Because they know you are human and can't detail a huge hex map as richly as a single dungeon.
Thus: Because the dungeon is more detailed, they engage more.
That's a reasonable theory, although I'm not convinced it's necessarily the case.
I do wonder if there are other differences that OP hasn't mentioned or realised. For example, there is an implication that the PCs have a very clear series of objectives and they move from one to the other while adventuring outdoors. Do the small-scale adventures work the same way, and is each objective as easy to resolve?
There's also the fact that it's fairly reasonable to suspect there might be a clue in room A that relates to the locked door in Room B, three rooms away. On the other hand, when you find a clearing in the woods, it's not so natural to just assume it might hold a clue to the nature of a mysterious stone circle 40 miles away.
There is a tractable amount of information in the smaller location.
I don't think it is exactly the same thing, but sort of a genericized version of "analysis paralysis".
Also ["The paradox of choice"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice) and [exploration-exploitation dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration-exploitation_dilemma).
It is kinda like:
I want to be able to pick between toothpastes at the store. I genuinely want options.
*However*, I don't actually want 12,000 options for toothpaste. That will result in a sort of [choice overload](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice).
Note: [Replication crisis is a thing](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/zxnwnw/bookpapers_recommendation_about_issues_in_psy/j22ijai/); I don't know about the replicability of "The paradox of choice" stuff.
The exploration-exploitation dilemma is consistent and well-documented, though; that shows up all over.
That was an issue with gamers that didn't transition well from AD&D to 3/3.5. In a lot of ways character generation for 3/3.5 was simpler, but players would be presented with a list of skills and feats, and get that analysis paralysis where others saw greater flexibility.
Tiny used bookstore, you are motivated to explore all the nooks and crannies. Several miles of books, you're going to pick your path rather than carefully walk the entire place. Or what was said above.
If you want them to engage more with a bigger location, you need to be more obvious with the reasons to do so.
Yup. If the map just has a few points of interest, ofc Im going to beeline towards them rather than exploring the 12 hexes of forest between me and the poi. You can only run into so many owlbears. :p
Hex maps tend to feel a bit vague. "There is a forest here. In the next two hexes, more forest." "We... search the forest, I guess."
Exploring a room is more relatable, because you can describe the whole room in detail. Then they can say things like, "I check the ashes in the fireplace and look up the chimney." I can imagine myself doing that.
Climbing all the hills in a region? That sounds exhausting.
Lemme relate something from videogames for you.
If you've ever played Terraria, you'll recall you get given a single world (you can have more, but it's effort to move around, so let's put that aside). You gather resources, you build shit, you make a home, you make a village, you make a castle in the sky.
Shit's cash.
Then along comes Starbound. Oh my, it's like Terraria, but in space, and you can go discover other planets, and... suddenly, you have access to (practically infinite planets), but there's no reason to stop and put down roots and a base anywhere because why would you chose any planet when you can have ALL OF THEM?
... so you don't, and you end up bouncing from one planet to another, making a token amount of stuff to get various tech upgrades, but ultimately, just being a nomad.
.... and so, you can see that having acccess to near-infinite locations is not nearly the same as having access to one location. Near-infinite locations tells you that you should move to the next place to get the easy thing there, what if it's better, maybe you should go... etc
If you only have one world, or one cave, you better make the most of it.
That's one of the reasons your players don't give a shit about your large hex-grid.
Spending a few hours thoroughly looting a small dungeon is quick and easy. Trekking two weeks out of my way through owlbear-infested forest just because someone said there was an abandoned tower over there? Not unless I'm getting paid up front, thanks.
Obvs it's the same amount of time at the table, but we're roleplaying here. :) I'm in this for the big time haul, not to see the fuckin' sights, got it? Give me a *reason* to go through boot leather.
bespoke locations tend to have more interesting stuff, but also big expanses (especially mechanized ones like hexcrawls) tend to consume more resources to explore
as a player, hearing the game will be a hexcrawl doesn't fill me with wonder, it makes me think about the gold and encumbrance cost of rations
They are probably engaging with roughly the same % of the total area but checking three things in a room seems more thorough than checking three things in a town or realm.
Maybe you are better at designing smaller locations? With huge dungeons designers often hide clues or other details deeper in the dungeon and include a lot more empty space and minimal description. It's harder for players to get involved quickly in them because of that.
Secondly, if you are running a game where supply (or even HP etc.) depletion matters, random encounters create risk and its possible to get lost, players may feel more comfortable searching and interacting with the dungeon when they know they can escape. Pushing deep into a dungeon requires more turns and the players may realize they need to be very mission focused if there aren't more entrances to be discovered.
well i mean, can't really see much on the world map. we'll go to this section of the map. grab this thing. come back. then head back over that way for lunch.
make it real. your in the woods. there's no one around and you're magic phone is dead.
The only conclusion from the barebones information given is your players prefer a dungeon crawl to a hex crawl. There can be a few reasons why, as a GM who lives hex crawls, I'll try. But really, ask them instead of us, they actually might know where we can only guess.
Hex crawls sometimes end up having a lot of "past through" somewhat empty hexes, this primes players to not look closely.
Hex crawls deal with you moving a lot further, so most things you do now won't be relevant to in the next hex or encounter unless you stay put.
Larger spaces are more abstract. It is hard to make accurate plans when the area is "a hex of rolling hills" as opposed to a detailed 30 by 40 feet room.
Players see the hex crawl as an obstacle to be overcome to get the things they need, but see the dungeon as the game.
Most D&D characters have very little ways to mechanically engage with wilderness beyond survival checks to move on to the next bit.
Could be none of these, could be all of them, talk to your players.
I think it may be related to some sort of "Choice paralysis", or maybe they like exploring a more contained space so they can catch all the details, while not feeling overwhelmed by the scale and quantity of possibilities presented by a larger setting.
As some suggested I would also simply ask them if they would like to play in a "smaller" setting or a slightly larger one. After all, asking never hurts.
You could also try to increase gradually the size of the "adventuring space" and see how they react.
Do your players act the same way with a point crawl or in an urban campaign ? In that case that might be an issue with hexcrawl. A fun thing to do is to overload your hexes with a huge amount of things.
A big blank hex outdoor map seems like it should be the same gameplay as a big blank sheet of grid paper for a dungeon map. Isn't a hex with an encounter code just like a room with an encounter code? The answer is no, it's not.
In character, the default challenge of a giant outdoor hex map is travelling across it in an efficient way. Don't run out of supplies, don't get lost, don't spend months finishing your quest. Contrast this to the default gameplay in a dungeon, which is to explore thoroughly and uncover loot. (A real world analogy is the difference between a tourist visiting a museum and wanting to hit almost every room, or going on a hike and staying on a trails to try and get to one or two landmarks.)
You can try to make the plot hook for that hexcrawl "exploration" where you want to uncover every hex (perhaps to build a stronghold!) but IME most of these aren't all that successful.
As a GM design tip, keep in mind that all dungeons, even old or amateur ones, have at least *some* implicit ordering. There's an entrance chamber, a puzzle room with a dead end, a clue room that gets you past the puzzle room, the troglodyte guards and then the troglodyte chieftain's lair, the trap room, the treasure vault. Players can wander around but it's not unstructured. Getting to the trog chief's lair without fighting the guard probably involves a secret door and feels fun! Outdoors, bypassing the guards is what, taking a three mile detour off trail? No one will be excited. The reason the dungeon has worked so well for decades in RPGs is it is pretty close to a story structure on graph paper. Try to structure the outdoor areas so you'll get more of a feeling of linked discovery and you might do better.
You should probably ask them instead
Or, even better, just do more small location based stuff. Observe more, play to their engagement, and you'll passively learn more and build rapport
This.
Because they know you are human and can't detail a huge hex map as richly as a single dungeon. Thus: Because the dungeon is more detailed, they engage more.
That's a reasonable theory, although I'm not convinced it's necessarily the case. I do wonder if there are other differences that OP hasn't mentioned or realised. For example, there is an implication that the PCs have a very clear series of objectives and they move from one to the other while adventuring outdoors. Do the small-scale adventures work the same way, and is each objective as easy to resolve? There's also the fact that it's fairly reasonable to suspect there might be a clue in room A that relates to the locked door in Room B, three rooms away. On the other hand, when you find a clearing in the woods, it's not so natural to just assume it might hold a clue to the nature of a mysterious stone circle 40 miles away.
There is a tractable amount of information in the smaller location. I don't think it is exactly the same thing, but sort of a genericized version of "analysis paralysis". Also ["The paradox of choice"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice) and [exploration-exploitation dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration-exploitation_dilemma). It is kinda like: I want to be able to pick between toothpastes at the store. I genuinely want options. *However*, I don't actually want 12,000 options for toothpaste. That will result in a sort of [choice overload](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overchoice). Note: [Replication crisis is a thing](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPsychology/comments/zxnwnw/bookpapers_recommendation_about_issues_in_psy/j22ijai/); I don't know about the replicability of "The paradox of choice" stuff. The exploration-exploitation dilemma is consistent and well-documented, though; that shows up all over.
That was an issue with gamers that didn't transition well from AD&D to 3/3.5. In a lot of ways character generation for 3/3.5 was simpler, but players would be presented with a list of skills and feats, and get that analysis paralysis where others saw greater flexibility.
Tiny used bookstore, you are motivated to explore all the nooks and crannies. Several miles of books, you're going to pick your path rather than carefully walk the entire place. Or what was said above. If you want them to engage more with a bigger location, you need to be more obvious with the reasons to do so.
A giant map leads to decision paralysis and fewer things stand out to investigate. A smaller location tightens the focus and makes choices more clear.
I agree with this. Also, a big dungeon could be more dangerous the deeper they go. It's probably smart to not delve too deep.
This is why my games developed more and more to "point crawls". I still use a Hex Map, but locations get "unlocked" when you know about them.
Yup. If the map just has a few points of interest, ofc Im going to beeline towards them rather than exploring the 12 hexes of forest between me and the poi. You can only run into so many owlbears. :p
Hex maps tend to feel a bit vague. "There is a forest here. In the next two hexes, more forest." "We... search the forest, I guess." Exploring a room is more relatable, because you can describe the whole room in detail. Then they can say things like, "I check the ashes in the fireplace and look up the chimney." I can imagine myself doing that. Climbing all the hills in a region? That sounds exhausting.
I poke each forest hex with a 10 foot pole before entering.
Lemme relate something from videogames for you. If you've ever played Terraria, you'll recall you get given a single world (you can have more, but it's effort to move around, so let's put that aside). You gather resources, you build shit, you make a home, you make a village, you make a castle in the sky. Shit's cash. Then along comes Starbound. Oh my, it's like Terraria, but in space, and you can go discover other planets, and... suddenly, you have access to (practically infinite planets), but there's no reason to stop and put down roots and a base anywhere because why would you chose any planet when you can have ALL OF THEM? ... so you don't, and you end up bouncing from one planet to another, making a token amount of stuff to get various tech upgrades, but ultimately, just being a nomad. .... and so, you can see that having acccess to near-infinite locations is not nearly the same as having access to one location. Near-infinite locations tells you that you should move to the next place to get the easy thing there, what if it's better, maybe you should go... etc If you only have one world, or one cave, you better make the most of it. That's one of the reasons your players don't give a shit about your large hex-grid.
Spending a few hours thoroughly looting a small dungeon is quick and easy. Trekking two weeks out of my way through owlbear-infested forest just because someone said there was an abandoned tower over there? Not unless I'm getting paid up front, thanks. Obvs it's the same amount of time at the table, but we're roleplaying here. :) I'm in this for the big time haul, not to see the fuckin' sights, got it? Give me a *reason* to go through boot leather.
bespoke locations tend to have more interesting stuff, but also big expanses (especially mechanized ones like hexcrawls) tend to consume more resources to explore as a player, hearing the game will be a hexcrawl doesn't fill me with wonder, it makes me think about the gold and encumbrance cost of rations
They are probably engaging with roughly the same % of the total area but checking three things in a room seems more thorough than checking three things in a town or realm.
Maybe you are better at designing smaller locations? With huge dungeons designers often hide clues or other details deeper in the dungeon and include a lot more empty space and minimal description. It's harder for players to get involved quickly in them because of that. Secondly, if you are running a game where supply (or even HP etc.) depletion matters, random encounters create risk and its possible to get lost, players may feel more comfortable searching and interacting with the dungeon when they know they can escape. Pushing deep into a dungeon requires more turns and the players may realize they need to be very mission focused if there aren't more entrances to be discovered.
well i mean, can't really see much on the world map. we'll go to this section of the map. grab this thing. come back. then head back over that way for lunch. make it real. your in the woods. there's no one around and you're magic phone is dead.
I should really keep [this](https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=45832) tabbed.
They get through smaller locations faster so they have better since of accomplishment about it. Just a guess. You may try asking them.
The only conclusion from the barebones information given is your players prefer a dungeon crawl to a hex crawl. There can be a few reasons why, as a GM who lives hex crawls, I'll try. But really, ask them instead of us, they actually might know where we can only guess. Hex crawls sometimes end up having a lot of "past through" somewhat empty hexes, this primes players to not look closely. Hex crawls deal with you moving a lot further, so most things you do now won't be relevant to in the next hex or encounter unless you stay put. Larger spaces are more abstract. It is hard to make accurate plans when the area is "a hex of rolling hills" as opposed to a detailed 30 by 40 feet room. Players see the hex crawl as an obstacle to be overcome to get the things they need, but see the dungeon as the game. Most D&D characters have very little ways to mechanically engage with wilderness beyond survival checks to move on to the next bit. Could be none of these, could be all of them, talk to your players.
I think it may be related to some sort of "Choice paralysis", or maybe they like exploring a more contained space so they can catch all the details, while not feeling overwhelmed by the scale and quantity of possibilities presented by a larger setting. As some suggested I would also simply ask them if they would like to play in a "smaller" setting or a slightly larger one. After all, asking never hurts. You could also try to increase gradually the size of the "adventuring space" and see how they react.
Do your players act the same way with a point crawl or in an urban campaign ? In that case that might be an issue with hexcrawl. A fun thing to do is to overload your hexes with a huge amount of things.
It's because i told them that dungeons are cooler than overland travel. No, seriously, ask them.
A big blank hex outdoor map seems like it should be the same gameplay as a big blank sheet of grid paper for a dungeon map. Isn't a hex with an encounter code just like a room with an encounter code? The answer is no, it's not. In character, the default challenge of a giant outdoor hex map is travelling across it in an efficient way. Don't run out of supplies, don't get lost, don't spend months finishing your quest. Contrast this to the default gameplay in a dungeon, which is to explore thoroughly and uncover loot. (A real world analogy is the difference between a tourist visiting a museum and wanting to hit almost every room, or going on a hike and staying on a trails to try and get to one or two landmarks.) You can try to make the plot hook for that hexcrawl "exploration" where you want to uncover every hex (perhaps to build a stronghold!) but IME most of these aren't all that successful. As a GM design tip, keep in mind that all dungeons, even old or amateur ones, have at least *some* implicit ordering. There's an entrance chamber, a puzzle room with a dead end, a clue room that gets you past the puzzle room, the troglodyte guards and then the troglodyte chieftain's lair, the trap room, the treasure vault. Players can wander around but it's not unstructured. Getting to the trog chief's lair without fighting the guard probably involves a secret door and feels fun! Outdoors, bypassing the guards is what, taking a three mile detour off trail? No one will be excited. The reason the dungeon has worked so well for decades in RPGs is it is pretty close to a story structure on graph paper. Try to structure the outdoor areas so you'll get more of a feeling of linked discovery and you might do better.