Adventures while travelling

Can anyone suggest ways to make an adventure which takes place over multiple days of travelling, rather than simply exposing the players to various episodic situations they encounter over the course of their journey?

I suppose two options are (a) have the party be joined by NPCs (in a caravan, on a ship, etc) who are the adventure element or who will draw it to the players, or (b) determine that the party's travel path will take them close to Evil Site X (Ye Stereotypical Orcish Caves) and build up to that as the players get closer (with orc scouts and raiding parties).

Thoughts?

PCs are pursued or pursuing.

PCs travel through a large region ravaged by war, plague, etc.

Intrigue, thievery, murder within the caravan.

hmm...

You might find some inspiration in this list of RPG Plots.

I know I saw a large thread on this same idea quite recently. You might want to search the archives for "Travel". As far as stretching something out over several days, they could meet a band of brigands early who run away quickly after the battle seems to be going poorly, but who then gather help and track/stalk the PC's for a couple of days. If they are with a wagon train or caravan, do hit and run missions from the brigands. Kill a guard here, kill a guard there, until the owners of the wagon caravan are begging the mighty heros to do something. Maybe have the bandits make off with one wagon tht contains something extra special i.e the child of the merchant in charge, a very special item/gift for a noble/wedding/sacrifice that the merchant must have back. PC's find the wagon with some bandits, but the rest have already left witht he desired item. This could easily run for several days. Clever planning will still move the characters in the travel direction they desire to go (roughly) so they won't be tempted to give it a miss.

Pushing them for time with lots of natural obstacles (cliffs, raging rivers, dense forest/jungles etc) will make all the natural obstacles seem to be real challenges - they can't afford to take the laong way round now can they... they might have dead body with them or something that needs to be brought to the temple for a raise dead spell... but it's too far away or something.

Rav

theres a great PDF download of different adventure ideas. its for harn, but its just little plot ideas no stats... its really good...

its on the sword and sorcery site... which i cant find the link for right now...

The plot of the film Predator would make an excellent travelling adventure. The party has to make a journey through a deep wilderness, where all of the terrain is a challenge (as per a previous poster's comment) then add in a single assassin/monster, using hit-and-run tactics to attack the players and/or steal their equipment.