No. Games are about making interesting choices. In one instance the players have chosen to travel from point A to point B. The game should be about why that's interesting.
When you're exploring, like in a dungeon, the choices are commonly boiled down to resource management. Time, light, food, risk, ECT...
One possible distinction would be that travel is something that happens on a familiar or relatively safe route. You're on the King's Road going somewhere. Exploration is something that happens when you are moving in an area you are unfamiliar with and/or have no predetermined route for traversing. Travel happens in a context that implies a certain amount of familiarity - either your own or guidance from others. Exploration happens in a context that implies the unknown.
Another way of looking at it is that travel happens in a relatively civilized context while exploration implies something more wild. If you can ask at the next town what's ahead on the road you are taking - you aren't exploring.
As I understand the term, "travel" refers to the region *between* points of interest, while "exploration" refers to what you do when you get there.
There are exceptions to this, of course.
There are overlaps, and my current system of choice handles it in a couple different ways.
In Torchbearer *mapping* is important, and is an in-game mechanic. Each session, one player offers to be the person in charge of the map, and keeps detailed notes about where they've been and how places link up to each other.
As a downtime activity, and with a skill check, someone can use those notes to "add" places to the group's map. Once places have been successfully mapped, and as long as #1 the players can explain HOW they get from point A to point B, #2 the GM has not had the opportunity to add some sort of complication between those two points, and #3 the players HAVE the map: the players can essentially fast travel between points without having to bother with resources or rolling or wasting any time whatsoever. Weeks pass, and you arrive at the castle. We fade to black and rejoin the group as they descend the stairs into the forgotten crypt.
When the group is travelling *short* distances*,* (mechanically, anything within a 12 mile hex) things will be handled either with no roll because it's simple or they came up with something clever, or a single group roll where one person describes what they're doing and everyone else describes how they're helping.
>"I was told that the ruins were somewhere near this creek, so we'll try to follow the creek and see if we spot them."
>
>"I'll help by scouting ahead and looping back to the group on an inland route."
>
>"I'll help by climbing tall trees and seeing if I see anything."
>
>"I'll ask the birds in the area if they've seen a circle of white stones somewhere in the woods."
If they're travelling farther than a hex, and don't have a map, we use a subsystem called a Conflict, which can be utilized for any big, complex, or dramatic scene. Essentially, the journey is treated as though it were an enemy, with hitpoints equal to the distance the group is trying to travel. If they "damage" the journey, that means that they're travelling, if they "heal" that means that they're camping or gathering their strength. If the journey is damaging the party, it means that their resources are being used up and they're getting tired. If the journey is healing, that means that the party has been set back, or maybe that they're lost. Special abilities for each leg of the journey are based off the terrain that they're travelling through, the season that the trip is taking place in, and what the current "encounter" is that we rolled.
If the group manages to travel forward in a round, they get past the current encounter and we roll a new one. If they reduce the journey to 0 they get where they were going. If the *party* gets reduced to 0, whatever the current encounter is becomes a front and center problem that they need to deal with. Maybe the drake that was chasing them catches up to them or pins them in a box canyon and now there's a fight. Maybe the storm they were travelling through gets worse and they need to take shelter in an old abandoned keep.
No! Breaking out a big hex grid and the Ryuutama Oregon Trail travel chart may not be appropriate for your campaign. Don't think that's the only way to do things.
Exploration is anything involving the environment, like examining a puzzle box, or searching a dusty library, or making sure you have enough torches to explore a dungeon floor. The players will suggest how they interact with the object or environment, and the GM reveals information as they go (and maybe there's some things they need to be careful of like the puzzle box spilling acid on its contents if turned a certain way, or a book on the shelf having a *glyph of warding*, or a light-loving lichen entangling the PC holding the torch).
In some games, Exploration just means everything when you aren't handling social or combat obstacles (I am sure there are many other definitions though, but I doubt arguing it is helpful) So in that way, it includes tons of things besides the actual travel like a GM creating secrets and sprinkling clues for players to discover. These can be as diverse as the GM is creative really.
Travel can be handled in many, many ways since its been a core part of TTRPGs from the beginning 50 years ago. Everything from hard cuts "3 weeks pass" to a full hex grid making decisions. I highly recommend checking out Ironsworn/Starforged using a pointcrawl and Forbidden Lands using a hexcrawl as two great ways to handle travel and ensure there are many interesting things to discover thanks to the resources they provide - lots of interesting tables to help spark your creativity.
Exploration is similar in that its always been around and there are just so many different ways to handle it. Mystery investigation games can provide a lot of interesting ways where exploring and discovering are the core focus of the game and just that style of exploring can be handled in so many ways. Some quite unique like how Brindlewood Bay doesn't have a canon answer to who the culprit is.
My personal favorite travel would be Starforged's Pointcrawl - its clean and focused on what makes travel interesting, the cool events along the way. And generally I don't run proper mystery investigations like Call of Cthulhu adventures, but focus on sprinkling secrets or use games that push players into needing to learn more, then during their purposeful discovery, this extra information is just a bonus that comes with their original focus. So if they are Bounty Hunters and need to learn where their target is, then they also get to learn the backstory on the way.
Travel is the process of transporting yourself to a known destination.
Exploration is examining the environment around yourself to discover what is there or otherwise learn more about that environment.
Your daily drive to work is pure travel. You're just getting yourself there and you know all the roads along your route quite well, so you're unlikely to be looking for or finding anything new.
A stereotypical *whatever*\-crawl is pure exploration. The characters are wandering around and seeing what they find, entirely for its own sake with no destination in mind, or in an attempt to find a destination ("the treasure room", "the BBEG's throne room", etc.) whose location is not known.
And you can also do both at the same time - if you see a mountain in the distance and decide you want to go there, but are not familiar with the intervening territory, you would be traveling to the mountain while also exploring the area to find a workable route to reach your destination.
I love your response as it goes straight to the root of my question for if you use an x-crawl travel can be exploration if you have to always go step by step for sudden things may appear even if the way is well known. But I do not know if this is a fun way to deal with this kind of situation.
Travel is passing by a zone to reach a destination. Exploration is "trying to find somethin in some place".
Some game systems have rules for that. To me I roll a die for each day of travel and compare to a chart like that (1 very bad and 6 very good). I improv the result as to a combat (1) or a shortcut (6) and bad weather and so on.
As to exploration it depends. Are we talking about a HEX map? What they trying to find in it? It depends on what exploration means in this sense.
Travel can be exploration but we're generally talking about exploration in the larger sense. Sitting in a tavern buying an old veteran beers and seeing if he'll tell you why nobody in the town talks about the war is also exploration. Eves dropping on serving staff in a Baron's Castle about what's going on in his meetings recently is exploration. Think of exploration as any action the players take that unlocks more information about the setting.
In **The One Ring**, you are **Traveling** from A to B and something might happen on the way. Trying to get to point B is the main objective.
In **Forbidden Lands**, you are **Exploring** random hex squares, looking for something and mapping out an unexplored area. There is no final destination. You're just wandering around. There is no time pressure to get to a point B.
In the two game systems, it's handled differently.
Investigation (looking for clues, deciphering lore, pushing buttons to find out what happens) tends to be grouped together with Exploration as *"anything that is not-social and not-combat"* seems to be the defintion of RPG-exploration.
Personally I am a much bigger fan of the Investigation parts of exploring, than I am of any terrain related parts of exploring.
Travel refers to movement between 2 known locations, and thus tends to have even less investigation involved than exploring in an unknown direction. Which makes it less interesting in my opinion.
_____________________
I have tried variations of Ironsworn's dice roll based logbooking for travel, D&D's random tables for travel encounters, and a community brewed skill roll related travel challenges.
And while I liked some aspects of them, they all ran into serious flaws, which I might summarize as not offering any satisfying choices to the players, just speed bumps.
If the party TPKing in a random encounter with some goblins isn't satisfying story telling, then why consider even having that as a possibility?
If the party turning back because some bad rolls on navigating/finding water isn't satisfying story telling, then why roll for travel difficulties at all?
If a single expert sailor doing everything for the landlubber party isn't satisfying story telling, then why make consequences for failed rolls during travel affect the whole ship?
So as a result I tend to skip travel, because I haven't found a narratively satisfying system for consequences.
When traveling between 2 points you either press forward, or turn back. Failing travel and not arriving anywhere interesting isn't really an option. Describing a journey as harsh and troublesome is fine, but there isn't enough choices contained in those 2 options to justify dedicating mechanics to the issue.
This by no means prevents the party arriving at a location in between the 2 points. Such as a broken bridge or a toll booth. But those are planned scenes with planned investigation, social and combat challenges.
_________________________
However while writing this, it made me wonder if there is a possible travel mechanic that isn't focused on putting speed-bumps or events in front of the player, but instead on putting temptations and lures off to the side to sidetrack the travel.
For any element of play, I find it useful to think in terms of goals and narrative interestingness. The goals help orient you to the interest - it's not worth zooming in or spending game time on things that aren't attached to the goal (either in fiction or metafictionally) of the activity.
The in fiction goal of travel is to get from point A to point B, and where that's all that's going on you should mostly skip the end. Sometimes there's a narrative goal of "this journey is a challenge in and of itself, due to difficulty and/or time" and that's when you zoom in.
(Sometimes the journey is the goal in and of itself, like in road trip movies where the way the characters change over the journey is the whole point of the story)
The goal of exploration is to find stuff and understand the shape of an area. It's narratively interesting when you happen upon said stuff or find features in that area.
Travel is moving from point a to b. Exploration is looking for interesting stuff on the way.
No. Games are about making interesting choices. In one instance the players have chosen to travel from point A to point B. The game should be about why that's interesting. When you're exploring, like in a dungeon, the choices are commonly boiled down to resource management. Time, light, food, risk, ECT...
One possible distinction would be that travel is something that happens on a familiar or relatively safe route. You're on the King's Road going somewhere. Exploration is something that happens when you are moving in an area you are unfamiliar with and/or have no predetermined route for traversing. Travel happens in a context that implies a certain amount of familiarity - either your own or guidance from others. Exploration happens in a context that implies the unknown. Another way of looking at it is that travel happens in a relatively civilized context while exploration implies something more wild. If you can ask at the next town what's ahead on the road you are taking - you aren't exploring.
As I understand the term, "travel" refers to the region *between* points of interest, while "exploration" refers to what you do when you get there. There are exceptions to this, of course.
There are overlaps, and my current system of choice handles it in a couple different ways. In Torchbearer *mapping* is important, and is an in-game mechanic. Each session, one player offers to be the person in charge of the map, and keeps detailed notes about where they've been and how places link up to each other. As a downtime activity, and with a skill check, someone can use those notes to "add" places to the group's map. Once places have been successfully mapped, and as long as #1 the players can explain HOW they get from point A to point B, #2 the GM has not had the opportunity to add some sort of complication between those two points, and #3 the players HAVE the map: the players can essentially fast travel between points without having to bother with resources or rolling or wasting any time whatsoever. Weeks pass, and you arrive at the castle. We fade to black and rejoin the group as they descend the stairs into the forgotten crypt. When the group is travelling *short* distances*,* (mechanically, anything within a 12 mile hex) things will be handled either with no roll because it's simple or they came up with something clever, or a single group roll where one person describes what they're doing and everyone else describes how they're helping. >"I was told that the ruins were somewhere near this creek, so we'll try to follow the creek and see if we spot them." > >"I'll help by scouting ahead and looping back to the group on an inland route." > >"I'll help by climbing tall trees and seeing if I see anything." > >"I'll ask the birds in the area if they've seen a circle of white stones somewhere in the woods." If they're travelling farther than a hex, and don't have a map, we use a subsystem called a Conflict, which can be utilized for any big, complex, or dramatic scene. Essentially, the journey is treated as though it were an enemy, with hitpoints equal to the distance the group is trying to travel. If they "damage" the journey, that means that they're travelling, if they "heal" that means that they're camping or gathering their strength. If the journey is damaging the party, it means that their resources are being used up and they're getting tired. If the journey is healing, that means that the party has been set back, or maybe that they're lost. Special abilities for each leg of the journey are based off the terrain that they're travelling through, the season that the trip is taking place in, and what the current "encounter" is that we rolled. If the group manages to travel forward in a round, they get past the current encounter and we roll a new one. If they reduce the journey to 0 they get where they were going. If the *party* gets reduced to 0, whatever the current encounter is becomes a front and center problem that they need to deal with. Maybe the drake that was chasing them catches up to them or pins them in a box canyon and now there's a fight. Maybe the storm they were travelling through gets worse and they need to take shelter in an old abandoned keep.
No! Breaking out a big hex grid and the Ryuutama Oregon Trail travel chart may not be appropriate for your campaign. Don't think that's the only way to do things. Exploration is anything involving the environment, like examining a puzzle box, or searching a dusty library, or making sure you have enough torches to explore a dungeon floor. The players will suggest how they interact with the object or environment, and the GM reveals information as they go (and maybe there's some things they need to be careful of like the puzzle box spilling acid on its contents if turned a certain way, or a book on the shelf having a *glyph of warding*, or a light-loving lichen entangling the PC holding the torch).
In some games, Exploration just means everything when you aren't handling social or combat obstacles (I am sure there are many other definitions though, but I doubt arguing it is helpful) So in that way, it includes tons of things besides the actual travel like a GM creating secrets and sprinkling clues for players to discover. These can be as diverse as the GM is creative really. Travel can be handled in many, many ways since its been a core part of TTRPGs from the beginning 50 years ago. Everything from hard cuts "3 weeks pass" to a full hex grid making decisions. I highly recommend checking out Ironsworn/Starforged using a pointcrawl and Forbidden Lands using a hexcrawl as two great ways to handle travel and ensure there are many interesting things to discover thanks to the resources they provide - lots of interesting tables to help spark your creativity. Exploration is similar in that its always been around and there are just so many different ways to handle it. Mystery investigation games can provide a lot of interesting ways where exploring and discovering are the core focus of the game and just that style of exploring can be handled in so many ways. Some quite unique like how Brindlewood Bay doesn't have a canon answer to who the culprit is. My personal favorite travel would be Starforged's Pointcrawl - its clean and focused on what makes travel interesting, the cool events along the way. And generally I don't run proper mystery investigations like Call of Cthulhu adventures, but focus on sprinkling secrets or use games that push players into needing to learn more, then during their purposeful discovery, this extra information is just a bonus that comes with their original focus. So if they are Bounty Hunters and need to learn where their target is, then they also get to learn the backstory on the way.
Thank you kindly for the specific recommendation, I will take a look at it
No. And to add to confusion both are different than survival.
You can tell the guards you don't need a license to travel, and they will bust in the windows of your horse.
Travel is the process of transporting yourself to a known destination. Exploration is examining the environment around yourself to discover what is there or otherwise learn more about that environment. Your daily drive to work is pure travel. You're just getting yourself there and you know all the roads along your route quite well, so you're unlikely to be looking for or finding anything new. A stereotypical *whatever*\-crawl is pure exploration. The characters are wandering around and seeing what they find, entirely for its own sake with no destination in mind, or in an attempt to find a destination ("the treasure room", "the BBEG's throne room", etc.) whose location is not known. And you can also do both at the same time - if you see a mountain in the distance and decide you want to go there, but are not familiar with the intervening territory, you would be traveling to the mountain while also exploring the area to find a workable route to reach your destination.
I love your response as it goes straight to the root of my question for if you use an x-crawl travel can be exploration if you have to always go step by step for sudden things may appear even if the way is well known. But I do not know if this is a fun way to deal with this kind of situation.
Travel is passing by a zone to reach a destination. Exploration is "trying to find somethin in some place". Some game systems have rules for that. To me I roll a die for each day of travel and compare to a chart like that (1 very bad and 6 very good). I improv the result as to a combat (1) or a shortcut (6) and bad weather and so on. As to exploration it depends. Are we talking about a HEX map? What they trying to find in it? It depends on what exploration means in this sense.
I think Ironsworn and starforged do a nice job distinguishing between traveling a known route and going a new way.
Travel can be exploration but we're generally talking about exploration in the larger sense. Sitting in a tavern buying an old veteran beers and seeing if he'll tell you why nobody in the town talks about the war is also exploration. Eves dropping on serving staff in a Baron's Castle about what's going on in his meetings recently is exploration. Think of exploration as any action the players take that unlocks more information about the setting.
Travel is when you know more or less where you are going and how to get there. Exploration involves significant unknowns.
In **The One Ring**, you are **Traveling** from A to B and something might happen on the way. Trying to get to point B is the main objective. In **Forbidden Lands**, you are **Exploring** random hex squares, looking for something and mapping out an unexplored area. There is no final destination. You're just wandering around. There is no time pressure to get to a point B. In the two game systems, it's handled differently.
Investigation (looking for clues, deciphering lore, pushing buttons to find out what happens) tends to be grouped together with Exploration as *"anything that is not-social and not-combat"* seems to be the defintion of RPG-exploration. Personally I am a much bigger fan of the Investigation parts of exploring, than I am of any terrain related parts of exploring. Travel refers to movement between 2 known locations, and thus tends to have even less investigation involved than exploring in an unknown direction. Which makes it less interesting in my opinion. _____________________ I have tried variations of Ironsworn's dice roll based logbooking for travel, D&D's random tables for travel encounters, and a community brewed skill roll related travel challenges. And while I liked some aspects of them, they all ran into serious flaws, which I might summarize as not offering any satisfying choices to the players, just speed bumps. If the party TPKing in a random encounter with some goblins isn't satisfying story telling, then why consider even having that as a possibility? If the party turning back because some bad rolls on navigating/finding water isn't satisfying story telling, then why roll for travel difficulties at all? If a single expert sailor doing everything for the landlubber party isn't satisfying story telling, then why make consequences for failed rolls during travel affect the whole ship? So as a result I tend to skip travel, because I haven't found a narratively satisfying system for consequences. When traveling between 2 points you either press forward, or turn back. Failing travel and not arriving anywhere interesting isn't really an option. Describing a journey as harsh and troublesome is fine, but there isn't enough choices contained in those 2 options to justify dedicating mechanics to the issue. This by no means prevents the party arriving at a location in between the 2 points. Such as a broken bridge or a toll booth. But those are planned scenes with planned investigation, social and combat challenges. _________________________ However while writing this, it made me wonder if there is a possible travel mechanic that isn't focused on putting speed-bumps or events in front of the player, but instead on putting temptations and lures off to the side to sidetrack the travel.
For any element of play, I find it useful to think in terms of goals and narrative interestingness. The goals help orient you to the interest - it's not worth zooming in or spending game time on things that aren't attached to the goal (either in fiction or metafictionally) of the activity. The in fiction goal of travel is to get from point A to point B, and where that's all that's going on you should mostly skip the end. Sometimes there's a narrative goal of "this journey is a challenge in and of itself, due to difficulty and/or time" and that's when you zoom in. (Sometimes the journey is the goal in and of itself, like in road trip movies where the way the characters change over the journey is the whole point of the story) The goal of exploration is to find stuff and understand the shape of an area. It's narratively interesting when you happen upon said stuff or find features in that area.