Daunting: Party of 5 new players who want a travel/exploration campaign

[CapnZapp]

The most important thing to realize is that 4E is heavily geared to the traditional dungeon crawl type of adventure.

I strongly encourage you to consider adding the Tweet houserule to any wilderness/exploration type of campaign. In short, it reads "you don't get any benefits from taking an extended rest unless you've covered two milestones."

D&D 4E is a game where things become interesting because you need to conserve resources over a series of at least three encounters.

I see no reason why only dungeons should enjoy that mechanical set-up, and why the game should play so utterly different just because some adventures play out over a single day, while others play out over several days or even weeks.

Removing the tight 1:1 connection between in-game days and extended rests is by far the most important rule change you should consider for any game not dominated by dungeoncrawling.

 

[Blackbrrd]

When I did overland encounters, I said that they wouldn't get a daily rest until they had done between 3 and 5 encounters. The short rest/long rest is just a gamist construction anyway, so I changed it to suit the campaign. I informed the players about my deceision and why I had done it, so they were fine with it. Oh, and I decided when they got the long rest, so that they wouldn't think: "oh, it is our last encounter of the day, let us use all our dailies".

 

[Cyronax]

The only real difference between a travel/exploration game and a dungeon crawl is the size of the map.

Resist the urge to introduce mandatory random encounters every day: instead try informing the players about dangers in the region, and allowing the players to choose which encounters they have. I mean sure, occasionally spring something unexpected, but don't always make it a bad thing.

Couldn't agree more. To echo off other posters, CHOICE is good, but for exploration type games its good to make the game appear organic. To do that, its important to give the PCs a map or at least some rumors of other locations, which they can choose their path based on differing priorities.

These priorities could be based on a number of encounters, rumors, or missions and its interesting to have them juggle them all at once.

That way they'd decide between options they have gained all possibly in a short duration of one another:

1) Take this wayward princess back to her kingdom .... for an arranged marriage (but her father will reward us!)?

2) That old man with the prophetic gaze said there's a destiny for us in that distant mountain.

3) This antique figurine I just found in a village bazaar has a map in it! To buried treasure?!

4) Etc.

To use internet gamer jargon .... its essentially a diffuse Sandbox type campaign.

C.I.D.

 

[Squire James]

I remember being a player doing the original Isle of Dread adventure. The DM handed us a blank sheet of hex paper, and told us the PC's patron was offering 10 gp per hex mapped out, plus 100 gp per "city" or "ruin" site mapped out. Then he had lots of "standard" encounters of various levels placed randomly throughout the map to keep things exciting. Some were easy, some were challenging, and some were "Oh my God, run AWAY!"

 

[Dr_Sage]

In adition with what many ideas posted above I would like to add: some travel campaigns give you the opportunity for nice skill challenges, specially involving navigation (usually nature and perception), resilience tests (endurance) and etc.

You can add: simple diseases like common cold, and more serious ones on the fly by PCs failing saving trons and endurance checks when exposed to cold, rain, snow etc. The point here is give a sense of realism, and in 4ed the exaustion and some diseases take form of "less healing surges and some penalty".

Just my 2 cents.