Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 200 - Exploration

Episode Date: November 12, 2023

Exploration is the shortest of the three legs of RPGs and doesn’t get the love that combat or social encounters do at most tables.  However, with a little planning, and learning how to run a hexcrawl or prepare some mysteries and histories, exploration can be a lot of fun for your entire table.  Plus you will get to hear Jeremy struggle to say Lothlorien.   #dnd #pf2e #DMTips #RPGExploration #GMTips   Resources: 3D Crafts & Curios etsy store - https://etsy.com/shop/3DCraftsAndCurios    Badooga’s Exlploration Guidelines - https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-MEVza9zokR5wbbwbs5c   Sly Flourish article on Pointcrawls - https://slyflourish.com/pointcrawls.html   The Angry GM - Exploration - https://theangrygm.com/what-makes-exploration The Alexandrian article on Hexcrawls:  https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. You know what your players would enjoy, and if exploration isn't on that list, bypass it. However, there are some reasons to include exploration activities in your game. The first and most important, it makes the world feel bigger. It's the weekend, that means it must be time for the Taking 20 podcast. This week, episode 200, Sprucing Up Exploration in Your Game. I want to thank this week's sponsor, 3D Crafts and Curios.

Please head over to 3D Crafts and Curios on Etsy and check out the dice towers and the DM screens and everything else that they make that's available at their Etsy store. It's time to announce the winner of the three 3D printed mugs generously provided by Brinton at 3D Crafts and Curios. Caleb Miller has been selected out of all the entries to receive these mugs.

Congratulations, Caleb! Your contact information has been shared with Brinton, who will be in touch to arrange delivery of your awesome prize. I want to thank everyone who sent in NPCs and followed 3D Crafts and Curios on Instagram. A few of you shared NPCs and explicitly said you didn't want to enter the contest to save international shipping costs and that kind of thing. Honestly, I am floored by the thoughtfulness by many of my listeners, and I want to thank everyone who submitted NPCs but didn't want to enter the contest, and thank you to everyone who responded at all and

followed 3D Crafts and Curios on Instagram. Finally, Brenton, thank you so much for sponsoring another giveaway for the podcast. I am overwhelmed by your kindness and your generosity, and I'm very thankful that this podcast has brought you into my life, and thank you so much for everything that you do. For those of you who didn't win, I do apologize, but if you think you missed out, think again. You can still use the coupon code TAKING20, that's TAKING20, at the 3D Crafts and Curios Etsy store to get 20% off your order throughout the end of the year.

I'll include a link in the resources directly to the Etsy store, and I'll be sure to share it on social media as well. I also want to thank our other sponsor, Korn. Did you know that pirates are some of the best people to sell Korn to? They pay about a buck an ear. Do you have a topic idea for me? If so, send it to me at feedback at taking20podcast.com, and I'll try to get the episode scheduled in the near future.

I apologize for what's about to come, but it is hard for me to believe it's been 200 episodes since I started this little podcast, and I am stunned about how quickly time has flown. I started putting the pieces into place just before COVID pissed in our collective cornflakes and turned the world upside down just a little bit. These four years have not been easy, and there were hardships that made me feel discouraged. Brain cancer, loss of family and friends, the grind of putting out weekly content, late nights, early mornings.

But the kind words that I received, the messages of encouragement that I received from you, kept me going. There were times when I felt discouraged, but your emails, your messages, always lifted me up right when it was desperately needed, and I thank all of you for it. It's critically important to me that you, my beloved listeners, know just how thankful I am for all of you. And always I want you to know how grateful I am for your support and encouragement. I've learned so much from all of you, and I'm constantly inspired by your creativity and kind feedback that you've provided. I'm constantly inspired by your creativity and kind feedback that you've provided.

That feedback has helped me shape the podcast to what it is today, and I am grateful and thankful for your willingness to share your thoughts and ideas with me. As of the time you're listening to this, we'll probably reach about 40,000 downloads over the life of the podcast, and I am so excited to see what the future holds. I can't wait to continue to share my passion for tabletop role-playing games with all of you for as long as you'll put up with this old idiot rambling about shit like beholders and making bad dad jokes. I love you all, and thank you so much for listening. Okay, alright, alright, enough of that mushy crap. Let's get to the episode proper. As I mentioned in the previous episode, and if you haven't listened to it, you really should,

As I mentioned in the previous episode, and if you haven't listened to it, you really should, many RPGs are built on three different pillars, combat, social encounters, and exploration. I've talked a lot about combat since it's prominent at most tables, and last week I encouraged DMs to give some love to social encounters, giving some depth to your NPCs and encouraging creative use of skills. This week, I want to focus on the often maligned and usually skipped over exploration phase of adventuring. Adventures tend to be about being there, in the dungeon, in the city of Waterdeep,

being where the monsters are and introducing them to this new spell you learned called, hang on, Fireball. Most of our games are focused on dungeons and places where dragons live. Hey, wait, wait, is that where the name comes from? Okay, huh, what do you know? We as dungeon masters are the architects of the game for the players.

We work with them to craft these tales and adventures. And within these adventures, at least at most tables, combat does tend to be king. And as I mentioned last week, social encounters also should be added. But exploration is an amazing phase of the game that if you include it can create just as much tension as combat when you handle it correctly. Now when I talk about the exploration phase of tabletop role-playing games, there's two types of activities I tend to lump into this phase. The less commonly used one includes activities that progress scene by scene, where precise scale and time and positioning just aren't as important.

You have a general marching order, and it's assumed the characters stay in that general order until they declare they're doing something different. A great example of this, by the way, would be infiltrating a manor home late at night. Maybe you treat it like a skill challenge at the outer gate and some stealth checks, moving across the tree-filled south lawn, and then another skill challenge to get up to the second floor window and open it. And maybe you have another set of roles to slip by or distract the guard in the hallway. And unless there's a time-limiting factor like a delayed alarm, you're not worrying whether it took 24 or 36 or 60 seconds to climb the rope

to the second floor. You limit the activity around the table to what I would call the important moments in checks. You might keep a rough track of about how much time has elapsed, and it's a kind of a low fidelity tracking though, just a general sense of whether it's been five minutes or 30. I call this trimming the fat on the exploration, since making the group roll sneak checks while completely unobserved and having no one around may build tension in a small way, but it's generally a complete waste of time. Save your tabletop time for the good stuff. More commonly, though, the exploration phase of RPGs occur in a wilderness, between settlements, and between places of interest.

The exploration phase of an RPG is much more freeform. Time isn't tracked round by round, or even minute by minute. Exploration phases of RPGs usually happen on a map, and most of the time the movement on the map is tracked in hours, depending on the size of the square or hex. For maps at what 5e calls the province scale, where one hex equals one mile, players may traverse only 18 to 30 hexes per day depending on the pace that they're moving, and of course there's no encounters or reasons to stop. These numbers drop by a factor of six if the map is kingdom scale, where one hex is six miles. Those 5e rules, by the way, can be found in the Dungeon Master's Guide on page 242. Exploration is probably the least used phase of RPGs these days, by the way, can be found in the Dungeon Master's Guide on page 242. Exploration is probably the least used phase of RPGs these days.

In the bad old days, it seemed like a lot of the old school adventures had at least one instance of a hex crawl, where the PCs go from map hex to map hex, discovering what's there. Everyone had to bring along enough food and water for wandering around the desert or whatever, or had to find enough to survive along the way. It was gritty, somewhat realistic, and frankly, usually implemented very poorly. No fault to designers of yesteryear, by the way. The game had closer ties to tabletop wargaming, where tracking resources was a fun, insert air quotes here, part of the game. As RPGs have matured, combat has stepped to the clear forefront, and exploration activities are often hand-waved, and there's a lot of reasons why tables don't do exploration. Heavy exploration games become more about accounting than adventuring if done wrong.

Oh, you're going through a swamp hex? That means you use X amount of water. Oh, you're going through a desert hex? You use X plus 4 amount of water. Whatever number hex happens to be in your game. Oh, you didn't bring enough water? Now we're going to start tracking exhaustion effects, which still exists in 5e and Pathfinder 2e. Don't get me wrong. I'd love me some realism in a game, but eventually it becomes too much. How much food do we have? Well, each of us has seven and a half rations left, but the ranger did some hunting and provided a total of 22 units of food. There's five of us, and so dividing that out, 22 units...

I'm a math nerd. I will admit that. But I would eventually get bored with a game where you have to track resources down to the gnat's eyelash. The second reason exploration is often hand-waved is because most hexes on a map are fairly empty forest or jungle. Desert, snow dunes, sand, whatever. 90 plus percent of the time there's nothing of note in the hex. It starts to feel like a slog from place to place when you, oh, what's in that hex? Nothing. Okay, let's go to the next one. What's in that next hex? Nope, nothing. Okay, what's in the next hex? It's the same reason a lot of computer games implement fast travel.

It lets the characters skip ahead to the fun stuff and not worry about the eight days trekking through the ass end of Galarian to get there. Third reason. Few game systems explain the exploration phase well, and yes, I'm looking at you 5e and Pathfinder 1e. I like that Pathfinder 2e fleshed it out a little bit more, and I now have my hands on the player and GM core from the Pathfinder 2e remaster, and I'm reading those sections now. I'll probably do an episode on those two books coming up in the near future, so stay tuned for that. And then the fourth reason that exploration is often hand-waved

is because done poorly, it feels like a waste of time. You enter this location, let's calculate your walking speed. How long have you been walking continuously? Oh, let's break out the exhaustion rules because that's more than 12 hours in a single day. And if you'll pardon the expression, there's very little fun down that road. If you're just role-playing the travel to role-play the travel to make it more realistic, I mean, that can just bore everybody to tears. So with all the problems with exploration staring us in the face, why should DMs put any time into exploration at all?

Shouldn't we just hand wave the time it takes to get someplace and not mention it? Sure, you could. Nothing wrong with that at all. Game how you want to game. If you don't see any value in including exploration in your game, then don't include it. You know what your players would enjoy, and if exploration isn't on that list, bypass it. However, there are some reasons to include exploration activities in your game. The first and most important, it makes the world feel bigger. Exploration encounters breathe life into your game world, enabling

players to unravel mysteries, uncover hidden treasures, and navigate intricate landscapes. It shows the players that there's more to the world than City A, Dungeon B, and Campsite C. There are creatures that live their entire lives in the quote-unquote uncivilized places of the world. Some of these creatures are animals, sentient plants, wildlife, magical beasts, humanoids, and yes, even dragons. One of the best ways to handle exploration, if you want to give the PCs that sense of discovery and wonder, is using something called hex crawls.

I mentioned them earlier in the episode. And as I said, not every group enjoys these, and anytime I've ever pulled these out for the first time with a group, I do so on a very small scale till I'm sure the players are having fun with it. A hex crawl is exactly what it sounds like. The players start with a mostly or maybe even completely blank map made of connected hexagons, and the players enter an unknown area of the map. They find out what's there and can fill it in. It's swamp, it's ruins, it's a mountain, it's a village, or whatever it is.

And the DM can have one or more adventure events take place there in that hex. Hexes are one or more miles in size, and it gives the players the Star Trek feeling of boldly going where no one has gone before. Well, or at least no one who has brought back a map. I will grant you that hex crawls are an old-fashioned notion when it comes to tabletop RPGs. Most of the time, travel is done either theater of the mind or hand-waved entirely, but man, there's something fun about a good hex crawl that makes you feel like you're accomplishing something new and novel. Hexcrawls can be made parts of true sandbox adventures where the players can lead their characters almost anywhere on the map. And if you give them some excitement when they get there,

even better. The challenges are different than your traditional dungeon or city adventure. There's a website called The Alexandrian that has a massive multi-part article on hex crawls that I will link to in the resources. Please go check that out. Now, I'm not saying you, my beloved GMs, have to prepare a multi-level dungeon for every hex, but role-playing the discovery of at least mentioning different events while traveling the wilderness gives space to your world, makes your cities feel special and important, like shining beacons of relative safety in a vastly untamed world. Plus, it lets you use that

dungeon that you've prepared for a while and you've been itching to spring it on your players. You can drop that in as ruins in any one of those hexes. Second reason you may want to include exploration in your game is it allows the opportunity to satisfy player curiosity and open up the game a little bit. The vast majority of us humans are inquisitive by nature. We have deep-seated desires to learn and understand the world around us. This extends to the RPG world as well. As a test to see if curiosity is part of your makeup, I give you two choices. As a test to see if curiosity is part of your makeup, I give you two choices.

A likely empty hex to explore, and one that's labeled Ruins. Or even better, the Ruins of the Iron Citadel. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that if you gave your players that choice, the Iron Citadel is going to get a look. We're a curious species for good and ill, and there's this nagging tendency to want to examine the unique, the different, and possibly valuable. It's why some spend their weekend mornings going to places like yard sales, or antique stores, pawn shops, shopping at donation sites, or metal detecting on beaches. You never know what you're going to find. In RPGs, we have that same curiosity. It takes on different forms, but like, for example, in video games, I'm an explorer. If I come to a T-intersection and my mini-map is telling me to go

right, about 75% of the time I'm going left because I want to know what's down the other direction. Open the door. Oh, it's six pain elementals. Let's just shut that door and go back to the direction I should have gone. Now I know, and with apologies to G.I. Joe cartoons, knowing may be half the battle, but the other half is making sure I have enough ammo to kill six pain elementals. The third reason to include exploration is it can build tension in your campaign. Time spent walking the high road is time that's not being spent solving the mystery, finding the artifact, or slaying the big bad. The knowledge that this trip is going to take six days when

there are marauding gnolls around should make your players feel a little tension. What's going on during those six days? Are the gnolls sitting by idly fretting, or are they plotting, scheming, or attacking things that the PCs hold dear? One of my groups is roleplaying in a sandbox right now, and a phrase I often use is Tempus Fugit, time flies. The world is not idle while they do whatever they're doing. If they decide they really want to travel three days by boat, that's three days for the big bad to get closer to what they want. An easy way to show the weight of travel choice is to show the effect the big bad is having in the world. They're slowly walking to Selgaunt when a ship would have been faster. Yeah, sure, it's faster, but that's two gold pieces each to sail and we're cheap as shit.

Great, fiscally responsible. However, in those extra days, word reaches you that the big bad is dug in at the ruins of Ordolan and and has recruited some nearby wildlings to their cause. Now, the big bad is even tougher and is in a defensible position. Fourth reason to make exploration part of your game is because exploration parts of your game allow the GM to have some environmental challenges. Cliffs, rapids, heavy snowstorms, rains, droughts, and other challenges that you won't find in a city like Otari or Candlekeep or deep into a dungeon. It gives your game a little bit of variety,

which is rarely a bad thing. Okay, so you've listened to me prattle on and you decided you want some exploration sessions, but you're not sure where to start. I'm glad you asked, because that's the next section of this episode. What are my tips for handling exploration the right way? Well, the good news is I have eight. One, avoid boredom by giving the PCs meaningful choices along the way. Make the PCs consider their resources used and possible side effects of making certain choices. Now, I can hear you saying, Jeremy, I can't plan for every choice the PCs could possibly make. And, of course, I'd say, you're right. Don't even try. Make a point crawl, which almost feels like exploration in a dungeon. When they do A, then they can do B or C.

If they choose something else, gradually route them back to B or C. You're the DM. The world can be whatever you want. Probably the best way I've ever seen this mapped out, by the way, is by the great author Sly Flourish of The Lazy DM's Companion and other book fame. He wrote a great explanation of point crawls that I'm going to link to in the resources. Give that a read. It's a short article and can really spice up exploration while still keeping it relatively easy for the DM to prepare.

Second tip I would have. Allow the PCs to discover little bits of ruins and lore in interesting places along the way. Give hints to cryptic clues or symbols throughout the environment. These hints can lead to secrets or puzzles or hidden paths. It encourages players to unravel some mystery that's been long lost. At worst, these tidbits make your players more curious about the lore and history of your world. These are the ruins of the town of Slegboro where every inhabitant disappeared when a mysterious green fog rolled in overnight. When the traders arrived the next day,

there were black human-shaped shadowy stains in the beds, floors, chairs, wherever someone happened to be when the fog formed. No one knows what happened to the 200 souls who called this place home. Interested in that mystery? Yeah, me too, and I just made it up sitting at the mic. I don't know what the hell happened to the population of Slegboro, but if you have ideas, send them to me. Feedback at taking20podcast.com. Now let me cite you another example that you're probably familiar with, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Can you imagine if the story had been written

so that Frodo heads out from the Shire and arrives in the land of Mordor in six months' time, but you don't see what happened over those six months? Oh, well, it's not like we'd leave out anything important except for Sam and Merry and Pippin, Rivendell, everything in Rohan, the Battle of Helm's Deep, the Black Gate, the Paths of the Dead, Moria, a shit ton of character development.

If that were an RPG adventure, you could almost argue that the travel was the point. How much lore was revealed on those travels? The history of the elves and orcs, the enormous statues at the Argonoth, the ruins of Amun-Hinn, the Lothlorien, I cannot say that, Lothlorien, there we go, Lothlorien, Minas Morgul. That trip could have opened up deep dives into the lore of multiple ancestries and nations. Neither the movie nor some of the original books dive very deeply into the lore, but other books like The Cimmerillion do. Am I suggesting you write a thousand pages of lore in case the PCs ask about it?

No, of course not. Absolutely not. Do not do that. However, if there's something neat about your lore that you're dying to reveal, leave a hint somewhere. Dangle the bait out there and see if the PCs bite. Third tip I would have is that you can set the scene with varied and detailed descriptions that you can pre-write or be ready to improvise. Way back in episode 78, I talked about scene descriptions where we DMs should try to paint vivid scenes with detailed descriptions that engage all the player's senses, sights, sounds, smells, and textures of an environment. A well-described setting fuels player imagination, immersing them in a world that you've created.

By taking time and making detailed descriptions, it helps players visualize the surroundings and gives the game world a sense of realism. Fourth tip for exploration, the world should not be static. Two ways that you can show this is to have areas of the world be vastly different in different seasons or times of the year. That safe mountain pass just became a lethal mudslide trap during the rainy season. That grassland with abundant game in the spring could become a frozen, foodless wasteland in winter. And the second thing that you can do to show that your world is changing is to have weather play a part of it. I could probably do a whole episode on weather and probably will at some point in the

future, but trekking through a light snowfall versus a blizzard or oppressive heat versus a pleasant breeze make for different experiences while you're gaming. Present the party with problems that encourage creative problem solving related to the weather. Making your environments varied fosters player engagement, transforms the exploration from a joyless drudge into a dynamic and rewarding experience. Fifth tip, give player agency during exploration. Offer multiple paths allowing them to make meaningful decisions that influence the game. Player-driven exploration encourages collaboration and creativity and enriches the overall game experience. It makes them feel like they've had a major role in shaping events around the table. Of course they do, but showing it to them really

reinforces that fact to the players and makes it feel more fulfilling. Sixth tip, have random or seemingly random events. Include things like, I mentioned weather changes, animal encounters, natural disasters. These events add unpredictability to the exploration, keeping players on their toes and fostering a sense that the world is a living, breathing thing. Seventh tip, if you want to introduce a little bit of drama to your exploration, introduce some sort of time pressure. Time-sensitive elements like collapsing tunnels, rising water levels, or something else that adds a sense of urgency to the exploration, forcing the players to make quick decisions and prioritize their actions. Eighth and final tip. One of the best ways to make exploration better is to encourage and reward the party when they do explore.

Imagine they're traveling to some city to talk to Lady Schmuckety Schmuck, and because of bad weather and faulty navigation, they come across a forgotten ruin in the jungle. They take shelter there and discover something, a lost magic item, the fate of a similar group from long ago, or a group of previously unknown intelligent creatures living there who view the characters with wonder, fear, or hunger. Not every rock should have a magic item under it, but I'd keep a ruin encounter or two in your binder and pull it out when you want to reward the characters for exploring. I'd be remiss, by the way, if I didn't point you to another great resource in this long episode. A few weeks ago, I found a link to a homebrew set of recommendations for 5e called Baduga's Exploration Guidelines. It's 30 pages of great ideas designed for the 5e system, but it would

be very easy to convert to any other game system that you're playing. I'll put a link to it to the resources. Go give that a read and see if it doesn't spark some ideas for your game. By encouraging exploration and providing rewards to your players for doing so, you can create dynamic and immersive experiences for your players while exploring your world and learning more about it. Tailor the encounters to your group's preferences and play styles, and vary up your descriptions and encounters to ensure that each trip into the wilds is unique and memorable for your campaign world. And if you do so, I bet you and your players would have fun doing it. Again, do you have a topic idea for me? Send it to me. Feedback at taking20podcast.com

and I'll try to get into a future episode. Tune in next week when I'm going to focus an episode entirely for my beloved players out there. how you can help your DM succeed. Before I go, I again want to thank 3D Crafts and Curios and Brenton for sponsoring the giveaway that culminated in this episode. Thank you so much, Brenton. I also want to thank this week's sponsor, Korn. I always get an eerie feeling when I'm going to a Korn maze. I feel like I'm being stalked.

This has been episode 200, Running Exploration Encounters. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2023. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.