D&D 5E how to run long distance travelling without it sucking
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
On the rare times that I actually play it out rather than do a collaborative scene-building montage, I set some stakes for the travel and then present encounters that challenge the players to achieve victory. Such stakes might be getting from point A to point B before a certain time, finding something hidden on the way to point B, avoiding detection while traveling, gathering important reconnaissance, etc.
So, for example, if the characters are trying to get from Sleepy Hamlet to Big City before the doppelganger is crowned king, I'm going to present challenges along the way that slow them down. These might be wandering monsters, natural hazards, or the like. If they are slowed down three times (say), then they fail to get to Big City before the doppelganger is crowned and must now deal with the aftermath. (Or they get there on time, but suffer a cost or additional complication.)
The key, in my view, are the stakes. If travel is just a matter of going from Point A to Point B with some throwaway encounters thrown in, I'm going to prefer to skip it and describe a montage. If, however, the PCs have something to win or lose other than the odd wilderness encounter here and there, I'll make it a tough challenge that the players will feel good about winning, where success and failure are both interesting, and that affects the direction of the unfolding story in a significant way.
I tend to not do many combat encounters while traveling, if the encounter doesn't move the story forward or add any new interesting twists/information they just serve as speed bumps. While traveling they know at most they will more than likely only have one or possible two encounters in a day, so there is no conservation of resources and that by itself tends to make the combats trivial.
Now you can make the combat encounters have a goal besides defeating the enemy, like saving goods on a wagon that a group of goblins have set on fire that are important to the survival of a town, or the fight is a diversion so some of the enemy can take something from the party, then it becomes about stopping that or catching the thief more than just killing some guys.
Noncombat traveling encounters can also be fun, meet new npc's like merchants, wise men, pilgrims, other adventuring parties and how these groups are treated will come back down the line and effect the story.
You can also do heroic things like help a farmer put out a house fire, or help a dryad catch some mischievous pixie kids who got away from her care, fun stuff that heroes do besides reducing someone else's hit points.
Besides general encounter building advice like using a mix of monsters, special terrain features, and alternate win conditions I am not sure what else to say.
Now you can make the combat encounters have a goal besides defeating the enemy, like saving goods on a wagon that a group of goblins have set on fire that are important to the survival of a town, or the fight is a diversion so some of the enemy can take something from the party, then it becomes about stopping that or catching the thief more than just killing some guys.
Noncombat traveling encounters can also be fun, meet new npc's like merchants, wise men, pilgrims, other adventuring parties and how these groups are treated will come back down the line and effect the story.
You can also do heroic things like help a farmer put out a house fire, or help a dryad catch some mischievous pixie kids who got away from her care, fun stuff that heroes do besides reducing someone else's hit points.
Besides general encounter building advice like using a mix of monsters, special terrain features, and alternate win conditions I am not sure what else to say.
S
Sunseeker
Guest
IMO, it's mostly RP with a little side of dice.
Here's what I do:
You need a general idea of how long the travel takes and if someone is guiding the party. From there on I simply make a "danger roll" against the player's checks to lead them from point A to point B per day. Traveling on a road reduces the danger and makes checks easier. Cutting a path through a haunted wood that hasn't been traversed in a 100 years if of course, more dangerous.
There is a problem I've run into: Rangers. Specifically that their favored terrain ability says "you can't get lost". Which makes for a very lame walk through the dangerous woods unless you do the following, which is what I did to my rangers(there were 3 at my table!): 1: the terrain is magical, by the book this overrules the "you can't get lost" feature. 2: the ranger is an idiot; by that I mean that I make them make a survival/nature check to determine if they are making progress towards their destination, or not. 3: The party takes over; this is easy: offer something to cause the party to disagree on what direction to take. The ranger might get outvoted and off into the woods they will go!
Here's what I do:
You need a general idea of how long the travel takes and if someone is guiding the party. From there on I simply make a "danger roll" against the player's checks to lead them from point A to point B per day. Traveling on a road reduces the danger and makes checks easier. Cutting a path through a haunted wood that hasn't been traversed in a 100 years if of course, more dangerous.
There is a problem I've run into: Rangers. Specifically that their favored terrain ability says "you can't get lost". Which makes for a very lame walk through the dangerous woods unless you do the following, which is what I did to my rangers(there were 3 at my table!): 1: the terrain is magical, by the book this overrules the "you can't get lost" feature. 2: the ranger is an idiot; by that I mean that I make them make a survival/nature check to determine if they are making progress towards their destination, or not. 3: The party takes over; this is easy: offer something to cause the party to disagree on what direction to take. The ranger might get outvoted and off into the woods they will go!
Zak S
Guest
From here:
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co...-how-hell-do-you-run.html?zx=fa2a057717b2454d
This is specifically about moving over areas with hexes ("hexcrawls") but the principles can be applied to lots of games:
-The players will be either traveling overland from point to point (moving at traveling speed) and just running into stuff incidentally or carefully searching through each hex individually (moving at "mapping" or "searching" speed--which is slower). Which depends on the kind of campaign goals they have. Frodo and company were traveling, Lewis and Clark were searching.
-Searching characters are trying to find all the interesting stuff in an area. Traveling characters will only note the obvious stuff (mountains, huge rivers) or things that find them (angry cultists, stirges, etc)
-The key to this kind of thing is meaningful choices and choices require information. There are two traditional ways hexcrawling players can get information: A. They start with a partial map B. They look around.
-In either case, these two options should be jiggered as much as possible to present players with at least two options for how to go at all times. For traveling, the simplest choice is: Fast, dangerous route or slow, easier route. Of course the slow route is also dangerous because it gives more time to run into random encounters.
-If the players just look around (no map), they will see landmarks. Landmarks are super important. These are things PCs can see in different directions that indicate what kinda thing to expect in that direction--mountain? City? Monument? River? Without landmarks the players are just going "Hmm, east or west?" and that's totally arbitrary and boring because there's no information behind it.
-You can see 3 miles to the horizon over flat ground. If you or the landmark are higher up than flat ground and your view is unobstructed you'll see things that are farther away.
-Players walk (or ride) and you keep track of time (figure out movement speeds per hour and per day for whatever method the PCs are using). When you get to a new area figure out what's obvious and (if your players are searching) what's hidden. Tell them about the obvious thing right off "So you ride for an hour and then you see a huge rock shaped like a weasel".
-If there's an encounter, figure out whether the thing sees them or they see it first or whether they see each other simultaneously (just like a dungeon). Remember that since most hex products or maps you make are, of necessity, sketchy, you can and should embroider the hell out of what the PCs see. You do not have to stick to the description. "1047 River, Demon" can be turned into..."You see a bridge with an insect demon eating a giant pink ooze on it, there appears to be no other crossing here".
-Build up the setting around the players as they move. They meet a random cleric? If you can figure out who this is a cleric of and where the cleric's going and what temple the cleric is from you've just added lots of obstacles and resources for the players and added a layer to what's going on.
-At the end of a session, ask the players what they intend to do next session. You can prep more detail around their likely routes. The key to making a hexcrawl more than a bunch of random encounters is building relationships between locations on the map--a good hex map will have these seeded in to begin with, but there's always room for more.
-If your players are searching, remember there's lots of room in a hex for stuff no matter how small. Don't have any ideas? That's what random tables are for.
-A lotta times, if they're just traveling, the PCs will come upon nothing special in a given hex, that's ok.
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.co...-how-hell-do-you-run.html?zx=fa2a057717b2454d
This is specifically about moving over areas with hexes ("hexcrawls") but the principles can be applied to lots of games:
-The players will be either traveling overland from point to point (moving at traveling speed) and just running into stuff incidentally or carefully searching through each hex individually (moving at "mapping" or "searching" speed--which is slower). Which depends on the kind of campaign goals they have. Frodo and company were traveling, Lewis and Clark were searching.
-Searching characters are trying to find all the interesting stuff in an area. Traveling characters will only note the obvious stuff (mountains, huge rivers) or things that find them (angry cultists, stirges, etc)
-The key to this kind of thing is meaningful choices and choices require information. There are two traditional ways hexcrawling players can get information: A. They start with a partial map B. They look around.
-In either case, these two options should be jiggered as much as possible to present players with at least two options for how to go at all times. For traveling, the simplest choice is: Fast, dangerous route or slow, easier route. Of course the slow route is also dangerous because it gives more time to run into random encounters.
-If the players just look around (no map), they will see landmarks. Landmarks are super important. These are things PCs can see in different directions that indicate what kinda thing to expect in that direction--mountain? City? Monument? River? Without landmarks the players are just going "Hmm, east or west?" and that's totally arbitrary and boring because there's no information behind it.
-You can see 3 miles to the horizon over flat ground. If you or the landmark are higher up than flat ground and your view is unobstructed you'll see things that are farther away.
-Players walk (or ride) and you keep track of time (figure out movement speeds per hour and per day for whatever method the PCs are using). When you get to a new area figure out what's obvious and (if your players are searching) what's hidden. Tell them about the obvious thing right off "So you ride for an hour and then you see a huge rock shaped like a weasel".
-If there's an encounter, figure out whether the thing sees them or they see it first or whether they see each other simultaneously (just like a dungeon). Remember that since most hex products or maps you make are, of necessity, sketchy, you can and should embroider the hell out of what the PCs see. You do not have to stick to the description. "1047 River, Demon" can be turned into..."You see a bridge with an insect demon eating a giant pink ooze on it, there appears to be no other crossing here".
-Build up the setting around the players as they move. They meet a random cleric? If you can figure out who this is a cleric of and where the cleric's going and what temple the cleric is from you've just added lots of obstacles and resources for the players and added a layer to what's going on.
-At the end of a session, ask the players what they intend to do next session. You can prep more detail around their likely routes. The key to making a hexcrawl more than a bunch of random encounters is building relationships between locations on the map--a good hex map will have these seeded in to begin with, but there's always room for more.
-If your players are searching, remember there's lots of room in a hex for stuff no matter how small. Don't have any ideas? That's what random tables are for.
-A lotta times, if they're just traveling, the PCs will come upon nothing special in a given hex, that's ok.
Manbearcat
Legend
Some good ideas here. I think this may be an area where leveraging Group Check mechanics is a good idea:
a) Pick some standard roles that would apply to such a travel. Dungeon World uses Quartermaster, Scout, Trailblazer. Those are quite good I find. Perhaps if more than one person is managing provisions, navigation, or recon, you could have the highest person roll with advantage.
b) Pick relevant DCs for the group to roll against.
c) If 50 % or more pass, they arrive and expend the normal amount of expected provisions, etc (that might be just ticking off some gold from each player's stash).
or
d) If 50 % fail, an interesting, dangerous setback occurs along the way. This could be:
* a geographical hazard
* an encounter with relevant monsters or a lair creature
* the PCs getting separated
* the PCs getting lost
* weather or climate related exposure
* you might take this opportunity to introduce an ominous new threat or escalate an existing one
Regarding tangible fallout on the PCs mechanically, this would be a good area to introduce the Exhaustion Track and/or charge them n number of Hit Dice apiece. Then they would have to roll their Group Check again to get to their destination (or incur more complications if they fail again!).
You may want to impose the condition of no Long Rests until they reach civilization or make them earn a Long Rest mechanically.
a) Pick some standard roles that would apply to such a travel. Dungeon World uses Quartermaster, Scout, Trailblazer. Those are quite good I find. Perhaps if more than one person is managing provisions, navigation, or recon, you could have the highest person roll with advantage.
b) Pick relevant DCs for the group to roll against.
c) If 50 % or more pass, they arrive and expend the normal amount of expected provisions, etc (that might be just ticking off some gold from each player's stash).
or
d) If 50 % fail, an interesting, dangerous setback occurs along the way. This could be:
* a geographical hazard
* an encounter with relevant monsters or a lair creature
* the PCs getting separated
* the PCs getting lost
* weather or climate related exposure
* you might take this opportunity to introduce an ominous new threat or escalate an existing one
Regarding tangible fallout on the PCs mechanically, this would be a good area to introduce the Exhaustion Track and/or charge them n number of Hit Dice apiece. Then they would have to roll their Group Check again to get to their destination (or incur more complications if they fail again!).
You may want to impose the condition of no Long Rests until they reach civilization or make them earn a Long Rest mechanically.
Zak S
Guest
The only thing I'd add is to put in some elements of choice about route or method that has mechanical consequence. If it's just Roll On Somebody's Skill then I think it can get monotonous faster. Not immediately, but faster.
Good choices are like:
This route has worse weather and sheer drops.
This route has more creature encounters.
etc.
Nebulous
Legend
Very good ideas. My last random encounter with a hostile manticore, while logical, was a boring speed bump the dice decided. But neither do I want dangerous overland routes threat free. It's a fine line to balance and I don't want to spend time dev3loping campaign appropriate random encounters. I have the Toolbox DM book and should use it more for elaborate encounters. But it's fun rolling encounter dice. There's tension. The players know some4hing really nasty might pop up.
I would say it boils down to a) knowing why you are bothering to run travel at all instead of just cutting to arrival at the destination and b) your players being on board with that.
Personally, I don't have any hard and fast ideas - certainly not for your group, although I know what I do with mine - offer new opportunities and dangers, introduce NPCs, try and evoke a sense of wonder and curiosity about the game world.
There's a Middle Earth-based game called The One Ring. I don't own it, but I']ve heard that travel - like in Tolkien - plays a big part in the game, both mechanically and descriptively to bring Middle Earth to life. Might be worth checking out, or maybe someone who has it will chime into this thread.
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