Wilderness Travel

[Stallrein]

Hi All,

I'm looking for a way to make traveling from town to town more interesting. This is something I always seem to struggle with and it always just turns into you went from Point A to Point B and had 1 or 2 encounters along the way.

Is travel something I can prep better for? Should I have the party be making wilderness checks to stay on course? Any help or even stories from your own games would be great. Thanks!

[JellyPooga]

The question is; do you just want to make travel more interesting or do you want it to be part of the adventure?

If the former, just chuck in some random encounters and skip the rest. If the latter, then there's all sorts you can do.

Take a leaf from The One Ring RPG and make the players plan their journey; give them a map with multiple routes of varying speed and difficulty.

Include points of interest or challenge along the way; chasms, mountain passes, rivers, deep forest, etc. all of which have their own dangers or trials to overcome. How are you crossing the river if not at the bridge? Did you bring climbing/cold-weather gear to cross the high-pass?

Make random encounters more than just a fight in the open; instead of being ambushed by bandits, have them come across the bandit camp. Give them the option of exploring a ruined tower (mini-dungeon!) by the side of the road. While foraging, the Wizard is abducted by kobolds; rescue party!

Adventure is not about fighting, it's about choices, so include those choices in to the travel sections as well as the main plot.

[Ninja_Prawn]

It really depends on what your players enjoy and what kind of game you want to run. Recently, I've been rolling for encounters every hour in the wilderness (encounter happens on an 18-20). I haven't used random encounter tables though, I've just been making up encounters on the spot (this is in a play by post game, so there's plenty of time to do that).

This approach keeps people on their toes, and avoids the 'one encounter per day/journey' trope quite well, while still getting the party from A to B fairly quickly (which has generally been our priority). Frequently I'll go days with no encounters at all, and I structure a lot of encounters to make them optional (or sometimes just 'you stumble upon some treasure'), so it doesn't make traveling into a final fantasy style random encounter grind. The flip side is that when combat does happen, the party is almost always at full strength, so you need to balance for that rather than the standard 6-8 encounter day that you'd expect when the party is in a dungeon.

[Bigmouth]

I don't think there is any universal cure-all for making travel interesting.

Sometimes it is probably best to just describe the journey and any encounters.

However, things that I personally use to spice up travel are encounters where rp is front and center.
Party camps for the night...as they are setting up camp a fellow traveler shows up and asks to share their fire. Happens is so many stories and for good reason. Shared camps were a thing IRL. Stories to swap, good way to toss out adventure hooks, foreshadow dangers, test your character's alignments and get them to do

People travelling in the same direction. Another great way to offer stories and lore, hints of adventure, all that good stuff.

People coming from the direction the party is headed. Very loaded. An encounter like this can set up a lot of information/misinformation about the destination. "The mayor is a vampire!" "Blacksmith Gimby is a murderer. Don't trust him." Bad information, good information. RP hooks and all that fun stuff. Get to town and Blacksmith Gimby does seem really suspicious, players might investigate her all on their own, then end up deciding the true murderer left town the day before they arrived...oh no, that could have been the person they talked to!

Signs of violence: Instead of the bandits, cultists, goblins or whatever attacking the party for the 'random encounter' what if the party comes across signs of the random encounter having attacked juicier/safer targets? Merchant wagons, settlers, farmers etc. Everyone can be dead, you can have survivors-perhaps some of them injured, maybe signs that people were dragged off. Again, sets up morality play RP. Does your party loot the dead people, bury them respectfully, wrap them and carry them to town? Do they set off to find the people/creatures that did this horrible thing? Will they heal the injured (using their valuable resources) before setting off to find the villains? So many possible moral/rp decisions. Did your party ignore the burnt out wagon? Will they ignore it when they discover a heavy strongbox smashed on a rock?

If you've got a tracker in your group, throwing out tracks instead of encounters. Gives more player choice, can spark rp over whether to ignore the tracks or not. "Hunting party of 12 Kobolds." "Meh, not interested" can end up leading to "Burnt out cabin. Looks like a hunting party of kobolds did it. Looks like 12 of them." I wouldn't overdo that followup, but it certainly can work occasionally. Making player actions matter is generally a good thing. Good and bad.

If they are off the beaten path, letting them stumble upon interesting locations is fun. Give them the joy of finding these places (which some players really love). Then the temptation of sidequesting. "I know we're on our way to Oz to see the Wizard of the Coast, but these are honest to goodness Gygaxiian ruins...we can explore them just a liddle bit can't we?"

Another non standard encounter is weather and terrain issues. "The river is flooded. There's no way you're fording the river here." "Last week's heavy rains seem to have caused a mudslide and the pass is washed out." This stuff gives a chance at problem solving. Using abilities that they perhaps don't drag out very often.

So, to sum up. I like offering distractions, waving sidequests, things that can create rp.

[Aett_Thorn]

I’m personally not a fan of doing random encounters on the fly. If i’m doing a random encounter, i’ll roll a few up before the session, so that I have time to plan them out just a bit, and also be able to generate a good feel for the area or give the players a head’s up.

Coming across some giant spiders? The party will begin to see webs on the trees well before they see the spiders. Brigands on the road? The last village had a warning sign at the crossroads that the party might spot or be able to pick up from a villager. Some sort of exotic creature? How did it get to where it is and what would it be doing on the road besides just appearing?

I also like to make sure that overland travel is dangerous not just from monsters, but from the environment itself. If the party needs to cross a river, maybe the bridge is out and they need to figure out how to get to the other side. Heavy rains may have made the road muddy, slowing travel. Maybe the party comes across a lone shepherd that is being harassed by a pack of wolves. The goal might not be to fight the wolves, but just protect the flock until you can get them to safety. Storms, heat, friendly or not so friendly caravans, a wandering tinker or traveling troupe. Lots of things to see and do on the roads!