I haven't met many players in the last 30-some years who're interested in old-school resource management or bookkeeping. Some yes, but not many. In the last 10 years I've almost exclusively met players who prefer 5E's version of "resource management" over anything even approaching old-school resource management. So I'd say it's absolutely true. I think you're maybe missing some of the context of the comment you're disagreeing with.
No one's talking about old-school resource management and bookkeeping. Talking about hit points and spell slots - the same things that everyone is already managing. Nothing in a "wilderness is a dungeon crawl" style requires "old-school resource management and bookkeeping." The two are not tightly intertwined.
If you hate an activity or a mechanic, it doesn't matter how enthusiastic or descriptive the referee is. But don't pretend like marking a torch off on your character sheet is somehow inherently more engaging than a skill check. Either you decide the activity has value or you decide the activity does not. Arguing about it won't change anyone's mind. They're personal preferences, not capital "T" Truths.
No one's talking about spending torches. You're attacking a strawman.
I am talking about a diversity of player engagement. Just skill checks for exploration is analogous to just attack rolls for combat - it risks eliminating interesting complexity and can become rote. It's not sufficient, IMO, for a mode of play that strongly relies on an exploration element. It'll wear thin.
And how is it resolved? According to you, none of the above matters if any of it is resolved with a skill check. The details are engaging or they're not. The resolution mechanic is engaging or it's not. Some people simply have different preferences. Arguing that their preferences are wrong is a waste of time.
Again, that's a strawman. My argument is not that we must eliminate skill checks. My argument
is is that part of the reason a lot of people aren't satisfied with exploration in 5e is because "make some skill checks" can be very bland in practice.
In comparison, consider the different modes of engagement that a dungeon-crawl-style approach brings:
Saving throws, triggered by environmental conditions or sudden wilderness traps, help players to feel reactive and defensive.
Choosing paths helps players to feel empowered and that their decisions affect the game in significant ways (and serve as moments of RP between party members - WHY did you choose Path A over Path B? Is it because you're a dwarf and Path A is underground?)
Attack rolls are involved in encounters that happen on the path.
Taking damage keeps a feeling of tension and consequences high.
Spending class resources (such as spell slots) helps increase that tension, to characterize what your character cares about, and to give you options for dealing with challenges
Skill checks are a part of the package, but asking them to carry the full weight is like asking attack rolls to carry the full weight in combat.
Sure, and high level spells should sometimes make the world less dangerous for youi, but that doesn’t mean the game couldn’t use some ways that those high level spells are also a risk.
Sure. I do think, as I mentioned above, spending class resources (like spell slots) on solving exploration issues is a useful part of making exploration engaging. So my concern with adding risk to those spells is that they may become trap options or the like. But that's more about specific spells than it is about exploration in general, I believe.
So, do you have any ideas that aren’t just basically a detour into the martial vs casters arguments?
Aspects of play other than resting that can present exploration challenges at higher levels and how to challenge those aspects of play, for instance?
The central idea with resting is really an argument about
deadliness. Resting is just a way to reduce the deadliness of an area. And deadliness itself is really just a way to say "engaging consequences for failure."
So, there's a lot of space to play with there, even if the high level characters aren't threatened by HP attrition.
High-level characters have a bigger foothold in the world, which means that threatening their bonds could make more sense. The scaling of D&D tiers already plays into this - high-level characters deal with world-shaking threats. So, time becomes a resource that can threaten the PC's, or at least the things they care about. It doesn't need to be a countdown to doomsday (though that's fine, too!), it could be a countdown to
it gets worse. Save yourself by resting, but take too much time, and towns start disappearing off the map, your friends start dying, etc. Traditional D&D where you get a stronghold as a class feature would have your keeps falling and your wizard towers blowing up or whatever. In 5e, it sounds like "Bastions" could play this role a bit.
That can be a little numbing if repeated often, but on the other hand high-level play is usually pretty rare, too. In practice, maybe that problem solves itself.
As long as the party has to actively do something to avoid failure (success is not guaranteed, they must take actions and make decisions to reach it), and that failure
matters (character death, end of the world, the pie goes stale, you go mad, you loose hope, your wife leaves you for a younger man who plays in a band and your children end up resenting you, whatever), the stakes of exploration are high enough to be engaging.
Where a lot of approaches fall short is that (a) no one makes a choice during exploration that matters (the procedural "roll a survival check" and "point a to point b montage"), or (b) those choices don't matter (nothing will happen if we get lost, we long rest and roll again, why are we even rolling). A dungeon-crawl mindset nips those problems in the bud, but it's not the only way to do it (though it is the way D&D kind of wants you to do it out of the box, in a rather maladroit and opaque way).
