What does "exploration" mean in a TTRPG context?
A lot of times, when people talk about the "pillars" of (mostly d20 fantasy) RPGs, there's a discussion of combat, noncombat/social, and exploration.
Combat is easily covered by rules/mechanics/game sub-systems.
Social, much the same, though a lot has been said over the years about how social often gets the short end of the stick in many systems unless they're intentionally "about" it.
Exploration is the messier one for me, because depending on how it's being discussed, it can mean a few very different things:
Map traversal: hexcrawl/point-crawl/etc, and rules for traveling between them/time management.
(Though, I might personally be inclined to say that "travel" doesn't imply exploration on its own)
Resource management: Food/water/sleep/etc matter and there are mechanics to reflect that.
World construction/campaign direction: there is a big map with lots of "stuff" in it the players don't know about. They are broadly able to freely investigate these things as suits their interests, with maybe 1-2 hints to get them started as needed.
(This feels like campaign structure more than a mechanic, interested in hearing from other perspectives)
So, especially for people who really love exploration style play... What does "good exploration" mean? How do you want it to feel like as a player? What are systems that do this "right" and how?
Asking because I'm too Forever-GM brained and there's nothing on the map I don't put there, so I can't wrap my head around it. Unless it's Quiet Year and we collectively as a table put it there.
Can't respond to everyone, but here are some other cool answers I'm seeing:
- Exploration means an internally consistent world with lots of details to follow up on, regardless of system. I'd call this world building.
- Exploration is extremely procedural, with dungeon turns, resource tracking, stacked on top of each other depending on the system. Very common in OSR style.
- Exploration is everything not combat.
- Zen answer: there is only the situation and the actions the players take.
Additional thought: I'm seeing a lot of "in DnD... " with a sprinkling of "In OSR"....