One of the three pillars of Dungeons and Dragons, and a number of different RPG’s is this idea of exploration. However, when it comes to being a Dungeon Master, exploration is often the hardest of them to make interesting. While combat and NPC interactions can rely some of the players as well for their input, the Dungeon Master is way more in charge of exploration, in my opinion. So how do you make exploration something that is interesting in the game?

Dungeon Master Tools – Exploration

Firstly, let’s talk about why exploration is difficult or often overlooked in a campaign by the Dungeon Master and the players. Exploration is often this idea of travel of getting from here to there. We think about Lord of the Rings, as an example. There is a lot of “exploration” going through Mordor, the part with Tom Bombadil that everyone loves so much. But with that, often times just walking isn’t going to be all that interesting, and we see that in Lord of the Rings as well.

So when the party of players leaves the town, what do they do? They start walking. And it might take some time to get somewhere. If the Dungeon Master is doing a good job it won’t be too long of a walk, but Tolkien made it a very long walk. And things happen along that walk. But I think that exploration is more than that.

Exploring on the Walk

But I think it’s important to talk about exploring along the walk. We see exploration happen along the walk in Lord of the Rings. Some of it pays off in interesting ways for the characters, and other parts, well, not so much. And I think a Dungeon Master can learn from this.

Example from Lord of the Rings

Let’s, for this example, say that all the players are the four hobbits in Lord of the Rings. When their NPC mentor seemingly dies fighting a giant monster they can’t defeat, that’s an interesting element along the way. Of course by this I mean Gandalf the Grey fighting the Balrog. But there are other elements, like the side quest to Tom Bombadil that don’t make that much sense.

So the point of the example is make it matter to the story. I want to go back and talk about story arcs again. Not to beat a dead horse, but story arc planning can help make the exploration more interesting. Why, because, that is the chance to start dropping breadcrumbs for arcs to come. In Lord of the Rings how much more epic is it when Gandalf returns as Gandalf the White?

Example with Story Arcs

Here’s our story planned out:

• Find treasure
• Fight Mid-level boss
• Learn about Big Bad
• Search for way to stop Big Bad
• Get information from wizard
• Find artifact
• Confront big bad

Let’s say we are on that first arc of finding the treasure. Before we head out of town the group is confronted by a gang of street toughs. They all have a crimson band tied around one arm as a notable feature that you call out as the Dungeon Master. When you finish up that arc, because it’s part of the walking out of town, you go onto that mid-level boss. And sure enough the boss’s henchmen have a band tied around their arm that is crimson.

So what did I do there? I tossed in seemingly a random encounter, gave it one piece of flare, an arm band, and paid that off later. Will the players remember it, possibly. But let’s also say the players maybe don’t kill all the street toughs because some run away, those street toughs will remember the players for sure.

Exploring in Other Ways

So we talked about that journey exploration, but sometimes exploration isn’t so much that traveling. Sometimes you might want to focus on exploration being a dungeon or something like that. If there is an old lost ruin of a dungeon, no one might know what is in there. And the NPC’s probably don’t have a good map of it. So this is another way to add in exploration in a more meaningful plot or character driven way.

Example from Lord of the Rings

So is there an example again from Lord of the Rings? There certainly is. The Mines of Moria are a pretty standard dungeon. While it does offer some of the bigger arc stuff like I talked about with Gandalf, there is another story that is progressed through this exploration. And that is of Gimli finding out what happened to the other dwarves. It’s a good character developing arc for a specific character.

Example with Story Arcs

So let’s keep this story going that we’re doing. The players are out of town after fighting those street toughs. They maybe need to deal with some more wildlife along their way, but they reach the crypt where the treasure it hidden away. You know, the one where they are going to need to fight the undead. Read up on that here with combat.

We know from talking about story arcs and planning sessions that the players know a little bit about this place. But the information they got was from a drunk who ran away from this place. So it isn’t likely that the person knows everything for the players to know. That is when you start to explore with the players and they explore this tomb/crypts to get down to that last hidden crypt. And that leads us to our next thing, creating a dungeon.

Creating a Location

So, I say it’s about creating a dungeon. It doesn’t need to be that, it can be any sort of explorable location. If the players need to find something in a woods, that is an explorable location. But it is called Dungeons and Dragons for one RPG, so I do think of Dungeons.

What do you do as a Dungeon Master to prep a location? I think there are a few ways that you could try and make this work. Let’s start with the easiest way, you can use an existing tool. This is one dungeon generator that I have found that I think is nice – https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/. And even if you don’t use the dungeon that is generated, I think it’s nice to look at to help shape up some ideas of how it can work.

The other way is to sketch out a dungeon. You don’t need to plan everything out, but if you want to create a dungeon, I think jotting down a few things can be useful. Firstly, draw out some shape of the dungeon. That is where the generator actually can help too, even if you don’t want to use everything they put in there, you have a specific monster(s) you want to use, for example, it can give you a shape.

Then jot down some notes about the dungeon. Are there traps, and what type of traps are they? Are there wondering monsters or specific monsters that could be in a room in rooms? And what types of monsters do you want to use. You don’t need to plan each combat, but you can create a list to make it feel a bit more living.

Example Dungeon Creation

Firstly, I whip up a map from the Don Jon site. I want to use a map of some sort. That is just my template for my dungeon. Or I draw up a map. Mainly I want to create as many rooms as I want and I want to know how it maps out. The reason for knowing that is I want to create some dead ends and other things to mess with the players.

Traps

Next I want to put in some traps. But I don’t need to put them into specific rooms. For our example of this undead crypt, I know I want the last door to be trapped, it’s the final room it makes sense, so I put a trap there. Otherwise I put one in the first few rooms, so the players know to look for it, and then I roll to see if there is a trap or not and what type of trap. In this case, I want a spike trap and a poison trap, so I grab stats for them and create a little table.

Monsters

Then I think about what monsters do I want? If you know what you want it makes it easy. But much like the traps, create a table to roll for monsters in rooms or not and what type of monsters. In this case I want a couple of ghosts, including one I place in specific side room who isn’t actually evil, but just wants to go to rest and the players can help with that. And then some different combats of varying difficulty. And I roll when players enter rooms and then roll for bad guys.

Items

Finally there are items. A good dungeon should have some things in there as well. And you need to decide how much you want the players to find or how little. Since this is really early game, I want it to be a little. What I think makes sense is that some of the tombs will have bodies with jewelry on them, so the players can get a few cheaper pieces of jewelry to sell and then buy other items with. Plus there is going to be the item somewhere that the friendly ghost wants, and I’d place that specifically. And last the item at the end that the players already know about.

Always For the Plot or Characters

Final thing is that exploration is always for the plot or characters. I think that random encounters can be okay, but it needs to make sense. A random encounter is generally not for the plot or the characters. It’s for some combat in a game, and generally it’s the type of combat where it’s just kill everything that attacked, which isn’t that interesting. But they can be used to set the tone of the world, how dangerous it is, and then you drop them.

There can be reasons to use random encounters, but generally your exploration and combat in exploration should be for the plot. Even the locations you encounter should be for the plot. It’s great to find a random ancient ruin, maybe there is some treasure there, but does it serve anything? If the answer is no, why did you stop there? Make it serve either the plot, or for those random side quest locations, make them serve the players backstory.

Final Thoughts

Exploration is more than just random encounters as you get from place A to B. If that is what you want to use for exploration, than skip this pillar as it won’t be that fun or exciting for anyone. Instead montage through it and get to the locations that matter. Sleeping out in the woods and a few rolls where nothing happens as players keep watch, not that exciting.

And, as a Dungeon Master, when you do exploration and flesh out the world, I want to reiterate my last point, make it matter to the plot or to the characters. Even if it’s a new NPC and the players help them, make it meaningful. It doesn’t need to be a major thing, but one final example, our crimson arm band street toughs, maybe they messed with a shop keeper so the players help that shop keeper get something to keep the business going. Yes it’s not directly tied to the main plot, but it uses characters who matter to story arcs, so keep it simple and keep it tied in.

Down to two more Dungeon Master Tools topics:

• NPCs/Social Interactions
• Meta Game and Players at the Table

And let me know if there are other things to cover as well that you want to know more about, or help with. I think that there are a ton of different things that new Dungeon Masters are curious about or that feel intimidating. So I hope that I can help make them clearer and simpler for you.

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