think its a bit tricky, but for specific kinds of campaigns it seems easier to design for. Like, if your campaign is a hexcrawl into a true wilderness aiming to capture things like the journeys of historical explorers, I can think of all sorts of stuff involving the ability to blaze trails, build roads and outposts, engage the local governments to create supply lines, etc that would directly translate into 'because we played this minigame well and cleverly, we can make it to the temple we've been seeking or whatever'.

For a very military game with armies and their movements and logistics (even from a character-level viewpoint) where its not just about you going in with your elite skirmish squad and assassinating the enemy, but you really do need to do things like hold territory or perform sieges or whatever, it also seems straightforward to understand what the rules need to provide and how they'd be engaged with.

Or in a game that is very dungeon-crawl centered, it doesn't seem hard to imagine sophisticated dungeon environment/tricks and traps sorts of rules along with things that help characters deal with them in smaller chunks than 'I roll to detect traps'. Or even in a heist game, which is kind of similar.

But in general I think exploration works best when 'the plot' comes from the players and what things they know or believe they can or cannot do from their current position'. When you have that, then having rules that tell you how to figure out on your own 'what would you need to first achieve before you can complete your ultimate goal' are useful.

There's plenty of stuff about how to make/engage with a hexcrawl to capture the journey through uncharted wilderness. Things like blazing trails, building roads/outposts, establishing supply lines sound like downtime activities, and incidentally building an outpost is already listed there in Downtime activities in the DMG. To build an outpost it costs 15K gold and takes 100 days or if it's more of a trading post in style/type then 5K gold and 60 days. So sure add a line in the table for what 1 mile of road costs in gold/time, and maybe a line or two about how construction time/cost for everything should increase for remote locations but I'm not seeing this as exploration pillar stuff, it sounds like background stuff that costs time/money but if anyone decides to pay that cost simply gets done with maybe a complication or two that come up like with all downtime activities.

Being the general of an army where you are controlling/moving troops and fight at the battlefield level even if being described by the DM at the character level just doesn't sound like D&D, and more to the point would be some combat pillar variant/offshoot and not exploration pillar related.

For dungeon tricks do you mean things like presenting a locked door with a secret way through. Like say there's a locked door that can't be opened by picking the lock because there's no visible lock to pick, but there's a nearby pool that if they explore they find a passageway that leads to the other side of the door where a lever can be used to open the door. But obviously written/presented in a nicer manner, with good descriptions and maybe a map.

Because I would note if that's the kind of thing your thinking of it doesn't add any new exploration rules for anyone to interact with, it's just using the existing rules for swimming, maybe holding your breath, maybe a skill check if the water isn't still. Those rules all exist and are dubbed boring/uninteresting components of the exploration pillar which they basically are when looked at in a vacuum, it's the context around them that makes them interesting. So I'm all in favour of some predefined exploration challenges like that where you can just take them and drop them in wherever you want much like the traps already do or the puzzles section in Tasha's. And I'd also like to see guidance on creating your own sorts of exploration challenges/puzzles and how to handle players coming up with unexpected solutions, or what to do if they're stuck and how to avoid it by having multiple pathways to success and treating skill check failures as success with a cost. But at the end of the day we probably aren't talking about any new rules being added to the exploration pillar.