Distance and time

[Li Shenron]

How do you deal with distances in your games? Do your characters ever have to deal with long distances, and travels which take months to complete?

I'm curious because I like very much when in tales and legends the heroes have to travel incredibly large distances, and it takes a very long time (think LotR, but more modestly think CotSQ). I like when the different locations in the world, the biggest cities for instance, are really far and engaging a travel between two kingdoms is not for commoners.

In a RPG there may be some practical problems... One has to do with how to play such a travel. Do you fast-forward everthing except a few improtant encounters? If I do this, then I have two issues: (1) I may lose something about the sense of patience required by the PC to engage in the trip, and (2) there's an immediate suggestion to the players about when interesting things are going to happen. Still, this is what I usually do, because on the other hand I don't want to toss in some totally uninteresting encounters, and neither I want to chronicle every day of the trip.

But still long distances give me more sense of wonder, so for me are quite important. I also think that they are a bit needed in order to fit better with a "vaguely middle-ages" scenario, which is the most typical in my games. But other DMs I gamed with preferred to have everything close enough so that the characters could easily find a new tomb to raid, a merchant to sell dozens new items found, and a cabal of wizards with every conceivable magic item on sale, and be back home conveniently in time for tea.

A similar problem I have with long periods of time in other cases. Sometimes I think that the typical D&D games are too dynamic, it takes only a year to create a new evil empire that threatens inevitably the entire universe, and a copuple of weeks to destroy it. It takes two years for a character to grow from 1st to 20th level, usually while the rest of the world stays at its own level.

I'm mostly rambling now, I know... It's just that I often wish to make our games less Harry Potter and more Lord of the Rings.

Do you think that it is possible with D&D 3.x, or is it too much an action-oriented system, which doesn't tolerate patience?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

How do you deal with distances in your games? Do your characters ever have to deal with long distances, and travels which take months to complete?

Yes... but I suck at calculating how long the journey should take. I usually just measure it in "days".

Some adventures make travelling part of the adventure, however.

I'm curious because I like very much when in tales and legends the heroes have to travel incredibly large distances, and it takes a very long time (think LotR, but more modestly think CotSQ). I like when the different locations in the world, the biggest cities for instance, are really far and engaging a travel between two kingdoms is not for commoners.

In a RPG there may be some practical problems... One has to do with how to play such a travel. Do you fast-forward everthing except a few improtant encounters? If I do this, then I have two issues: (1) I may lose something about the sense of patience required by the PC to engage in the trip, and (2) there's an immediate suggestion to the players about when interesting things are going to happen. Still, this is what I usually do, because on the other hand I don't want to toss in some totally uninteresting encounters, and neither I want to chronicle every day of the trip.

DnD "requires" for game balance four encounters per day. It's not going to make sense if the heroes have five days of pleasantness, then all of a sudden they are attacked by dozens of orcs one day. If you want to put in combat encounters, I suggest putting a "bandit controlled area" somewhere on the map. Make it secret, too. Now you have a good reason for the PCs to fight several times as they try to plow through the bandit camp. (Replace bandits with orcs, or whatever suits your campaign.)

Alternatively, if the PCs are travelling through an area they've never gone through before, you could create a mini-adventure taking place at a village or something along the way. Write about three plot hooks that sound totally different but lead to the same mini-adventure. If your PCs visit three interesting villages with three interesting plot hooks, maybe they'll bite on one. And if not, save the mini-adventure for some other time.

One of the things that annoyed me about travel in a medieval setting are horses. Since the PCs spend most of their waking hours on the horses (we don't bother with things like rest breaks for horses as that's all subsumed in the travel time), they often end up in combat encounters while still mounted. Most horses are weak, which is a bad thing when attacked by giant scorpions (who will just try to eat the closest unarmored thing) or wizards toting fireballs (so I blast the PC and his horse!). Furthermore, the speeds involved made combat a PitA. They won't want to walk, either - often PCs feel they have to get to point B within a certain amount of time or something bad will happen. That's often (but not always) the reason they want to travel in the first place. See if you can make them climb a mountain range where horses can't travel.

It's possible your players are simply less patient than you. If they're not a fan of LotR long travel times, they'll never enjoy it, no matter how much you do.

 

[ajanders]

It is possible, but it may not be desirable.

You can simulate the passage of weary days in the saddle by...

talking...

real...

sloooooooooooowww.

But who really wants to listen to that?

And one of my DM's tried to dramatize this by saying "You ride for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long ,long time. You're all very very very very very very very very very very very very tired."
Then we hit him with pillows until he promised not to do that again.

The best way to get the feeling of traveling over distance is just to redline it: get the map out, show the players where they're going and what they're seeing.
If the PC's all want to stop somewhere then hey! new adventure!

If they don't, just keep on drawing until they get there.

One small caveat: you may not want to do this at low levels. Camping for the night in cold weather can be a CR 1 encounter in itself, and if you demonstrate to the PC's at low levels how tough travel can be, they'll make up the details for themselves when you redline.

Essentially, if the PC's aren't doing anything, don't waste precious session time.

 

[el-remmen]

I've had long distance travel through wilderness as part of my 3.x games - and I just did overview descriptions of a few days of travel here and there - making sure to make note of weather changes and temperature and times they stop for fresh water, or find game trails if they need to hunt.

I also allow that one or more of those descriptions might pique the players' interest and they might go check out some feature or sound and then I "zoom in" to a more detail-oriented encounter that may or may not actually lead to combat or something else of interest.

I also leave a certain amount of the choices to the players - both in terms of describing different routes based on survival and/or knowledge checks (with aid from whatever maps they might have and how accurate they are) - but also in terms of simply allowing certain cool window-dressing scenes at the players' behest - like the ranger returning with an elk to be butchered and cooked on the open fire - or someone with the bowyer/fletcher skill collecting the green wood needed for his craft. . .etc. .

Below are four examples from my story hour of how I handled one overland journey (over the course of about three or four sessions):

Isilem, the 16th of Quark – 565 H.E.

The light of Ra’s Glory beat down on the Keepers of the Gate as they marched single file through a narrow stream with broad sloping sides that turned more directly northward. Mid-day seemed to stretch out for hours, as they sucked down quart after quart of water from their skins. The stream they followed had become a narrow trickle of gritty stuff, and even though they had rested not long before to eat some lunch, exhaustion weighed down their legs.

Much earlier in the day they had noticed a column of smoke that emerged from the haze a mile or two to the east. They did not investigate, eager to avoid meeting up with anyone. Now the ravine cut three ways; the stream heading east, as the land before them in all direction rose up into barren bluffs. The center way broadened even as the walls became steeper, and the way to the west was the narrowest.

With an arcane word, Martin the Green shifted into his reptilian humanoid form modeled for Tanweil, and soon was breathing heavy as he flapped the small leathery wings with all his might; jerking back and forth awkwardly in the air when he tried to turn.

With another word he was invisible and gained a great deal of height to make slow wide circles and gate the lay of the land.

Martin could see the narrow path to the east turned widely and then seemed to suddenly end at the foot of a craggy black hill. Clouds were rolling in from the west, obscurity visibility in that direction, but the broad ravine directly ahead made him gasp.

Several days later, the Keepers of the Gate had made their way past the first of the mountains, led by Ratchis through deep undercuts made in them by cold streams. In this way they were able to avoid the worst of the climbing, and where they did have to climb some, they found the llama was deft and leaping up onto to rocks and from one to another, as long as they were not too high or too far apart.

Beyond this, was a world ringed by mountains. It was a grassy highland many miles across and marked with many streams and ponds, and littered with huge stones left behind by retreating glaciers thousands of years before. The high plain was broken up by great jagged ridges that rose and fell as if the hard earth had once been sand, and some colossus had dragged its feet walking back and forth.

As usual, Ratchis took point, leaving Logan to lead the rest of the group and he jogged ahead to each rise, squatting down and looking over to make sure nothing awaited them beyond. He would jog back and forth all day, seemingly tireless, reporting what he saw, and for two days it had always been ‘all clear’.

One hazy mid-morning, Ratchis made his way to the top of a ridge, expecting to see the rest of the plain beyond, but instead it was a ragged ravine that ran east from the mountains to a river the party had noticed at the western border of the plain. Movement on the opposite ridge caught his eye, and he lowered himself down even more. It was twelve, or perhaps sixteen, humanoid figures, picking their way up the opposite ridge and over it.

Four days later they marched down into another pleasant valley set within tall green hills. They had left the jagged bluffs of the trolls and their hut, three days before. Within the hut were the mostly eaten corpses of three gnomes, shreds of their armor and scattered gems and silver obleks, which the party collected. Gunthar took the biggest gem, a diamond, for himself; assuring everyone that he was just holding it. They took the time to bury the gnomes under rock cairns.

This place was much more hospitable. The trees here were growing tiny red mid-summer apples, and the birds sang sweetly along with a babbling brook that wound lazily around the valley.

“I know its only just after noon, but maybe we should rest here the rest of the day and leave again tomorrow,” Ratchis suggested. “We have been making good pace and this is a good place to replenish some supplies, get fresh water, collect some apples and nuts and I can go do some hunting with Logan and Dorn.”

The others agreed and began to set camp.

Osilem, the 3rd of Keent – 565 H.E.

After two days of marching up and up into the cold air of the mountains, The Keepers of the Gate had barely made eight miles of progress in the last day and a half. The going was very steep and very treacherous most of the way, and twice the llama had to have levitation cast on it to get it up the sheet climbs. Frantic, it kicked and spat despite Ratchis’ efforts to calm it, though it quickly became quiet again when its feet were on solid ground.

They climbed down into a rectangular gully and were not sure of which way to go. A narrow path with tall stone walls wound off to the east and seemed to go underground, while a series of plateaus seemed to lead to a higher path that veered northward.

It was decided that Martin would talk his dragon-man form and become invisible to get a better vantage of a way to go by using his arcane eye spell.

Up among the cold mountain winds, Martin the Green took his time surveying the land all about him, and then sent his unseen eye to scan the distant horizon and look around the mountains that blocked the party’s way.

He conveyed what he had seen of the ways to go when he came back down.

“The narrow winding way does go underground, and I could not determine where and if it came back out, though there was a place where a stream poured out of a great cleft in the mountains miles east of here, that might have been it,” Martin explained. “The other route is not all that much more promising. Several plateaus lead over the mountain and down towards a stone highway that crosses a gorge. It looks like a road paved long ago, and on the other side of the gorge is a fortress cut out of a black stone bluff, with towers and a gate. It looked like there were dwarves there.”

 

[Vrecknidj]

I find the difficulty is in setting the mood. During those long treks (whether by land or sea), the characters should really be getting to know one another. They'd be swapping tales, learning of one another's past loves, fears and dreams, learning who gets along best with whom, etc.

All of that can be captured in novels and, to a much lesser extent, in films. In D&D, however, it's really not practical for the DM to say "Let's just run the next couple of sessions without encounters. Your characters will be riding across the open plains for several days (or weeks), and there aren't any monsters out there." The players would balk at having to go through 4-hour role playing sessions (or, in the case of my group, 10-hour RP sessions).

So, what I've sometimes done is write a story that has all the characters in it, and takes the characters from their point of departure to their destination. I write a large block of text, and email it to my players. They add to it, comment on it, or make suggestions to me (players can get kinda touchy about what their characters say or do). Then I revise a few times and when I'm done I have a few pages of story that does what I couldn't really have done sitting around the gaming table.

I ask that all the players read the final draft before we get together at the next session, and then we've got that long journey covered.

Dave

 

[Klaus]

Since I play so infrequently these days, overland travel is done in two minutes of talk (and I ask the PCs if there's anything they wish to get done during the voyage).

One idea of "dramatizing" long journeys is to do it like the FotR movie: get three or four pictures of landscapes to represent places the PCs are journeying through, and show it to them in order (works even better if you also pull out a map to show what each picture represents). If there's something important, you spend a little time in that day (like the Crebain encounter in FotR).

Also, a couple of "cut away" scenes, telling the PCs stuff some NPCs are doing, help the players feel like the world is moving around them as well.

 

[gizmo33]

Do you think that it is possible with D&D 3.x, or is it too much an action-oriented system, which doesn't tolerate patience?

This is a really interesting question that greatly impacts the way that DnD is played and yet IMO there's never really been a lot of guidance on this issue.

I agree that boring encounters during overland trips are not worth it. I try to flow-chart the long-trips in my campaign, but that only works when I have some advanced notice that the PCs are going to take the trip. Otherwise, I tend to fast-forward.

DnD works well in dungeon settings because the PCs know what they're supposed to do and the DM only has to be prepared for relatively few contingencies. Plus interesting encounters are grouped close to each other, and there's plenty to do for all the characters. I would think that interesting travel or down-time scenarios would have these same characteristics. This is the basic position of the Heroes of Battle book, which tries to make mass combat interesting in this same way.

The Pendragon game system has rules for down-time. The framework is that you adventure once a season, and then roll on a chart to determine what you character does for the rest of the year. The system seems designed for players to develop families of knights and play over several generations. Did anyone have any experience with this game and are there elements that could be used by DnD to address the second part of the OP? (Of course I can imagine some players saying "but my warforged ninja doesn't want a family!" so YMMV)

 

[Sound of Azure]

I've had some pretty cool players in the past. They've let me get away with a lot of things in the past. In one campaign we had, the whole campaign was based around two of the PCs (and their friends/ bodyguards) going on a pilgrimage to their holy land.

There were an number of encounters along the way in between the major towns, as you'd expect. But it was a very long way to their goal (hence the point of the pilgrimage. I thought it was unrealistic just to have a lot of random encounters (though there were some). I had the characters get to know each other.
Their guide also told them stories. Quite a number of these involved the players getting pre-generated characters and taking part in the old legend, thus writing more history into my world. Each of these "tales" had something to teach one or another of the PCs about the journey, or themselves.
Luckily enough, my players lapped this right up. It gave them a chance to diversify, and play with some unusual ideas they had during non-gaming hours.

 

[3catcircus]

It is up to the DM to make it interesting enough to keep the players' interest, but the player's also have to be willing to participate as well. Additionally, the DM can *use* overland travel to provide clues or additional plot hooks for his players.

In one of my last sessions, one of my players wanted to "speed up" travel by casting Phantom Steed, until I pointed out that they had a cart and mule carrying all of their loot that would be left behind...

Of course, I *did* make it interesting. I fully described the weather conditions and indicated that a steady drizzle would later become a downpour (the ranger correctly predicted the weather). I fully described their environment, indicating the gently rolling hills were full of heather with little explosions of purple flowers due to the early spring rains and even a small dogwood or two was starting to flower.

I had them come upon a burnt and plundered caravan. I used extremely graphic descriptions of what the victims had suffered - indicating that a small boy was tortured by having his entrails pulled out of his belly and strung along the ground, that the old man had been "crucified" to his own wagon wheel with daggers and had suffered thousands of cuts that individually wouldn't be fatal, that the half-burnt bodies of two women in a wagon clearly showed signs of being "ravished" and that a hidden journal seemed to indicate that more people had paid passage on the caravan.

What was just a simple set piece to describe the dangers of travel instantly became a race to follow the tracks rapidly being washed away by the rain in hopes of rescuing whoever was captured in the raid before they possibly suffered the same fate...

The fact that I plan on using this to help in the advancement of my plot is a bonus - they *will* remember this scene.

Overland travel doesn't have to be boring. There are plenty of crazies out there in the real world to take inspiration from when designing non-combat "encounters."

How about a mysterious group of strangers that seems to be "shadowing" the party wherever they go, keeping just far enough away that the party can't see details and mysteriously dissapearing from view, but always manages to be around?

The kindly old halfling who needs a ride because his pony threw him and ran off but he declines to partake in the evening meal each night?

Two dandies being chased by a group of angry gnomes?

With a little bit of effort and a willingness to describe things in excruciating detail, overland travel can be just as exciting as combat.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I'm in agreement with the time issue. It is something that bothers me often. In my current game, everything has been fairly close together (3 days walking is the furthest we have had to go). The game has been very intense as the result is that we have gone from 1st to 5th level in less than 2 months game time - and almost 1/4 of that was waiting in town healing and doing a few other things after our healer was killed and my character reached -9 HP and was down 6 points of strength.

It may be the one simple reason I actually miss the games I was in where we had to take time to train between levels. It made it that much slower in game time to get there.