since I've been gone for a while with moving and having a baby and such, I've fallen somewhat behind on the Spelunker thing; however, early on it gelled a couple of ideas that I wanted to try.
http://home.comcast.net/~doho123/games/spelunker/
This incorporates a couple of systems that I wanted to try:
1) a bluff/bet/wager system somewhat related to poker
2) trying to develop a game with some sort of unique mechanical device
I know a lot of people on this board are really into the themeing of games; unfortunately, I'm more into the base rule mechanics, so while you aren't going to be "collecting pottery fragments" for points, you will still be collecting points.
Anyway, I thought I'd post this up, and let people take a look at it, and maybe it will help give some people a different approach, or help cement the current approach, that various people might be suggesting on the collaborative project.
I don't know if there's really an exploration problem. However, what it does fix is someone getting lucky draws for points. Creating maps, as opposed to having them get made randomly, let's you balance the scoring for all players. (of course, there's other ways to balance things like that, but then you get into analysis paralysis problems and such).