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View Full Version : How do you handle overland travel in fantasy games?



Chaosvii7
2014-10-16, 10:12 PM
I was just wondering if anybody can help me gleam any insights on how they typically handle overland travel in worlds, especially in those that are still being developed as the players travel through it. I've had a party that's spent the last few months in a small town and just last week a cart that had been arranged for them to use to travel had appeared in town. This week they'll say goodbye to the NPCs in town and then head out to wherever they want. I know plenty about the places they're going to and what they'll be doing when they get there, but I'm having serious problems theorizing and creating things to happen along the way as they travel. I don't want to do Random Encounters - I already had a whole topic dedicated to that (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?358058-How-do-you-generate-Random-Encounters) and I've since decided against using them. But obviously the area between Points A and B ought to be populated enough with creatures, groups, etc. that the group has stuff to interact with as they travel. It's about four days to the nearest, well, anything, and of course there's a few detours and groups along the way doing things, but otherwise I feel like there's not enough to populate the world along the group's travel.

I did have this idea to make a version of the map with hexes superimposed upon it, and every hex is representative of either an encounter or a location. Depending on what hexes they traveled through they'd find whatever the hex would detail. It's a more fair solution to just making arbitrary encounters in my opinion, but I don't know how well the system would work. If you think this is good enough to work then please let me know. Otherwise, I am at your mercy. Feel free to give me any input and help on the matter that I can use to best enhance the experience of having my party of players trod along well-worn paths to new and exciting places, while keeping the travel equally as intriguing.

hifidelity2
2014-10-17, 07:05 AM
First of all do you want encounters? And if so do you have any idea as to the number / severity. If the travel is just to get from Adventure A to Adventure B then you can just say “You send X days travelling and thing happens”

IF however you want to introduce plot hooks, given them some XP for encounters then I would
- work out how many days from A to B
- What the terrain will be on each day
- Populate that with a few encounters – some “Random” and some of importance

The reason for the random ones is so that the players don’t know which are plot hooks and which are just random bandits

Thrawn4
2014-10-17, 08:04 AM
Do you know where they are heading for? That would make things much easier.
I don't think hexes are necessary, just come up with some nice ideas and use them in the right moment.

How are the relations between place A and B? Hostile, indifferent, trade agreement, friendship? What is the area like? Highly populated city and its surroundings, lonely villages or undiscovered wilderness?
Depending on that you can have quite a variety of things, e. g. a tavern with card games, guards looking for trouble-makers, strange animal tracks leading to this creepy forest, mercenaries guarding a merchant, mercenaries robbing a merchant, bandits saving the village from wolves because they need something from them, a priest trying to convert the party, a hunting party or the ghastly stories from this guy they met on the way.

DonEsteban
2014-10-17, 08:18 AM
This depends greatly on how much (out of game) time you want the travel to take. I personally often feel (perhaps wrongly) that spending much time on "scenic encounters" detracts from the story. If you feel so too, it's perfectly fine to say "after five days of travel you arrive at the City of Splendors", perhaps describing some of the scenery along the road for context and later reference.

Logistics and complication of travel can be a nice thing (for a while). Anything from getting lost to finding or losing food and water to overcoming obstacles like rivers or gorges to random encounters. You could also let each players describe some interesting event that might happen on the way. "On the first evening you set camp at a small clearing in the forest with a creek bubbling through it. Max, start to describe something that happens during your watch." And so on. Real gems of roleplaying might (or might not) evolve from this kind of set up.

If you really want lots of things to happen you can of course use anything up to a full-blown hex crawl. Just do a web search for hex crawl and you'll find tons of great material. As the previous post says, it's nice if some of the things encountered along the way have some relevance to your plot. A nice opportunity for foreshadowing, too.

Chaosvii7
2014-10-17, 09:26 AM
First of all do you want encounters?

Of some sort, yes. It doesn't have to be "you get jumped on the road" kind of encounters but I certainly want for there to be things for them to encounter as they travel.



IF however you want to introduce plot hooks, given them some XP for encounters then I would
- work out how many days from A to B
- What the terrain will be on each day
- Populate that with a few encounters – some “Random” and some of importance

I know that the nearest area of interest to the party is 4 days, the farthest is about a week. Terrain is pretty straightforward - it changes but it's not unpredictable or unprecedented.


Do you know where they are heading for? That would make things much easier.
I don't think hexes are necessary, just come up with some nice ideas and use them in the right moment.

I currently do not. The map they have is riddled with locations as well as directions towards other known areas, and they will choose where they want to go from here out. They have a few different destinations available to them, and I'm letting them choose what order we explore them in.

All the other info you gave me is useful, thank you Thrawn.


This depends greatly on how much (out of game) time you want the travel to take. I personally often feel (perhaps wrongly) that spending much time on "scenic encounters" detracts from the story. If you feel so too, it's perfectly fine to say "after five days of travel you arrive at the City of Splendors", perhaps describing some of the scenery along the road for context and later reference.

Logistics and complication of travel can be a nice thing (for a while). Anything from getting lost to finding or losing food and water to overcoming obstacles like rivers or gorges to random encounters. You could also let each players describe some interesting event that might happen on the way. "On the first evening you set camp at a small clearing in the forest with a creek bubbling through it. Max, start to describe something that happens during your watch." And so on. Real gems of roleplaying might (or might not) evolve from this kind of set up.

If you really want lots of things to happen you can of course use anything up to a full-blown hex crawl. Just do a web search for hex crawl and you'll find tons of great material. As the previous post says, it's nice if some of the things encountered along the way have some relevance to your plot. A nice opportunity for foreshadowing, too.

I totally get that. Sometimes there's just things that the party wants or needs to get to, and is deserving of expedience. Perhaps I could just have encounters where the group settles down for any reason. I don't need to go overboard with the logistics and action, but I do want to make sure there's enough substance where travel doesn't feel like it's an afterthought. The group I have has an incredibly easy time getting into their characters, so I like to make the sessions enriching enough where we can frequently explore their characters.

Algeh
2014-10-19, 12:28 PM
You can also ask the players about how they plan to travel. Ok, fine, with a cart, but are they rushing at their fastest possible speed? Ambling along looking for medicinal herbs, edible plants, or other things that might grow along the path? Marching in step, singing 100-verse songs with dirty lyrics all day to keep the pace? On constant alert for possible bandits, deployed in a tactical formation and searching for possible ambushes? This should give you some mini-hooks for encounters that aren't just random things. Anything the players "does anyone have anything their character wants to do while traveling?" might be a good way to start that off.

Then, come up with a few things that might then happen to a group like whatever they're acting like down the road they're going and highlight 1-3 that are worth roleplaying through (probably one big thing or 2-3 little things). Maybe their cart axle breaks because they're taking it too fast, or they find a boggy place and have to do some roadbuilding to get their cart through. Maybe farmers flag them down to ask them for help with something, since they look so efficient with their marching and singing (ok, fine, that's a bit of a stretch). Maybe they find a lost or runaway child while shaking all the bushes looking for ambushers. Maybe they get a magical rash from touching a strange plant when they try to collect it (I'd suggest starting the scene before they actually touch the plant, something like "on the second day, among the more common -whatevers- you've been finding, you notice a plant you can't readily identify. It's -description-" and let them decide what to do about it). Plan stuff that'll take about a half hour to an hour of game time, but not more than that.

Basically, just have them deal with a few interesting things that happen, and assume the rest of the journey was uneventful. No one wants to hear a blow-by-blow description of my last train ride from San Jose to Portland, but that the train had to wait a long time for a freight train to clear the tracks in the middle of nowhere, so we all got out to play in the snow for a few minutes is maybe worth mentioning. Pick out those bits and roleplay them.

jedipotter
2014-10-19, 07:06 PM
You kinda only get three choices:

1. Ignore Travel. Distance is pointless. Just have character's travel instantaneously. This is the way most moves do it, think of the Indiana Jones map animation.

2. Half travel. Let the character's travel for a while then ''stop and have an encounter'' or two.

3. The Forever Trip. Where the character have to play through each bit of travel.


The big problem comes that players almost only ever travel for a reason. They need to get to Skull Island to find the Stone of Power. So, well, the players just want to do that. The DM, on the other hand, has detailed a huge world. So he has lots of places for the characters to visit and interact with. And the DM even has a little side trek for the characters to get lost in the Black Swamp and find the Stone of Power Stand. the players don't know about that, so they just avoid the whole swamp.

Pex
2014-10-19, 07:32 PM
Just because the party adventures doesn't mean something must happen while traveling. No harm in having encounters while traveling, planned or random, but neither is there harm in saying "A week passes and you arrive at your destination."

Jay R
2014-10-19, 08:10 PM
The reason for the random ones is so that the players don’t know which are plot hooks and which are just random bandits

This is also how you get them more experience points that the specific adventure would generate.