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LimeSkeleton
2013-09-29, 06:56 PM
Lately, I've been having ideas bump around in my head for a game all about exploring various psychedelic landscapes and dreamlike environments, from endless wastelands to jungles full of golden apple-trees. I already have interested players, so the impetus is now on me to figure out the best way to make this experience into a game.

Are there any good systems that put the focus of the game on exploring environments and interacting with them? In my mind, there would be minimal combat or careful dungeon exploration-esque situations.

Any suggestions, or I am I exploring uncharted territory here? :smallwink:

Arcane_Snowman
2013-09-29, 07:26 PM
Mystic Empyrean (http://www.mysticempyrean.com/) is in part about this: the world has survived some unnamed apocalyptic cataclysm, which sundered the fabric of reality itself. The players are creatures called Eidolons, who fashion flesh out of their souls.

As an Eidolon you have the power over cornerstones, the remnants of the old world, that have become worlds unto themselves after this cataclysm. Should you get a hold of a cornerstone, you can reshape the world as you see fit, restoring that which was ultimately lost, or remaking the world in your own image. What these worlds are like is entirely up to you and your players, as it encourages cooperative world building.

BWR
2013-09-30, 04:27 AM
I'm not exactly sure what you expect from systems that promote exploration. XP from discovering stuff? Mechanics for search checks? Skills for archeology? Rules for dreams and dream adventures?
Or just settings where exploration and discovery is paramount.
In the case of mechanics, most games cover this sort of thing to a certain degree. In the case of setting, you can easily run a lot of traditional settings as exploration games rather than whatever they normally are.

Planescape.
Just ignore combat and throw amazing places and cultures at the players. The actual system is not exactly optimal for non-combat situations but you can easily ignore system and focus on fluff.
Seriously, this is exactly what Planescape was designed for.

Earthdawn.
Explore the world after an apocalypse.

Tribe 8.
While mostly focused on spirituality and horror and tribal politics, you can easily turn it into a game focused on discovering what happened to the world and the nature of the enemy.

The Nightmare Lands
A Ravenloft expansion. Though limited by the rather clunky ad hoc system for 2e, it has some interesting ideas for dreams and adventures there.

The Everlasting had some interesting ideas for incorporating dreams into games.

I've never read it but I would think "Changeling: the Dreaming" has some useful stuff for dreamlike games.

Arbane
2013-09-30, 05:12 AM
There's a Japanese tabletop RPG called Ryuutama (http://www.j-rpg.com/ryuutama/) where the whole point of the game is travelling and meeting people. I haven't played it, but it looks good.

Topus
2013-09-30, 05:36 AM
Years ago I had quite a good exploration adventure with In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas (http://www.xxiemeciel.com/ins_ebook06.php) but it is heavily related to real world religion and mithology. Your characters are strongly affected by their patron angels or demons so if you want to decontextualize your game from heaven and hell you should create new patrons.

CombatOwl
2013-09-30, 05:39 AM
Lately, I've been having ideas bump around in my head for a game all about exploring various psychedelic landscapes and dreamlike environments, from endless wastelands to jungles full of golden apple-trees. I already have interested players, so the impetus is now on me to figure out the best way to make this experience into a game.

Are there any good systems that put the focus of the game on exploring environments and interacting with them? In my mind, there would be minimal combat or careful dungeon exploration-esque situations.

Any suggestions, or I am I exploring uncharted territory here? :smallwink:

There aren't a lot of games like that... probably because you don't really need much of a system for that, and it would be hell on the DM to try to convey all of that himself. You'd almost have to make the game about describing what they encounter.

Rhynn
2013-09-30, 05:46 AM
There aren't a lot of games like that... probably because you don't really need much of a system for that, and it would be hell on the DM to try to convey all of that himself. You'd almost have to make the game about describing what they encounter.

Yeah, the first thing I thought was "you can do that with any old edition of D&D where the rules don't get in the way..." Wilderness hexcrawling was one of the standard methods (although the goal was always acquiring treasure, but if you give XP for finding strange things instead...).

HeroQuest rules support exploring bizarre otherworlds (a standard part of the setting), but don't really have anything specific for it.

I think the main thing would be creating excellent and interesting random tables to create cool content on the fly, and those would work for any system.

Blacky the Blackball
2013-09-30, 06:04 AM
Lately, I've been having ideas bump around in my head for a game all about exploring various psychedelic landscapes and dreamlike environments, from endless wastelands to jungles full of golden apple-trees. I already have interested players, so the impetus is now on me to figure out the best way to make this experience into a game.

Are there any good systems that put the focus of the game on exploring environments and interacting with them? In my mind, there would be minimal combat or careful dungeon exploration-esque situations.

Any suggestions, or I am I exploring uncharted territory here? :smallwink:

Numenera (http://www.numenera.com/) is exactly the game you are looking for.

It's all about exploring psychedelic landscapes filled with strange wonders; and the mechanics are pretty great.

The setting is basically post-post-apocalypse. What I mean by that is that the apocalypse has come and gone (well, many of them have to be more precise) and we have left the "scrabbling around trying to survive" stage of most post-apocalypse games and we're now stable and building a new civilisation and new world on the ashes of the old world(s).

The main intent of the game is exploration of wonders left by previous civilisations - many of whom may have reached almost Q-Continuum levels of technology before destroying themselves or leaving the universe for somewhere else (we really don't know what happened to them). The tech that you find is definitely in the Sufficiently-Advanced-It-Might-As-Well-Be-Magic category

I've heard the game (accurately) described as "Prog Rock Album Covers: The RPG".

NichG
2013-09-30, 06:14 AM
In my experience, the best systems for an exploration-based game are systems that not only tolerate 'weird' but actively help you communicate it.

You want as big of a toolkit as you can get to make each place feel meaningfully distinct, so I actually wouldn't recommend rules-lite games. You want the places/things/etc the players encounter to be able to tweak the rules in lots of different ways, and at the same time you want those tweaks to not make the game fall apart too easily if you do something wrong.

For example, in 2ed Planescape, each place you went changed the way your spells worked - either subtly or overtly. Go to Carceri and you need to kill your friend and use his entrails in order to cast a divination. On Acheron when you summon something, you go to take its place from where you summoned it. All sorts of little idiosyncratic things 'about the place' that have direct meaning to the players rather than being window dressing.

In D&D I could have something that modifies hitpoints, stats, saves, BAB, all sorts of different schools of magic, works based on alignment, race, class, ... A nice set of knobs to turn. But some things in the rules are a bit fragile - for example, a place whose water lets you restore spell slots would basically become more than 'a nice little thing we found' and would end up being the focus of the game as the players turn it into an industry, cart away gallon drums of the stuff, etc. D&D has a pretty good dynamic range though and its overall pretty stable, so you can certainly run an exploration game in D&D.

Honestly though, its about your approach as a GM as much as it is about the system. You have to be willing to surprise players with things they didn't think were possible, and the players have to be okay with that.

Terraoblivion
2013-09-30, 10:36 AM
One of the default playstyles for Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine centers on discovery and exploration. It will be weird, surreal and dreamlike exploration and discovery, but that's because everything in Chuubo's is like that. I've found the system to very effectively encourage its feel and to encourage both discovering neat stuff and working together in discovering it. It's an odd system at the very edge of what's recognizably an RPG, but it's good at what it does and supports exploration as a default playstyle.

Topus
2013-09-30, 03:26 PM
Numenera (http://www.numenera.com/) is exactly the game you are looking for.

wow, it seems tailored to his needs :)

Knaight
2013-09-30, 04:00 PM
Torchbearer isn't available just yet, but given that the products were in shipping weeks ago it is very close. It's specifically built around exploration, and while it is designed for dungeon crawls, "dungeon" is a very broad concept.