Henry
Autoexreginated
[MENTION=158]Henry[/MENTION]
How much real world time do you want this travel to take up, a couple minutes, an hour, one session every now and then?
Also how random do you want these encounters to be? For example, would a bunch of tables called "random terrain features of the natural world" meet your needs? Or would you like something tightly crafted around the story and mythos of the Jade Regent AP?
Ideally, about 45 min to an hour per session - more than 25% and it will cut into my group's roleplay or combat time too much. It's funny, but of those three "pillars," exploration get ignored most in Paizo's APs (Kingmaker notwithstanding).
...the Marco Polo reference makes me think that the key elements are:
(1) Keeping the caravan safe
(2) Trailblazing
In other words: Marco Polo had a rough idea of where he was going, but he didn't have a precise set of travel plans.
As [MENTION=467]Reynard[/MENTION] says, Jade Regent is more linear than that, but my purpose is to figure out what kinds of tricks I can use to invoke the feel of "hexcrawl" and "figure out the best path. I like your suggestions on it, as well as the skill challenge suggestions -- my clip-card idea feels a little too gimmicky for it.
Simple answer: Pre-roll/Pre-determine a lot of stuff--as much stuff as you can.
This way, you're exactly prepared for the upcoming scenario, and it moves smooth as glass.
I think the best way may be to bust out big maps of the area, have a lot of canned description waiting based on terrain, and a couple of either non-combat or "combat-esque" two or three roll encounters like what [MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION] said.
And before I forget, big thanks to all the suggestions so far. The more idea-tossing, the better it coalesces in my head what I want to do.
EDIT: And for anyone interested, I was just reminded of a thread I saw last year about this -- I even commented on it! -- on Paizo's site:
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboard...r/adventurePath/jadeRegent/extraCaravanEvents
As an idea of a way to inject some of this -- though they're more specific to the caravan, than the environment.
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