Of the three pillars of D&D, exploration can be the most difficult to design for. Here’s how you can take the iconic concept of a dungeon and apply it to exploration encounters in your D&D game.
Really sounds advice all around! I had already started taking exploration like a dungeon with some time to travel between the nudes, but hadn't considered yet taking the same approach to cities and World Maps – mostly because there is usually not enough time pressure to limit players into exploring a city sequentially, but this might work for specific adventures or even chase sequences!
One particular advice given that I really like and have already implemented in my games is trying to make challenges that players can step away from, particularly puzzles
There's nothing as frustrating for players as getting stuck on a puzzle that is the only way forward. So I usually put puzzles as optional paths to extra treasures or objectives, or maybe as a shortcut to certain paths of a dungeon. Occasionally, I've even thrown in one as part of a combat encounter, where solving the riddle correctly would activate magic that would create a safe area for players or enchant a weapon to be magical in a particularly difficult combat versus monsters immune to non-magical damage