I think every old school GM did it a little bit differently, and I personally like when the players go to the extra length to solve problems they are having while playing, Like, for example,  adding a wizard to the party who can cast continual light to make everburning torches for the party to use, or the Cleric, Druid, or Ranger that elects to take the goodberry spell, to ensure the party will never starve to death, or the Wizard that designs a new spell, or fighters, thieves, and rangers that actually craft up some animal traps so they can hunt while traveling through the wilderness. part of old school was teaching the players to actually use their brain, to come up with solutions to solve the problems that the characters were experiencing in the fantasy world. This skill transfers to the real world in a big big way, and contributes considerably to a person developing a skill set that enables them to overcome obstacles, resolve problems or disagreements, or to innovate or invent satisfactory solutions for improving real quality of life issues. All of that has been lost to some degree with the newer editions, including adding streamlined mechanics, like for example skills checks, that don't require the player to describe a specific set of actions that they are taking to resolve, a challenge or problem.

I'll get off my soap box now, however I do want to revisit exploration a bit, and outline why I feel that is a significant and immersive part of the D&D game, that has not been included with an eye towards quality in more modern versions of D&D as well as other roleplaying games... I have included one of my D&D GM's map to outline some of the issues I'll be discussing here today;

GM's Map of Oakroot, A Desert Hamlet
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3830[/ATTACH]

This is a typical five Mile Judges Guild hex, it is a hex containing the Hamlet of Oakroot and everything in it's immediate vicinity, as well as a good chunk of desert, and represents one of these random starting locations that I like to use, for a new player party that has not explored my fantasy world. The big hex is five miles across, and as you can see by the labeling of the map, each of these small hexes is about 1,056 feet or .2 miles across. So 5 hexes equal a mile, and twenty-five hexes is give miles. The beauty of using a five mile hex, is that it is easily scalable, and we can zoom in and scope in, and map one of the smaller hexes, on exactly the same sheet of graph paper, and one .2 mile hex, would for example contain 25 sub-hexes, that are just a hair over 42 feet across. Judges guild made it super easy to create precisely scaled campaign maps, and made it easy for the GM to figure out exactly how long it would take for travelers to get from one place to another in the wilderness. This of course makes it easy to calculate food and water usage, and everything the noobs all complain about that adds drama, excitement, and realism to the game is auto-magically included in the superbly elegant old school design. Not much thinking is required, one just needs to look at the accurately scaled map.

The players have to make their own map, because they are exploring. maybe they are just traveling to Oakroot, for the first time. Maybe they grew up, and were raised there, and are just starting out their adventuring life. If you look carefully at the map, you'll notice lots of sand dunes, Some of the areas already have specific names, most likely pretty well known by any locals, or people that grew up in Oakroot. There is also a river that originates in Oakroot, it is a natural spring in fact, with water pouring out onto the surface perhaps being drained by a subterranean river that is flowing beneath the desert. One of the big buildings one the map, is named The Princes Well. Just take a guess what you'll find if you go there? In addition there are some steep embankments and escarpments, some areas are labeled with names, and there are numbers all over the GM's map. These numbers are keys, and specific locations have been pre-keyed to specific encounters that are already written up. Some of these locations include notable NPCs, the vast majority are encounters though, Bandits, Thieves, Monsters, and some are just interesting locations that hold some local lore, or history.

Key
1. The Oakroot Monastery. Home of the Lawful Neutral clerics of Oakroot. A source of holy water, blessings, potions, as well as healing for any player party. The monastery is four levels with two large bell towers, as well as a cellar. It is rumored there is an entrance in the cellar to some ancient subterranean catacombs, but only the clerics know for certain, as Monastery visitors are not typically invited into the cellars. The Monastery is noted for the quality of it's three varieties of Red Wine, and from the Monastery to the river trail the grounds are covered in the spring summer and fall with lush and beautiful vineyards. Often the clerics, monks, and their faithful followers can be seen cutting new irrigation ditches with shovels and animal plow teams, and clearing weeds and other growths out of their vineyards. There are 78 Clerics, Monks, and Nuns that live at the Monastery year round. Services are offered in a large chapel on Monastery grounds once a week for the locals, and otherwise the Clerics and monks pretty much keep to themselves. They are led by:

Zima Vikre LN CL Patriarch 9th Lvl HD: 7+1 Hp: 26 AC: 9
Str: 16  Int: 13 Wis: 10 Con: 11 Dex: 8 Chr: 10
Spells: 33322

Magic Items:
+1 Snake Staff 1d6+1 damage, can turn into a snake in order to bind a foe of the cleric for   up to four turns.
Potion of Longevity
Potion of Fire Resistance
Scroll of Protection from Elementals
Ring of Mammal Control: Horses

He is served by:
Six Bishops 6th Lvl, AC: 9 HD: 5  HP: 21, 28, 17, 25, 21, 27, Aln LN
Spells: 2211
Each with a 30% of owning a magic wand or staff, Misc magic, 1d4 Potions, and 1d4 Clerical Magic Scrolls.

Three Curates 5th Lvl, AC: 9 HD 4+1 HP: 19, 19, 19, Aln: LN
Spells: 2,2
Each with a 25% of owning a magic wand or staff, Misc magic, 1d2 Potions, and 1d2 Clerical Magic Scrolls

Four Vicars, 4th Lvl, AC: 9 HD: 3, HP 12, 15, 11, 13
Spells: 2,1
Each with a 20% of owning a magic wand or staff, Misc magic, a Potion, and a Clerical scrolls

There are 12 Nuns which may be 1d4 levels having a 5% chance per level of having clerical magic items including weapons, wands or staffs, misc magic, a potion, and or a clerical magic scroll.

There are 8 Monks, with the highest monk being 8th Level, and each additional monk holding one rank or level beneath the . The monks are competent in unarmed combat and fast, as well as lethal

Thalinar Tavitus LN, Grand Master of the North Wind 8th Lvl Monk, HD: 8 HP: 23 Mve: 19" AC: 3 Attacks per Round:2  Dmge/Attk: 3d6 (Bruce Lee open fist style biatch slaps) (unarmed)

The remaining forty-five clerics, are randomly 1st-3rd level each with members of the order only having a 5% chance of owning one clerical magic item (Roll randomly).

The Three Red wines and their price the order sell them for are as follows:

Vikre's Red – 1,000 Gp per barrel, 20 Gp per Bottle, 4 Gp a glass. 25% chance of becoming intoxicated and temporarily losing 1d6 Wisdom for 1d8 Hours drinking one glass. Currently 4 barrels in the wine cellar. (not generally for sale)

Old  Ivagra Wine – 250 Gp per Barrel, 5 GP per Bottle, 8 Sp a glass. 10% chance of temporarily becoming intoxicated drinking one glass. Currently 12 barrels in the wine cellar. (for sale for special monastery guests only.)

Fulvius Wine -  20 Gp per Barrel, 1 Gp per Bottle, 1 Sp per Glass. ST vs. Con (per Bottle) to avoid intoxication. Currently 174 barrels in the wine cellar. Available for sale to all who can pay.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

2. 33% Chance nothing, 33% chance Prince's Royal Mounted Patrol (NA: 1d20), 33% Chance pilgrims or travelers with livestock, or merchants with mounts, wagons and livestock.  NA: 3d6 pilgrims or merchants, or 1d20 travelers. Mounted Patrol AC: 5 HD: 3 Armed with Spears & Shield, Longsword & 1d6 Throwing Daggers.

3. 50% chance nothing, 50% chance Prince's Royal Light Foot Patrol NA: 2d20 AC:6, HD: 1 armed with Spears and Daggers

4. Farmer Hekial seeking his missing daughter. (She is off with one of the Prince's guard without permission).

5. The burnt out farm.

6. Prince  Ronia's  Keep. A great stone keep, three levels with a large central 40' diameter round bell tower reaching up seventy feet.   Prince Ronia, Lvl 9 Fighter, Aln: N, HD: 9+3 HP: 29 AC: 1 armed with +1 Longsword / +3 versus Trolls (1d8+1), +1 Shield, and a +1 two-handed Warhammer (2d6+1). He has a Potion of growth, and is wearing a Ring of Fire Resistance as well as an Amulet vs. Crystal balls and ESP. he has a Champion personal bodyguard, Jishra who will kill anyone who even seems to threaten the prince. Jishra, Ftr Lvl 8, HD: 8+2, HP: 63  AC: 3 armed with a +1 Two-handed Sword (1d12+1), +1 Chainmail, and an excellent longbow with a quarrel of twenty +2 enchanted arrows dmge/attk (1d8+2), as well as a regular quarrel of arrows.  He also has a potion of invulnerability, and is wearing a ring of X-ray vision. He also has four additional escorts/personal bodyguards who will be found with him at all times, 4 Light Cavalry Bowmen, AC: 8, HD: 4 HP: 18, 14, 21, 15 armed with shortbows (1d6 arrow), scimitars (1d8), and daggers.

110 Royal Guards live in the Keep. They are Barbarians with veteran (+1) morale, and are composed as follows:
44 Light Foot, AC: 7 HD: 1 or 2, armed with Spear, Shield, & Dagger
33 Longbowmen, AC: 6 HD: 2 Armed with Longbows, Shorts Swords, & Daggers. (no shield)
44 Light Horsemen, AC: 7, HD: 3 Armed with 3x Spear, Longsword, Dagger, & Shield.

There is also two Onagers (2d6), and a Ballistae (3d6) on the roof of the great keep manned by twenty four royal engineers, AC: 8 HD: 1 Armed with Swords, and Daggers.

Via a messenger Prince Ronia can summon 1d4 additional 6th Level magic-users that will arrive in 1d4-1 days to help him defend the keep.

7. 33% Nothing, 33% 1d6 Thieves Guild members, 33% 1d10 Light Royal Foot Patrol, AC: 7 HD: 1 or 2, armed with Spear, Shield, & Dagger

8. 33% No encounter, 33% 3d20 bandits raiding, 33% chance 1d20 Prince Royal Mounted patrol

9-13 Random Encounter

14. Caverns

15. Infidels Bluff – A very steep 40' stone bluff that is too steep for mounts and pack animals to climb.

16. Caverns

17. Forgotten Silver Mine

18. The Buried Tower

19. The Lost Gold Mine

20-29 Random Monster Encounter

Notable Locales

Lower Narrows – located just East of town, features a trail with 12'-20' tall sand dunes just 30' from the trail. A place where bandits and brigands frequently attack from.

Axe Shadow Dunes – located Northeast of Town, features many mingled dunes which serve as an easy hiding area for bandits and brigands. With a day long search, the player characters have a 20% chance of locating a bandit leader, and a 10% chance of discovering an ancient Dwarven door in a large rock which leads to a forgotten ruined Dwarven subterranean stronghold which included a large forge.

Rock Bridge – The only passage up the Infidels Bluff that is suitable for mounts and pack animals. Dex check for the animal to safely climb.

Twisted Dunes – 2 in 6 chance of losing your way and becoming disoriented in these highly irregular dunes.

Amber Bluff – Rare mineral Amber is commonly found in this stony rock bluff/outcropping.

Let me know if you all want the full writeup for the Hamlet itself...

It sucks at it because it made it so easy to ignore all the actual exploration aspects. I wouldn't drop the Ranger, but if you want it to matter you have to really lean into all of the resource management and not handwave it.

1 week per long rest helps, but rituals are still an issue. I really don't think 5e is bad at exploration the way 4e is.

It depends upon how you run your games.   If the grueling chore of exploration is very important to the flavor of your games, then take your time and narrate every minute detail of it.  Don't allow the players to rush through those portions of gameplay.

However, that's not the fun part of the game for most players; so don't drown them in copious amounts of it.

Good read. That said, I disagree with this part:

Quote from:  Angry GMAs a GM, it's actually quite hard to create a location in the world that a group of dedicated PCs couldn't reach until they attained a certain level. Short of making it a flying location. And you can only have so many flying castles. The only way to truly make a location feel inaccessible to low-level, weaker parties is to put a powerful monster in front of it to kill parties who aren't up to the Challenge Rating. And believe me, you can only do that once or twice before the players get sick of it.

There's a quite easy way to accomplish this without resorting to the above means, I think.


Also, this paragraph just nicely encapsulates how KotBL differs from standard D&D:

Quote from:  Angry GMThat's also why it's such a big deal with a truly powerful dragon shows up in civilized lands. Or when a vampire lives among humans and starts letting his undead play in the streets. It's also why dragons pick remote villages and vampires pretend to be perfectly innocent noble lords. Because they know that they actually ARE outmatched against a powerful enough army or mob.

Which mob to form if monsters live openly among you and your brethren openly form alliances with them as well? I mean, it can be done... but it's probably more tricky.



Finally:

Quote from:  Angry GIn short, you decide all of the various things that will be obstacles to exploration – food, water, travel time, encumbrance, light, and so on – and then build abilities and treasures into the system that gradually allow players to mitigate them.

This is an interesting approach and I can see his point. But there are other ways of introducing varying levels of exploration, detached from level progress.

Quote from: Razor 007;1103587It depends upon how you run your games.   If the grueling chore of exploration is very important to the flavor of your games, then take your time and narrate every minute detail of it.  Don't allow the players to rush through those portions of gameplay.

However, that's not the fun part of the game for most players; so don't drown them in copious amounts of it.

Yeah, I enjoy exploration but dealing with the mundane difficulties of an expedition is generally not what I'm looking for. It's the discovery element that is exciting.

I ran an underdark sandbox exploration campaign with 5E a year ago. Can confirm - exploration doesn't work in 5E.

I ramped up the difficulty of travel with requirements for specialized pack animals and checks for difficult terrain. I had tough wandering monster encounters in challenging terrain. I nerfed magical light and create food and water 'because Underdark.' I houseruled rests to a long rest required successive nights in a secure location.

Didn't work. Travel was still mostly a breeze. Wandering monsters were dispatched with ease, as the party could still pretty much nova on them. The whole sandbox premise never really worked. We shitcanned the campaign after about 10 sessions.

PCs are simply too resilient in 5E for sandbox exploration campaigns to work. The default 5-8 encounters a day is baked into the system. I've learned as a DM that you must design 5E adventures and campaigns around that foundational assumption.

I've come to the conclusion that in order to have meaningful and engaging exploration in an RPG, you need a system designed with meaningful and engaging exploration as a core element.

Quote from: Haffrung;1103603PCs are simply too resilient in 5E for sandbox exploration campaigns to work. The default 5-8 encounters a day is baked into the system. I've learned as a DM that you must design 5E adventures and campaigns around that foundational assumption.

I've come to the conclusion that in order to have meaningful and engaging exploration in an RPG, you need a system designed with meaningful and engaging exploration as a core element.

Naw, you just switch Long Rest to 1 Week (as suggested in the DMG!), work off 5-8 encounters between LR, and make refugia suitable for a LR hard to find.

edit: Also, have lots of 'status quo' encounters with '300 Duergar' type stuff so the PCs learn to run away a lot.

And if your players just start turtling up and insisting on spending the whole week resting up - then offer them "partial rests" for 1 night's sleep.

Let them roll 1/2 hit dice - and maybe give them a 25% chance to recover a lost spell slot (Roll over 15 on a D20).  This means they get something back and encourages them to keep going (carefully) - but to be clever and work to avoid combat or they risk losing more than they gain back.

For my 5E campaigns, I'm using a blend of some of the DMG stricter rules on rests with my own slant applied to it:  Long rest and short rests occur per standard.  Long rests do not return any hit points.  They only return half the used Hit Dice (rounded up)--as the default.  Good conditions return more, while bad conditions return less.  (Sleeping out in the cold, with only rations, injured, you are lucky to get back one hit die.)  Then I'm using more of the exhaustion mechanic than the default.  Every failed death save is a level of exhaustion.  Death saves don't reset until you take a long rest.  I've also got various custom monster abilities that can cause exhaustion.  IMO, ramping up the exhaustion mechanic is the key to making the resource part of exploration sting.

I also find that my natural instinct to do flurries of wilderness encounters mixed with a few days of almost none, works a lot better than the 0-1 encounter per day thing.

The upshot is that the characters are fairly resilient the first 2 to 3 days they are exploring, but if they don't have adequate resources or find a safe place to hole up, they can get worn down pretty quick.  I've got a group lost at the moment down to 2 days of food.  They just found some questionable goblin food and decided to chance eating it.  Despite having two foragers in the group, the area is too infested to find much game.

Quote from: Daztur;1103539Far too much healing. Also combat is still too slow which reduces time for other stuff.

Quote from: cranebump;1103540Very long read. Some fixes are obvious. Drop Feats, change the rest/recovery parameters. Don't allow Rangers. Nix some spells. It feels like he forgot you can tinker with the game.

That said, I tend to agree things are pretty easy for 5E characters, on the whole. But maybe that just means GMs have to be more creative?

This is the issue in a nutshell. The 5e chassis is EXTREMELY solid, AND Exploration has received probably the most user-friendly rules I've seen in decades.

The Adventure chapter (Ch. is almost ignored however, as is Exhaustion, and Lifestyle, and Trade Goods and Vehicles, and it makes me weep how such useful tools are roundly ignored. The Movement Speed rates of "Slow, Normal, Fast," structured for Round, Hourly, Day is comfortably usable. Encubrance has two very approachable and simple methods. The explicit needs for food, water, and rest are simplified and usable. There is so much good stuff!... negated by fucking Natural Healing, certain Spells, and Features! Arrrrrgh! :mad:

Hints how I make it work for my tastes:
* First thing, Full Healing for Long Rest MUST GO! Only allow Hit Dice for natural Healing, period.
* Once Hit Dice are only used for Natural Healing, adjust % rate of Hit Dice regeneration to your desired campaign style. More heroic, more Hit Dice per Long Rest; more Fantasy Fuckin' Vietnam, less HD per LR.
* Day =  Short Rests and Week = Long Rests is mostly a fools errand, but a fantastic way to cripple 15 min Adventuring Day for Spellcasting slots while avoiding Spell Memorization Times. ... Just bring back Spell Memorization Times and cost them in Short Rest/s.
* Goodberry breaks Exploration dead. Either ban outright or rewrite the spell. It is incompatible as is. This is not the only borked spell: look hard at Find Familiar, Find Steed, Healing Spirit, Leomund's Tiny Hut (ban this one outright, or go back to old skool version), etc.
* Choose whether [Magic] Focus is turned on, if you want Components to matter at all.
* The Ranger abilities are powerful 'ribbons' but context can save against most of that. However, wandering encounters helps tamp down against things, like Ranger Survival food&water gathering (the rest of the party should be exposed ). Further, having the Ranger = +X PC rolls in a Group Check helps tamp down on everyone being transported stealthily, (so one lone ranger cannot whisk entire secret armies through terrain like a ferry; it gives Rangers a group safe-passage limit).
*Feats and Multiclassing requires a fine-toothed comb. At a start I would ban Alert outright...

There is a few more, but that is a solid start. Remember, so much was turned on to "get to the good stuff" which meant Organized Play (Adventure League) heroics with next to no bookkeeping. I hate that playstyle. :mad: BUT there are useful simplifications that DO work in practice buried under the heroic cruft! The trouble is knowing the baked-in-the-stew issues and fishing them out before cooking.

WotC D&D is very much a pre-made TV Dinner, less old skool Toolkit, so you got work to do to season to taste. That said, this 5e is a surprisingly strong TV Dinner Tray, which is easily made modular by cutting out the individual basins. I don't know if that is as flattering as I meant it... but we are dealing with WotC, so I have lowered expectations and 5e surpassed them.

5E does exploration adequately, but you do have to reel in magic a bit, and you absolutely need a chance of wandering monsters every 10 minutes or the like...too much comes back after a short rest to make such things perfectly reliable to get.

Quote from: Doom;1103645...you absolutely need a chance of wandering monsters every 10 minutes or the like...too much comes back after a short rest to make such things perfectly reliable to get.

How does trade work in that setting?

Quote from: Doom;11036455E does exploration adequately, but you do have to reel in magic a bit, and you absolutely need a chance of wandering monsters every 10 minutes or the like...too much comes back after a short rest to make such things perfectly reliable to get.

I just do a 1 in 6 chance of a 1 hour short rest being interrupted typically, seems to work ok. Plus 7 days for a long rest.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1103649How does trade work in that setting?

"Trade" as in going to a merchant in a town? Well, you generally don't have wandering monsters in a town. That said, merchants have long since discovered a silvery mist they spray over goods, to make them immune to Mage Hand (it wears off after a month). I outlawed Moon Druids because there's just not way to make a coherent pseudo-fantasy world with characters able to turn into rats or whatever even if they're not famous heroes.