Why Explore?

In the context of sandbox OSR D&D games... why should the players explore your game world?  What rewards exist to motivate exploration?





Here's a list based on my own experience, plus the answers a bunch of people gave me when I asked on twitter.  Players want to....

• See their character change based on what they encounter
• See the world change in response to their actions
• Discover the interaction points between the world and their character
• Enjoy the gamble of randomness in the game
• Form new or build on existing in-game relationships and romances
• Gain XP - often in the form of treasure
• Gain power and capabilities - new items and resources and allies
• Gain knowledge about the world and environment
• Gain information about other challenges that have them stumped
• Engage with new content - finding a new quest or situation
• See something new in the world, experience something unique - environments, settings, monsters, etc.
• Be surprised by what they find
• Discover something, put it on the map for others
• Follow clues to their ultimate discovery
• Solidify an alliance with a faction
• Find out what happens, what are the consequences of their decisions 
• Overcome a tough challenge
• Make deals
• Open or unlock new content- areas, quests, relationships, npcs
• Embody their alignment or beliefs within the world
• Solve problems or help npcs 
• Unlock and play with new character options
• Explore options within the fiction
• See their character succeed or fail
• Simply to experience it themself
• Find out what will happen to their friends

Let's break that list down a bit in terms of three different categories:

Mechanical Motivators

These things are explicitly mechanized by OSR games- there are rules the players can point to and follow for these events.

Notably, the extrinsic rewards of the game all fall here.

• Gain XP - often in the form of treasure
• Explicitly mechanized
• Gain power and capabilities - new items and resources and allies
• Explicitly mechanized
• Overcome a tough challenge
• Player Experience
• Explicitly Mechanized

Narrative Motivators

These things aren't explicitly mechanized in OSR games; they rely on the GM's narrative chops to set up the opportunity for them to exist, and for players to interact with them.

• See their character change based on what they encounter
• OSR games don't tend to mechanize this explicitly within the core rules- rather, when it happens, it falls under the narrative OSR umbrella of "if it happens to you, it happens to you"- your arm got chopped off, so you don't have an arm.  "Rulings, not Rules" gets a lot of play here.
• Some OSR style games have crit or fumble tables, or magical corruption tables that mechanize this.
• See the world change in response to their actions
• Form new or build on existing in-game relationships and romances
• Exploit in-game relationships; make deals
• Gain knowledge about the world and environment
• Gain information about other challenges that have them stumped
• Open or unlock new content- areas, quests, relationships, npcs
• Put something discovered on the map for others
• Follow clues to their ultimate discovery
• Solidify an alliance with a faction
• Embody their alignment or beliefs within the world
• Solve problems or help npcs
• Unlock and play with new character options

Experiential Motivators

These are just things that the players enjoy experiencing as they play the game.  If you have the first two categories, you should naturally have this one covered- but it's always good to keep in mind.

• Explore options within the fiction
• See their character succeed or fail
• Simply to experience it themself
• Find out what will happen to their friends
• See something new in the world, experience something unique - environments, settings, monsters, etc.
• Be surprised by what they find
• Discover the interaction points between the world and their character
• Enjoy the gamble of randomness in the game
• Discover something in the world
• Find out what happens, what are the consequences of their decisions
• Engage with new content

So what does this mean?

It means that, if you're trying to set up a sandbox open world D&D game, the ruleset of the game you're using probably only manages a small fraction of what motivates players to go out and explore- and the rest of it is up to the narrative framework of the world you're building.

That large list of Narrative Motivators also raises a series of excellent questions for us to consider, as far as our players are concerned.  For example:

• When does the player's character change?  How?  What keeps those changes in check, to allow the player to have fun with their character?  How does the player feel agency over the way their character is affected by the world?
• How does the player know the world will respond to their actions?  (That might be a base assumption of all players- including GM- but it's good to clarify!)  How does the player know how the world will respond to their actions?  What are the avenues of agency the players have over this response?  How much agency should the players have in this response?
• How does the player successfully build in-game relationships and romances?  How does the player know they can do this?  What are the avenues of agency for the player pursuing these?  
• What are the consequences of a new relationship?  What benefits can it offer?  How does the player know what these are?
• How does the player gain knowledge about the world and the environment?  What are the avenues of agency for the player pursuing this information?
• How does the player pursue information about challenges that are stumping them?
• How does the player know what courses of action will unlock new content?
• How much can a player put on the map for other players?  Everything?  Nothing?  What if that character dies before making it back?
• What if the player misses clues?  How does the player gain more information about a puzzle?
• What do alliances with factions do?  What do factions do?  What benefits and risks does faction membership confer?
• Why embody your beliefs and alignment?  What are the consequences of doing this?
• Why solve problems?  Why help NPCs?  What are the consequences of doing this?
• How does the player know what new character options will be made available?  How does the player know whether a new character option is desirable to them?

That's a lot of ground to cover, and it's part of why I think sandbox OSR games present a unique challenge to the enthusiastic GM!

I suspect some of this should probably be mechanized with explicit rules; some of it should definitely not be; and a great deal of it could be made easier with some simple, well-written guidelines.

Maybe we'll do a bit of that!

Until next time- did I miss a key motivator for you, as a player (not your character- you!)?  Do you disagree with how I've divided things up?  Think something I marked as Narrative is actually Mechanical?  Tell me all about it!