This review has been sponsored by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.
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Designed by: Real Nito Games (Adam Winchell, Josh Ladd)
[UPDATE NOV 2025: The creator has removed AI images after careful consideration.]
It’s no secret that the Exploration pillar of Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition is the weakest compared to the other pillars of Combat and Role-Playing.
D&D is, at its core, a miniatures wargame built for tactical combat. And role-playing comes with the territory of any tabletop RPG.
Exploration awkwardly encompasses everything else.
When crawling through dungeons, exploration is fun and immersive. Players make choices on where to go, what to touch, and look for secret doors, dangerous traps, and mysterious puzzles.
Outside of dungeons, however (i.e. travelling across a map), exploration can be awkward, slow, and tedious.
Xem’s Guide to Exploration ambitious tries to solve this problem with hex crawls and skill challenges.
I don’t hate hex crawls and skill challenges. But I think they should be used sparingly in specific situations. The supplement uses a skill challenge for fleeing PCs (which is just a chase in reverse), and I think that’s totally fine, with lots of opportunities for successes and failures with different outcomes.
Likewise, hex-crawling across a map can work — if the area is relatively small, and teeming with danger. You effectively transform the zone into its own “dungeon,” while still relying on the main problem of travel: the DM dictates everything, and the players react.
But turning every form of travel into a hex crawl is not something I would ever endorse — and I DM’d the ultimate 5e hexcrawl, Tomb of Annihilation!
Even when divvying out roles for everyone in the party, such as forager, mapper, navigator, and seeker, there is a lack of interesting choices and meaningful interactions. It mostly boils down to rolling dice in the hopes of avoiding a randomly generated encounter.
I’m never a fan of throwing encounters at the PCs as a form of travel punishment. I think encounters should also be use sparingly, and combat encounters especially (which many encounters end up being) slow the game down significantly.
Most players and DMs want to engage with the location (usually a dungeon or city) and not spend time getting lost and beating down random monsters in the forest.
There are two new rule ideas that I found worthwhile (ironically neither are specifically about exploration): extraordinary actions, and connections.
Extraordinary actions are new abilities that any player can activate by spending hit dice, up to their Proficiency Bonus. These abilities include a free 5-ft disengage, or adding bonus modifiers to attack rolls or saving throws.
That’s kinda cool! Everyone has HD and they represent an easily tracked, limited resource.
It’s less cool that activating any of these abilities also gives you a level of exhaustion. In my experience, that means nobody would ever use them. I’d drop that little kicker and leave the rest.
Connections are a gamey way of your players crafting their own shared-history NPCs (or monsters, whatever), or even turning an existing NPC into someone they know — whether it be a friend, a relative, or a rival.
You have a number of Connection Points equal to your Proficiency Bonus that you can spend to craft such NPCs (gaining new points as you move up in PB). The DM (and the player) can then use these NPCs to benefit that player’s story, or help (or hinder) them on a quest.
It’s neat idea, though like the rest of the supplement, it’s overly rules-y. Something I’ve learned over the years is to be less of a game designer and more adept at knowing my players, reading the room, and telling compelling stories.
The supplement is relatively short, which is fine, but over half a dozen pages are dedicated to full page AI art generated by Midjourney. AI art is a complicated topic, but this feels especially over-used and a bit disingenuous for an otherwise straight-forward supplement.
Pros:
- Extraordinary actions use hit dice in more interesting ways.
- Connections allow players to create interesting NPCs with meaningful interactions.
Cons:
- Hex crawls and skill challenges don’t necessarily improve exploration.
- Over-reliance on AI-generated art.
The Verdict: Xem’s Guide to Exploration features some good advice and interesting ideas, but relies far too heavily on hex crawls and skill challenges that ultimately slow the game down.
A review copy of “Xem’s Guide to Exploration” was provided by the publisher. Find more DMs Guild Reviews on my website and YouTube channel.
Support my work by using my affiliate links and pledging via Patreon.
RogueWatson 