I agree, it was fleshed out for interaction, although arguably these rules were already present in the DMG and were just moved to the PHB.
Exploration I was a bit saddened didn't really get much love. It could be that light didn't come up a lot because a lot of player characters have darkvision, so just doesn't come up a lot? I dunno. There's was a lot of room to really get the exploration pillar built up and I feel that it just didn't happen.
Definitely agree on the confusion in areas particularly as stealth. I had to flip back and forth while scratching my head to figure out what the intention was. Like you said, it's going to be up to the DM once again. If that's the intention, fine, but it seems contradictory to what was printed.
I wonder if the running text and the glossary were written by two different teams. The text calls out the DM as adjudicator for stealth, while the glossary then gives specific details. Coordinating that text is a bugbear of TTRPG production.
That definitely could be the case. I suspect that the Hide rule probably got changed in the glossary somewhere along the line and that didn't get pulled together in other places in the end. There's also some rules wonkiness where hiding gives you the "Invisible" condition, but that's shared with magical invisibility, so now See Invisibility and things like that see you when hiding mundanely. I doubt that's how it's supposed to work, but by the rules that's what happens if you go by the glossary.
I agree, it was fleshed out for interaction, although arguably these rules were already present in the DMG and were just moved to the PHB.
Exploration I was a bit saddened didn't really get much love. It could be that light didn't come up a lot because a lot of player characters have darkvision, so just doesn't come up a lot? I dunno. There's was a lot of room to really get the exploration pillar built up and I feel that it just didn't happen.
Definitely agree on the confusion in areas particularly as stealth. I had to flip back and forth while scratching my head to figure out what the intention was. Like you said, it's going to be up to the DM once again. If that's the intention, fine, but it seems contradictory to what was printed.
I wonder if the running text and the glossary were written by two different teams. The text calls out the DM as adjudicator for stealth, while the glossary then gives specific details. Coordinating that text is a bugbear of TTRPG production.
That definitely could be the case. I suspect that the Hide rule probably got changed in the glossary somewhere along the line and that didn't get pulled together in other places in the end. There's also some rules wonkiness where hiding gives you the "Invisible" condition, but that's shared with magical invisibility, so now See Invisibility and things like that see you when hiding mundanely. I doubt that's how it's supposed to work, but by the rules that's what happens if you go by the glossary.
That jarring disconnect in the Dragonlance art jumped out at me too.