User:Kydo/Overland Travel Notes

This is a heap of WIP. Please ignore.

Awkwardly stare at them for precisely 45 seconds. The awkwardness will make time crawl. Every single time. Also a good way to subtly bring order to the table just wait until everyone realizes you're staring at them and usually things settle down.

routines. that's the best way to convey the passage of time. every day the camp wakes. food is eaten. prayers and study are undertaken. exercise and meditation occur. the map is studied, the journal is updated. every night the watch is set. defenses are established. food is eaten. weapons are oiled and cleaned. Animals are cared for.

encounters should be vignettes. don't have "Orcs", have "A marauding band of Orcs are attacking a farmer's wagon and his family is already dead and he's losing the fight." Most road encounters other than ambush should be able to be avoided if the party wants to.

weather marks the passage of time. if it rains for a week, that's memorable.

campfire stories. every night one or two players talk about themselves or make up a quick story. or just general interactions between the party - resuming a debate, playing cards, or listening to music.

I always give encounters purpose. Even if they are random, they shouldn't be pointless. Yes! Every random encounter is a chance for a new plot hook! And, it's a chance to show the PCs how the world works, how not everyone and everything in the world exists solely to kill them or to serve them (unless everything in your world does in fact exist solely to kill them or to serve them—which could make for an interesting way to introduce an it-was-a-all-a-dream or a we-are-the-chosen-ones sort of trope).

It's an issue I see often, that the DM never adds in a bit of exposition from the NPC about world events. This means that when it's time for the players to travel to a new city that they don't realize they have to make a choice, brave the haunted forest or sneak through the gnoll hills. Moreover they don't have the important information, all they know is hills or forest, which means the scenario is less dramatic and the choice is less important. On the other hand it is extremely easy for merchants to say things like, "There's a bit of a markup on northern goods, it's not often people are willing to bring trade since there is no real easy path between here and there. Deal with the ghost, or the gnolls. It's a damn sorry situation." From that one conversation you have given yourself and the players everything needed to have them make an important choice.

One of the things I've recognized is that all stages of the game can be thought of as a large dungeon. In a dungeon we move room by room. In each room the players get a chance to do a little exploring, get a little exposition, and possibly be challenged by some encounter. This form of playing applies its self very well to travelling.

It is something I learned from playing old text based adventures on the computer where you had 'obvious exits' and had to type things like 'go north' or 'climb stairs'. It doesn't matter what the dungeon actually is. A trek can be divided up into rooms just like these old text based adventure games. Of course it depends on the fiction of the story. The 'rooms' of a journey through the patrolled and maintained roadways of a kingdom will be much different than the 'rooms' of traveling through untamed wilds.

I like to use "hey, aren't you that guy?" encounters to spice things up. When traveling, it's not unlikely for your party to encounter other travelers. A lot of times we have a habit of glossing over these people (or even pretending they don't exist) but I picked up an idea from an entry in the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Sonder sonder n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk. Working from that, I decided to incorporate that extra level of world-building and make all strangers potentially worth meeting. Give them a little backstory, some sort of goal, a secret. Let your party decide how they interact with them, but give them enough juice that they have a choice of involvement. On top of this, I like to sprinkle in some "hey, aren't you that guy?" scenarios. Other people in the world who travel about, either for pleasure or trade, that can have some minor benefit or detriment to your party. For example, they meet an older man traveling alone. He's a bit gruff and dismissive at first. Your party can choose to ignore him or keep trying to talk to him. They choose the latter and realize he just seems upset. Ask him what's wrong or not? If they do, perhaps he's upset because his grandson is very ill and he's forced to leave him and travel to make money to buy medicine. Maybe they offer him money, maybe they have a healing potion they're willing to give him, maybe they have a healer and are willing to delay their trip by a day to go help the kid themselves... maybe they do nothing. Whatever happens, they inevitably part ways and go about their quest. Later they need a hard to find item and go shop to shop, finally hearing rumor that there is a trader in town that often has such things. They round the corner and... "hey, aren't you that guy?" How does their previous encounter affect this one?

I have a similar method to this, but I have one of my PC's (at random) create the fluff of the NPC traveler. I've found that it gives each player and DM alike an opportunity to affect the world as a whole. I find that a lot of times it helps me pin point the motivations and desired play style of my players for future reference. I also find that it takes some of the pressure to create things on the fly off myself while simultaneously giving me new and fresh ideas to parse and expand in the future.

Don't do random encounters. Do almost random encounters.

Use the encounter to show off what's up ahead. Use it to give a little insight on the area or the current objective.

Why are the adventurers travelling? What is their purpose, their end-goal? Keep alluding to that objective and make their progress clear to them. If they're tracking someone and they're on the right path, show them the hints and clues they've found! Tell them about the footprints, or the blood trail, or the kidnapped boy's missing shoe! Are they fleeing someone? Tell them about the close-calls, where they almost get found! Are they on their way to an enemy dungeon? The monsters can't spend all day in that dungeon! Have them encounter the effects that dungeon and its inhabitants have on the surrounding area! Heck, have them encounter overland stragglers from the dungeon! Are they just trying to get to the next settlement? Have them encounter people from there and further up the road travelling back! Give them gossip and news from the places they are going to! Foreshadow events which will likely unforld once they arrive! As long as your players aren't just wandering for the sake of wandering, overland travel always has a purpose. Gear their experiences toward that purpose to tell a story.

A montage of vignettes.

Campfire Talk.

Prompts.

You want to give them prompting statements. "A little ways ahead a bluff rises as the only high point in the area." as an example. You wait a second to see if anyone says anything, then move on. "You pass it by, eyes glued to its slopes and the rocks which could hide gods know what. The road takes a surprising dip into a canyon, the floor of the forest quickly rising above you as you wind your way down. The canyon turns again and again, making it impossible to see far ahead." Wait again, this is another prompt, then continue. I tend to let most of these end without encounter unless the party decides to use a prompt, like climbing the bluff. Then there'd be a small orc raiding party just off the road, drinking, and probably waiting on travelers. Now the party can get the awesome feeling that comes with being the actors on the stage, rather than the reactor. Your party, given their suspicion, should bite the bait. Then you can tie combat into that. Give some stake to their success; guards on prisoners. They might kill the prisoners if the party attacks, but the prisoners, if saved, might give valuable information.

Main point is this - don't make encounters just for the sake of encounters. Make them if you want to show to your players something about the new enviroment. How dangerous it is or on the oposite how friendly. If not - fast forward to their destination.

So the standard answer is to make it so the group doesn't have to travel across the continent. :-) There should be plenty for them to do locally. If they're needed elsewhere, their patron can arrange transportation: a carriage, a river ferry, teleportation magic, etc.

I am not really familiar with OotA, so no specifics here, but here is a quick and dirty trick to make descriptions more graphical. Search google images for something like "Dark Cave". Find pictures you like and save them, and when the time will come to describe their travel enviroment just open one on your phone or something. Don't show it to your players just describe them what you see. Also, try using different senses in your descriptions, not just sight. What are the sounds around them? Is air in the cave humid or dry? What are the smells? Or maybe even taste to the air?

First time DM, here, and I desperately need advice. When it comes to city or dungeon encounters I have set up, I have no issues and the party has had a blast, but I have issues managing travel from location to location. I've set up random encounters, and I follow the usual method for springing them, and everything goes well. The main issues is that we have had 2 sessions so far that have entirely been "on the road". In both cases the party couldn't get through suiting up, setting off, and less than 100 miles of travel between two settlements. The party likes to chat and RP, but they also like to interact with every single noncombat encounter I create [to give the world some flavor] as well. Am I giving them too much freedom? Am I letting them take control of the pacing? I don't want to just have travel montage after travel montage between locations, but the campaign seems like it has slowed to a crawl. What are some ways to correct this and/or suggestions on how to improve? - You sweet, summer child. It sounds like your players are having fun and enjoying the journey, not just the destination. I've seen posts similar to this a dozen times, but always.. always because travel isn't taking enough time. You don't have a problem, you've stumbled onto a miracle. If the party is having fun, and it sounds like they are, you've done your job. They'll get to wherever they're going eventually, and the world will feel bigger because of it.

Take notes when they RP. Create encounters based on those. It creates great in character feedback.

Basically don't describe the general situation, fixate on what's different or interesting in your descriptions and think about the character's senses. What do they smell? How does the atmosphere feel on their skin? What unusual sounds are they hearing? Focus on what changes as they travel, not what stays the same.

There's no need to be verbose. Think of these descriptions as haiku, in a way: as expressive as they are brief.

The thing about horses is that a horse can outrun a man, but a man can walk a horse to death. Over the course of a day, you travel almost the same distance in the same time - because a horse can't go fast for that long.

I started playing and DMing the game in 5th edition. It's the only D&D system I know well. I feverishly read the D&D Next rules and dove into the 5e books when they released. However, running my sessions (specifically the LMoP Starter Module), I was frustrated by one thing. My players, also new to D&D, found it hard to roleplay. I could instigate it through NPCs but, with a relatively small group of newbies, they found it hard to initiate among themselves. Not knowing that homebrew was even a thing, I set out to devise travel rules that meshed with the DMG, reinforced dynamic world-building and encouraged my players to think as their characters consistently. The result, an old-school roll-table with brief roleplay encounters; small decision-making moments on the road. "A number of colourful wagons of brightly dressed men and women greet the party cordially. The gypsies welcome the group to join them for the night. Do you camp with the gypsies or without?" All of a sudden, the PCs traded stories, expressed a deeper personality, bickered in-character over decisions. At this point I saw a post by /u/famoushippopotamus, Mirror Mirror, which proclaims that asking the players how they feel allows them to externalise all the internal roleplaying that happens naturally at the table. For players who aren't naturally storytellers, it hands them the microphone and they run with it, especially when they're invested in those characters. So, I found my next goal, I wanted a way for the players to just say what was on their mind. There had to be some days of travel where nothing of note happens. I used to use a roll-table for weather but it was pointless and meant nothing to the players. So, there's a 50% chance in my rules that "nothing" happens: I describe some weather, the change of the environment as they edge closer to their destination and then whilst they set up for camp, I tell the Barbarian that as he eases down by the warm fire with friends around him that he feels like opening up. The player takes the cue, tells his companions of his worries and strife, they return with their own. I wrap it up by describing their pondering slumber before the next day begins (and I roll on the table again). The quiet moments in the fantasy stories where the adventurers swap stories and open old wounds. It really works. Because it invests the characters in each other and reinforces teamwork.

Force the party to act. You may have seen me call this the Raymond Chandler Effect. "When I get writer's block, I have a man come through the door with a gun.", said the great man himself. Force the party to act. DM: "Suddenly the stillness is broken by the sounds of many galloping horses coming towards you." or DM: "A group of rowdy kids burst out of the shop next door, yelling and shouting and laughing and swarm all around you, asking questions, pulling on your clothes, touching your weapons, stepping on your feet, asking to be picked up, playing tag with one another, jostling you and knocking you nearly off your feet." or DM: "Suddenly the sky goes dark and the sun is in eclipse!" The party acts. You react. If they get stuck again, mired in choice or doubt, you force their hand again. Maybe its a letter. Maybe its a dog barking. Maybe its a murder. Maybe its an Illthid invasion from outer space. Maybe its a pie that's half-off today only. Keep it relevant to what they are doing at the time, if you can. If you can't. Well. The Demonic Planar Gate is always an option

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