D&D 5E How do you handle travelling and navigation?

[MonkeezOnFire]

So one thing I've noticed as both player and DM is that the way we've been handling travelling is fairly dull. Sure, the odd roadside encounter occurs, but generally travel sections of the adventure are not as engaging as other parts. From the few roleplaying sessions I've watched online a common strategy is to accept that travel is not as interesting as the dungeon and to just fast forward to the good parts. That's a perfectly valid choice in handling the situation, but I want to engage more with the exploration pillar of the game, including exploration of the setting outside of the dungeons and towns. This desire largely stems from reading the excellent series of articles about the West Marches game where players explored large swathes of wilderness to find dungeons and riches.

So how do you handle the PCs travelling the uninhabited wilderness? Do you account for the possibilities of the PCs getting lost or do you assume they are capable enough of getting to their destination? And to make this related to 5e: what mechanics (if any) do you use when PCs travel?

 

[iserith]

So one thing I've noticed as both player and DM is that the way we've been handling travelling is fairly dull. Sure, the odd roadside encounter occurs, but generally travel sections of the adventure are not as engaging as other parts. From the few roleplaying sessions I've watched online a common strategy is to accept that travel is not as interesting as the dungeon and to just fast forward to the good parts. That's a perfectly valid choice in handling the situation, but I want to engage more with the exploration pillar of the game, including exploration of the setting outside of the dungeons and towns. This desire largely stems from reading the excellent series of articles about the West Marches game where players explored large swathes of wilderness to find dungeons and riches.

So how do you handle the PCs travelling the uninhabited wilderness? Do you account for the possibilities of the PCs getting lost or do you assume they are capable enough of getting to their destination? And to make this related to 5e: what mechanics (if any) do you use when PCs travel?

Your players are going to have to want to engage more with the exploration pillar of the game as well. So the first step is talking about it and coming up with ideas about what exactly it is you're exploring together, how that's going to look in play, and what rules and procedures will help you achieve those goals. Once you have come to an agreement with your players and have hashed out how the game will run, then it's just a matter of rewarding the behaviors you want to see (read: exploring!) with XP, treasure, and Inspiration.

The classic exploration game is the hexcrawl and West Marches could probably be qualified as such. The basic idea is the players travelling from hex to hex, tossing the place for anything of note, then moving on. Dealing with challenges related to terrain and logistics, running afoul of wandering monsters or monster lairs, and discovering points of interest (adventure locations) are the order of the day. In many such games, the primary goal of the characters, at least for a time, is to see what's out there and make a name for themselves. There may or may not be metaplots in which the PCs can get embroiled.

I have seen some popular blogs discuss the subject of hexcrawls recently and I have to say I haven't seen anything worth using - mostly just endless rolling on charts, granular subsystems, and keeping track of the results in tables or the like which I find to be a boring procedure indeed. I've also watched some "West Marches" actual play that just isn't my cup of tea. So I can't recommend any of these are being a source of inspiration for your own campaign.

If you're really just looking to spice up travel from point A to point B in a non-hexcrawl type game, then I'd recommend setting countdowns and deadlines for the PCs (e.g. "Get the antidote to Fort Castle before they all turn into zombies!") and then throwing challenges at them that make it difficult to achieve those deadlines. On top of that, make exploring worth it by rewarding it with XP, treasure, and Inspiration. It's an interesting choice to be operating under a deadline to get to Point B but also have a fleeting opportunity to sidetrack and get a magic sword or the like. Can we get the sword and get to Point B on time? Hmm...

 

[AriochQ]

We lay out the basics, travel times, marching order, and watches, then we fast forward through the boring parts.

If I were to run something using an 'exploration' mechanic, I would probably set some goal and the exploration would involved gathing clues or making incremental progress toward that goal. It would also probably include having the players fill in some sort of map as they went along. Coloring is fun.

Exploring just for the sake of exploring would be repetative and boring imho.

 

[vandaexpress]

If you're really just looking to spice up travel from point A to point B in a non-hexcrawl type game, then I'd recommend setting countdowns and deadlines for the PCs (e.g. "Get the antidote to Fort Castle before they all turn into zombies!") and then throwing challenges at them that make it difficult to achieve those deadlines. On top of that, make exploring worth it by rewarding it with XP, treasure, and Inspiration. It's an interesting choice to be operating under a deadline to get to Point B but also have a fleeting opportunity to sidetrack and get a magic sword or the like. Can we get the sword and get to Point B on time? Hmm...

You can even do this in a hexcrawl game as well. I've hexed out a map of Icewind Dale that my group will be running through in a few weeks. What I'm doing isn't necessarily focusing too much on exploration so much as keeping track of the passage of time. Different things occur at different times, like a major villain leaves the area on day 5. On Day 6, this town gets attacked by the barbarian hoard. On Day 7, this hostage gets executed, etc. Once the PCs understand that time matters, things like Random Encounters become less about grinding and more about strategic trade-offs, e.g. we just got beat up by a bunch of ice trolls pretty badly, should we take a long rest and risk missing out on xyz or do we press forward.

Hexcrawl exploration can be interesting with the right group of people, but as my campaign is a bit more story-driven, it becomes more useful to use hexes and travel times to foster urgency and drive home the point that events are happening in this world, regardless of whether the PCs are there or not.

 

[Fion]

I tend to run travel sequences as a montage. Ask the players what they are up to on each day of the journey. Then I'll sprinkle in potential events. Examples might be Hunting and scavenging for food, road-side brigands, traveling merchants. Then I sprinkle in some explorable locals along the way. Maybe an old crumbling temple, or a spooky forest area, a cave to explore, etc. These are 3-5 room/event 'dungeons' that are meant to be short but interesting with their own little story to unfold. For each adventure I write, I typically do five of these, which is usually more than enough. Any unused obvious get brought into the next.

I don't always do this however. If it's a road well traveled, or something simple like 'lets go back to Baldur's Gate and sell these art pieces', I tend to just skip to the end on those. But any road they haven't been on, or forest path, etc.. I tend to do the above. My players aren't always in the mood to explore, sometimes they just want to get from A to B, but if they are in the mood.. they'll find plenty to explore.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I like to be pretty strict about rolling for random events/encounters. It drives home the feel of being in a living, unpredictable world. The players will know they can't just assume the DM will skip wilderness encounters if they aren't relevant to a particular adventure/story/plot. The wilderness is dangerous, and such must be accounted for.

That said, if I know where the characters are heading, and about how long it will take them to get there, and there aren't any particular areas of interest on their likely route, I may just make all the random rolls ahead of time. Then I can narrate the elements that don't require their attention.

"You travel for three days across the rolling and occasionally wooded hills. The weather is fair at first, turning a bit brisk and cloudy by the third day. You see an occasional bear in the distance, but no threats to speak of, until the evening of the third day..."

I guess whether or not that is dull, IMO, depends somewhat on whether it is a DM's arbitrary attempt to insert some flavor, or whether I know it actually represents that living unpredictable world I spoke of (as represented by behind the scenes random rolls).

I do make exceptions when I running certain adventures that are intended to be highly story-based, and often on a certain (real-world) timeline. For instance, in my current adventure the players play kings of the giants (using my partially complete 3e-inspired ECL rules). Two of them have control weather as an innate spell, and the only threats they are likely to face while traveling are dragon scouts (they are at war with the dragons). I therefore, only make random rolls to determine whether they see any dragon scouts as they travel, and the times at which I make such rolls are story-event based, rather than in-game time (day, etc) based.

(As a final aside--random encounters don't have to be dull or meaningless. Sometimes they can lead to recurring characters--like the ghoul lord random encounter our DM rolled up in a Ravenloft campaign. It got away and became a recurring scourge trying to slay us at later points in the campaign. It's still out there somewhere...which is scary.)

 

[Greg Benage]

First, go outside. Like, take a hike.

The biggest problem I've found with most guidelines for wilderness travel is that the authors evidently never did this, or if they did, they probably didn't enjoy it much, because they leave out all the good stuff. Some people in the real world enjoy hiking, and yet there are precious few wandering monsters or crumbling ruins in the real world. Why is that?

It's because there's lots of other interesting stuff in the real world, and this stuff usually gets left out in favor of the wilderness travel checklist: terrain type, weather, random encounter, camp. Every day the characters are exploring/traveling, they should encounter cool stuff (in addition to the terrain, weather, wandering monster and possible adventure location). It can be totally mundane, but it will bring the wilderness setting alive and you might be surprised what the players do with it.

* A narrow game trail leading off into the woods
* A family of otters playing in a stream or waterhole
* A huge fallen tree (or dead treant!)
* Rare flora -- maybe a blossom is worth some money, or maybe the herbalist can do something with it
* An unusual terrain feature that can be used as a landmark (any petroglyphs or other markings?)
* A natural hazard, such as a steep ravine or quicksand
* Animal bones or fossils
* Ruins that AREN'T adventure locations. There's a crumbling tower, and some signs that an animal of some kind used to lair there, but it was some time ago. Now it's deserted and quiet...

Sprinkle LOTS of this stuff in and your travel/exploration will be much more engaging than the usual "You travel half a day through light woods, and...rattle, rattle...nothing happens. Stop for lunch?"

 

[AriochQ]

While I agree that travel CAN be fun and interesting, feeling the need to describe everything in great detail messes with the pacing of the game. It is really situation dependent.

For example, the characters are in the middle of a dungeon delve and need to return to a local town for some reason. If I want to send a message that the wilderness is a dangerous place and perhaps discourage frequent trips, I will roll random encounters (or just stick an encounter in). If I would rather get the town trip out of the way so they can continue with the delve, it will be the old "After an uneventful journey, you arrive in town".

I tend to view an adventure as a book, or a movie. When a character in a movie goes to sleep, do they focus the camera on him for 8 hours in case something happens while he is sleeping? Of course not. You see the things that are relevent to the story. I run my adventures the same way. Sometimes travel is relevent to the story, sometimes it is not. Keep in mind, that D&D is a co-creation of reality and sometimes the relevence of travel is player driven, rather than coming from me.

 

[Sunseeker]

The players have a general sense of direction, but must roll a survival check every day to keep from getting lost.

I also nerf effects that give players guaranteed results, such as "you always know which way is north". Well if you always know which way is north, you'll never get lost. But you don't have a compass in your brain. So you generally know which way is north, or at least know how to determine which way is north.

Nothing is 100% known in my games. Completely sucks the chance and mystery out of things.

 

[GX.Sigma]

If you want your players to explore the setting, there needs to be something to explore. There needs to be risks and rewards for the players' actions. No one cares about what the scenery looks like. If it doesn't affect the game, it's a waste of time.

At minimum, you need:
A reason for PCs to wander around (like, there's treasure-as-XP hidden everywhere)
Good things and bad things that happen as a result of the PCs' navigational choices (like, this hex is full of fire elementals that are 5 levels above the party, this one has lethal radiation, this one is all commoners with lots of gold and no means of defending themselves).