So let's talk about exploring the game world. At least the modern text-based games I have seen, seem to think that either it is a good idea that everything just exists out of space and time, or they go the other extreme and force you to "go north" hundreds of times navigating some sort of grid. Well, I think both is terrible.
On the one hand you want to visualize a world and for that there need to be different places. Different zones or points of interest. You explore the world and find new places, some hard to reach. On the other hand, walking in a text-based game is just stupidly boring and clunky. So my approach to solve this is kind of inspired by "choose your own adventure books" and Diablo style games. Odd combination you might think, but it makes sense, trust me.
Choose your own adventure books generally don't have pages and pages that tell you about a journey from a to b. If you have made your decision to go to a place you just skip to that page. Similar, in Diablo style games you will not walk from the basecamp all the way to the boss, you will use conveniently placed teleporters. So how can this be translated to a text-based game? Very simple actually.
The game world is separated into zones, acting as parts of the game, similar to zones in a traditional MMO. They are themed, have a difficulty, have specific things happening there and specific things to be gained. For example, you have an outskirts zone. Not too many bad monsters around, but you will also not find a mithril mine there. Another zone would be mountainous, where you encounter mountain themed enemies and the occasional environmental hazard, but likely find rare minerals or gemstones. Yet another is a forest, desert, etc. You get the idea.
These zones can be explored, which presents you with a random encounter specific to this zone. Such encounters would be enemies, NPCs or resources. The may be simple or complex, where decisions have to be made. Do you enter the cave you found? Do you check what is inside the ruin? Do you walk up or approach stealthily? Do you talk to the human you met? You might find some resource node to gather from later, you might discover a new point of interest to interact with. The possibilities are only limited by imagination. And that is already one of the main features of the game, you go to a zone, you start exploring, you gain knowledge of the zone, which encounters are dangerous, what can happen where and eventually, you move on to another zone. Are you ready for the swamps of poisonous stuff? Do you need some ores and go to the mountains? Better bring a warm coat, it might get chilly up there.
So what else can you do in a zone. Apart from exploring and gathering, which I will talk about another time, you can also hunt if you find relevant prey during your exploration. I mentioned points of interest, or POIs, which could be anything from an inn or a trader, to a quest giver or a dungeon. Again anything is possible with POIs, the key difference to general encounters is, that they are not random. Not only not random, but actually persistent between all players. The trader will be there for everyone, you might not know about him because you haven't found him yet, but he is there. If something would happen to him, the POI would just disappear for everyone (well at least those knowing about it in the first place).
And that is the concept of the game world and exploring it. Navigating it is done through a simple dialogue. Some zones maybe hard to reach, or require a precondition to get there. Some zone might require travel time or a fee to reach (think about entering a zone through a dangerous pass or a toll bridge). Either way, the world can be travelled, while offering random, mostly choice-based encounters through exploration. And remember, the world is dynamically changed, so an encounter that is there today might not be there after the area has been pacified. At the same time an invasion by the void will likely bring new encounters with it. There may be time limited encounters, lets say a Christmas event where human-reindeer hybrids called werereindeer... you get the idea.
I hope this gives you an idea of what you can do in the game world, but certainly it is not the only thing. I haven't decided yet whether I will talk about combat in the game or whether I will explain the economy. At the off chance that someone reads this, feel free to comment and let me know what you are interested in more. Because you want to know everything, obviously. Right?
BR
thatclaimgamedev