Three Pillars of Dungeons and Dragons

Three Pillars of Adventure

Whether one is running a game or playing it the pillars of adventure are a crucial aspect to the game Dungeons and Dragons. The Player's Handbook for fifth edition states and explains these concepts on page 7 in the Introduction chapter. The designers of the game mean this because the Dungeon Master's Guide also speaks of these pillars. "Creating an adventure involves blending scenes of exploration, social interaction, and combat into a unified whole that meets the needs of your players and your campaign. " (Dungeon Master's Guide, pg. 71). That quote is from the third paragraph of Chapter 3 in the book, Creating Adventures. But why? Why are these three pillars so important to this game?

Starting with Exploration. . . "Exploration is the give-and-take of the players describing what they want their characters to do, and the Dungeon Master telling the players what happens as a result." (Player's Handbook, pg. 7). This means it is the interaction with the environment. One of the fun things of fantasy, an any fiction, is looking into this alien world.

A key concept of creating adventures in the game is 'how do you get the party there?' Without reason there is no adventure, environment is a way of providing this. Say the party comes across a corpse in the road, they investigate and see tracks leading into the woods. They follow and find a wolf den. They have now engaged with the environment, and explored part of the world. Their curiosity was rewarded with a discovery, rewards are important to games as it enforces behavior and interest.

Keeping in line with 'how do you get the party to the adventure', is Social Interaction.  It means what it sounds like, the player characters reacting with non-player characters. This is an important part of the game as shown in the genre title of Table-top-Role-Playing Game. This is where the bulk of the role-play enters Dungeons and Dragons. Most reasons for adventure also come from social interactions, like a shopkeeper offhandedly mentioned orcs to the south or a bounty on a criminal.

Numerous skills also deal with social interactions, the character sheet has a skill called Performance. "Your Charisma (Performance) check determines how well you can delight an audience with music, dance, acting, storytelling, or some other form of entertainment." (Player's Handbook, pg. 179). There is even a class that specializes in Social Interactions, the Bard.

Pages 244-247 of the Dungeon Master's Guide for fifth edition deals with running social interactions. The idea of giving the players the ability to use their minds rather than just break down a barrier and smash things is a uniqueness to the game. It takes advantage of how freeform this game can be. For example there was a session on January 15, 2017 where my group was having a stake-out for some rustlers at an owlbear ranch.

Thing is the party decided that they didn't want to do combat this time. Instead they used some spells to add to the shock and awe effect increasing the impressiveness of the cleric's persuasion attempts on small band of Orcs, converting them to the cleric's religion. The party role-played that their characters would be too tired for more fighting as they recently finished a tough dungeon.

The cleric, Father Marks, usually tries to convert sentient creatures before fighting anyway so it was perfectly in character. This created a social interaction where they by passed an entire combat section. This in and of itself was an impressive feat of cunning, creativity, and just general humor. Being able to talk, pry, and coerce the characters of the world gives a level of depth and immersion to the game.

Finally comes Combat. Combat is one of the most extensively described pillars of the game because the original Dungeons and Dragons by Gary Gygax focused heavily on the dungeon crawl aspect. The original game had the other pillars but combat was a key focus. That's part of the reason why random encounters exist, exploration and making it back to town from the dungeon was meant to be a feat within itself.

Pages 211-289 revolve around different types of spells alone, that's 78 pages or approximately 24% of the entire Player's Handbook devoted just to spells. Pages 189-198 in the very book is Chapter 9: Combat. Classes also focus heavily on their combat mechanics, though to be fair they start off stating the role-play aspects of the class as well. The point is that a large portion of the game's mechanics focus on this pillar. This is from its origins, and the fact that its easier to outline what a player might do in a fight than in a free form social interaction.

The Dungeon Master's Guide also goes into more detail on combat is suggested to be done by the DM and players, focusing on movement, creature size, if miniatures are used, hex and square gridded maps, and so on. (Dungeon Master's Guide, pg.247-257). Combat is useful to adventure as it provides a clear goal, survival. It also feels really rewarding to fight a monster and slay it with your friends.

None of these pillars can hold up an adventure on their own though. An adventure without a sense of interaction with the environment feels empty, without combat dull and tensionless, and without social interaction the world has no soul. The ratios certainly don't need to be exactly the same, but good adventures need a bit of each.

"Creating an adventure involves blending scenes of exploration, social interaction, and combat into a unified whole that meets the needs of your players and your campaign." - Dungeon Master's Guide, pg. 71

Works Cited
Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Dungeon Master's Guide. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.
Crawford, Jeremy, et al. Player's Handbook. USA: Wizards of the Coast, 2014. Print.