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

[Fralex]

Thinking about how video games make travel more interesting and encourage you to explore...

Maybe the trick is to not make everything accessible at once. Make there be tantalizing hooks the players just can't access right now, maybe they need to come back after finding a key piece of information in the main dungeon (or a literal key) or will work out that it will only be accessible at a certain point in time. Sprinkle the environment with little mysteries the players aren't meant to figure out right then and there (unless they're really clever). Just like how dungeons have hidden treasures the players may not find, make checking out curious things off the beaten path rewarding in some way (not necessarily magic items or even physical treasure at all, maybe they discover something that gives them hope or warns them things will get really bad, maybe they meet an ally, maybe they find a sanctuary they can hide in later). Give them a reason to remember things about their journey for the way back, or even a reason to come back just out of curiosity.

 

[Wik]

I second the suggestion to make game travel similar to hiking. It's a wonderful piece of advice. A few things I do:

1. Keep track of the day, day of the week, and the phase of the moon(s). This is a wonderful piece of information to have, especially when describing night encounters.

2. Randomly determine weather. I don't do anything too specific - I roll a d8 for cloud cover (with 8 being a lot, 1 being none), a d8 for wind, a d8 for precipitation, and a d8 for temperature. It's kind of ad hoc, but who cares?

3. Understand what night's like outside, WITHOUT city lights. It can be dark... but it can also be amazingly bright. Recently, as in, a week ago, I was on a boat on the water of the west coast of vancouver island at midnight. There were no lights, but with the moon and the stars reflecting off the water, and the huge amount of fog further reflecting light... I had no problem seeing. I might've even been able to read!

4. Spice the place up with random people you meet, descriptions of ruins, and basic animal features. WHen doing this, though, be quick about it -detail the piece, pause for a second, and if the plaeyrs don't have further questions, move right along.

5. Advance your game plot in the travel. If dragons are attacking the world, have a burnt-out village, or find fleeing refugees. Lots of slavers? A city militia are patrolling nearby, and stop to ask the PCs a few questions...

 

[thalmin]

I agree with only part of what you said

If you want your players to explore the setting, there needs to be something to explore.

So far, I fully agree.

There needs to be risks and rewards for the players' actions.

Not necessarily. Good story elements, either plot related or just some flavor, can also be worthwhile.

No one cares about what the scenery looks like.

I strongly disagree with the part I put in bold. Some of us certainly do like some, or even a lot of, flavor added to the descriptions.

If it doesn't affect the game, it's a waste of time.

What is a waste of time for YOU may be what makes a game worthwhile for ME.
YMMV. But please don't speak in such absolutes.

 

[Morrus]

I have my own system. It involves characters making skill checks for the roles of hunter, guide, and lookout, with journeys of more than a week also requiring a healer and someone pep-talking the march along. They take a -2 penalty for each day, so the longer the journey the harder the check. Journeys can be broken up to make them easier - that requires a full night at an inn or similar location. The checks are made based on terrain, and successes and failures are counted. If the total is positive, they arrive as planned; if negative then they arrive in a sub-optimal condition.

That's the short version, anyhow. Obviously terrain speeds determine how many days a journey or a segment of a journey take.

 

[thalmin]

I second the suggestion to make game travel similar to hiking. It's a wonderful piece of advice. A few things I do:

1. Keep track of the day, day of the week, and the phase of the moon(s). This is a wonderful piece of information to have, especially when describing night encounters.

2. Randomly determine weather. I don't do anything too specific - I roll a d8 for cloud cover (with 8 being a lot, 1 being none), a d8 for wind, a d8 for precipitation, and a d8 for temperature. It's kind of ad hoc, but who cares?

3. Understand what night's like outside, WITHOUT city lights. It can be dark... but it can also be amazingly bright. Recently, as in, a week ago, I was on a boat on the water of the west coast of vancouver island at midnight. There were no lights, but with the moon and the stars reflecting off the water, and the huge amount of fog further reflecting light... I had no problem seeing. I might've even been able to read!

4. Spice the place up with random people you meet, descriptions of ruins, and basic animal features. WHen doing this, though, be quick about it -detail the piece, pause for a second, and if the plaeyrs don't have further questions, move right along.

5. Advance your game plot in the travel. If dragons are attacking the world, have a burnt-out village, or find fleeing refugees. Lots of slavers? A city militia are patrolling nearby, and stop to ask the PCs a few questions...

Lots of good stuff here.
As to weather, I have picked up a couple of back issues of The Old Farmer's Almanac and choose a part of the country with similar terrain and weather patterns. Then I look at the date in my game and look up the Almanac forecast.

As for how dark or bright it is at night, most people who live in cities have have no idea. I worked for a lot of years at a summer camp in central Wisconsin, many miles from city lights and air polution. On some clear nights with a full moon, I could read a newspaper without any other light. But on an overcast night when under full tree cover I literally could not see my hand in front of my face. I have also slept in an underground cave. Total blindness there. But someone struck a match about 50 feet away, what a difference!

 

[Connorsrpg]

Well, Exploration is often one of our favourite parts of the game. I have a lot of ideas very similar to [MENTION=40177]Wik[/MENTION].

I always have a calendar to which I add phases of the moon, weather, and set encounters.

Funnily, after developing and using MANY different weather systems and tables, I use the the same idea as [MENTION=40177]Wik[/MENTION], though I use a d10 for wind, temperature, cloud cover and precipitation. Obviously I have a starting point for each depending upon the time of year, season, climate etc. I also have a 50% that each is the same as the day before.

I always detail the journey. One of our best campaigns ever involved chasing the antagonist through a whole kingdom into the wilderness. The whole campaign was based upon small set encounters that I determined randomly and then detailed before the game - many of them had hints and clues related to the 'chase', many did not.

We are currently playing the Rise of the Runelords AP and the trip from Magnimar to Turtleback Ferry is barely mentioned. Well, in our campaign sailing the Yondabakari River alongside the Mushfens for its entire length has been anything but a boring journey.

I always try to create a living breathing world.

My first step is to detail each region/realm the party will travel through. I do this using my extensive Realms Creation Sheets. You can find them here: http://connorscampaigns.wikidot.com/gm-tools (at the bottom of page under 'Files'. They are word docs so feel free to modify. A friend has also put up an Excel version too).

From there I develop some set encounters using my Encounter Charts (also on the above link, split into Creatures, Events and Places) and the ones from the actual Realm Sheet. Rumours and recent events help.

With a few random rolls and each area having its own personality, you can make wilderness travel one of the best parts of the game. I even asked my players whether they wanted to gloss over the long journeys required in the RotR AP, and to a player they said, "No", b/c we have had so much fun with this in the past.

I also like the new ideas/rules in 5E, especially determining what pace the PCs wish to travel at and what they wish to achieve whilst traveling.

Sorry for long post - but this topic has come up before and it really makes our games.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Oh, and we also use a combination of the Renown from 5E DMG and the Relationship die mechanic from 13th Age. (Each 'level' of renown gets you another dice). That is a GREAT way to bring in PCs backgrounds and connections. I include connections to communities they have interacted with too if they are near them.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Thanks for all the replies. I am now thoroughly inspired to start creating more colourful descriptions of things discovered while travelling. Some of the posts above reminded me of my days in boy scouts going camping and taking delight in finding interesting places.

As for mechanics wise, I flipped through my DMG a bit and remembered that there are rules for navigating, foraging and tracking in there. I'll start with those rules and tweak them after a couple of sessions to suit my table. There's also some nice inspiration for discoveries for the players. Though I did find the provided random weather table to be a bit dull.

 

[S_Dalsgaard]

For weather I use this website - http://www.wunderground.com/history/ (I chose that one primarily because it has the temperature in centigrade, and while I have no problems with feet-to-meters, I can't do fahrenheit-to-celsius on the fly).

It has info on what the weather was like at different airports around the US at a given date within the last several years. My current campaign has the 2014 weather of Pierre, South Dakota.

I am about to send my PCs out on what could be considered a very small hexcrawl. They need to find a kobold lair somewhere within a 25 by 25 mile area of hilly terrain. I haven't really done anything like this before, so this discussion (and the ideas it fosters) are very much appreciated

 

[LostSoul]

Interesting choices can liven up wilderness travelling.

I think the first step is to make a well-designed map. You can think of a wilderness map like a dungeon map - they should have the same features: choke points, traps and ambushes, secret paths, and weird features (tricks) to interact with. In a dungeon you wouldn't put the object of the PC's goal (captives, treasure, the NPC to kill) at the end of a featureless corridor. Keep that in mind for wilderness exploration as well.

A simple example: The PCs want to get to the adventure site. They can take the direct route but it's through a mountain pass and they run the risk of natural hazards (difficult to climb peaks, avalanche or landslides, hidden chasms) and/or monster ambush. They can take a circuitous route around the mountains but it takes longer and wandering monsters may cause attrition. They can head through a haunted forest but no one who enters comes out the same. Then there's rumour of a secret pass or tunnel through the mountains but it's guarded by a powerful monster/NPC who demands a heavy toll (not just GP!) for those who travel through; or it's hard to find and that area is plagued by monsters.

Along the way the PCs will encounter things that give them more information about wherever they are going. A burnt-out farmstead. A deer dropped from a great height. Features that link to the danger of the world.

These monsters and NPCs should not be static; they should respond to the PC's choices. If the PCs take the mountain pass and dust it up with bandits, the pass opens up and some nice supplies are available for purchase in town. If they take another route, the town might be under duress from a lack of supplies. That way the choices the players make have some setting consequences and you're not creating content that won't be seen.