Micah Sweet
Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
He said that he's tried and failed to make travel interesting for them. To me that implies that he put interesting things in their path and they didn't care.
D&D General Is power creep bad?
Why would they be passive?
doctorbadwolf
Heretic of The Seventh Circle
I've never seen a player bored by teleportation.
But also, boredom and fun are a great example of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. That is, boredom may seem to contradict fun, but in fact you can great much greater satisfaction by letter boredom temper your fun.
Zubatcarteira
Now you're infected by the Musical Doodle
There's also Transport via Plants and Word of Recall at 6th level.
It's not entirely that didn't care, but they only care about the explicitly interesting things. And I really can only come up with so many of those. Like if I say:
The road has become less of a road and more of a bumpy old ox cart for several miles now as you wind your way through the hilly grasslands beyond the Westwood. Most of this area is still unexplored, after the Dragonwars, when the forces of the Forestmaster, the ancient Green Dragon of the South faced off against men and Fey. The occasional subsistence farmer or small village is all you can expect from here on out, as there are many strange creatures in this region.
(Players start looking antsy)
As you round the bend, you see, on the top of a hill, a dolmen- a circle of ancient standing stones. The true purposes of such monuments is unclear, but Druids often claim them, saying that they tap into powerful energies that flow through the earth, water, and sky, called lee or ley lines.
(Player perks up): Oh yeah? I climb up to get a closer look.
As you crest the hill, you see there are many bones, mostly animal, but some human, strewn about the area. The central, or "altar" stone of the dolmen is cracked, as if hit by immense force. You are struck by a sense of evil...
(Players poke around, skeletons animate, fight occurs.)
(Player): Well that was weird. I wonder what the deal was.
(Other players): No treasure, what a waste of time.
(Me): Perhaps you should ask the locals, or a scholar in the next major city you encounter.
(Players): Eh. Ok, we keep traveling.
A month later, they're talking to an NPC and he describes some ancient ruins he's been looking into, as well as legends of a "Dead Man's Hill" a monument site somewhere.
(Players): .....
(Me): Really? You don't remember anything like this?"
(Player): "Oh yeah, we did fight some skeletons. Yeah Mr. NPC guy, we saw it, it's off this way. Oh go back? Well, we're kind of in the middle of this thing, and it's a long way. Unless you could teleport us there?"
Neonchameleon
Legend
Because most of your examples sound pretty passive
If we're setting out to see the ruins of lost empires then that's the destination, not travel. If you're doing a Tolkien purple prose thing describing them as we travel past then that's passive. If those ruins are between us and where we need to go that's makework because we're trying to go somewhere.
Exploring the ruins of lost empires can be a lot of fun. I've run adventures where that was the goal of the PCs. But the travel and seeing the smaller parts before reaching the actual ruins was either a warm-up adventure or a teaser in which the PCs were largely passive during the travel section.
"Passing through" is passive, almost by definition.
Lands devastated by war and plague are an excellent setting for an adventure - but the travelling part as opposed to the trying to fix them part is a teaser and while they are passing through they are passive while while they are trying to fix them they are not just passing through.
Sitting round a campfire telling stories? And listening to the pilgrims and caravaners tell stories? If I wanted to listen to storytellers or tell stories I'd go to the local storytelling circle (and I have).
In short you're mostly passively there, waiting for the wyrm to go by if it's just a shadow.
I've run two basic variations of this - and in neither variation was it just a shadow. In one it was a giant predator to run from. In the other it was a large predator with a lair that the PCs had the option of hunting rather than sitting there waiting for it fly overhead. (And the last time a DM ran a variation of this one when I was a PC we realised that it was heading away from its lair so went there to hurredly steal as much of its loot as we could and run away and disguise our trail before it got back; once again the interesting part wasn't the travelling.)
Literally all your examples sound extremely passive to me, watching things go past. They stop being passive when you stop traveling. Traveling allows for teasers and allows plot hooks for sidequests. Not everything has to be active. But I'd rather things that are.
G
Guest 7034872
Guest
^^ Sheesh. I'm with you, James: I would've loved the hooks you gave them there.
Just because you didn't have to roll for initiative doesn't mean it was passive.
Neonchameleon
Legend
Indeed. That's not my standard for passive. You'll note how I compared e.g. robbing the dragon's (actually hydra's in that case) cave after it had passed as an active event to hiding until the dragon flew past as a passive one. We didn't roll initiative for the hydra either because it wasn't there - which was the point.
Neonchameleon
Legend
If that is a fair summary of events I'm almost at the point of starting a petition to find James a new group of players.
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