Do you get bored of the wilderness treck?

[Oryan77]

Your group is given a mission which requires you to leave the city you are in & travel to a dwarven mountain located in another kingdom. The travel time is 2 weeks of in-game time. How do you like to play this out? Do you mind spending a few sessions just doing wilderness trecks, or do you like to get from point A to B quickly?

How much detail do you like to hear about the wilderness treck?

 

[francisca]

I don't mind, and say "a moderate amount of detail" in a non-commital way, regarding the wilderness.

I enjoy the sidebar stuff, both as a DM and a player.

 

[demiurge1138]

A couple of encounters are generally nice, be they random or foreshadowing (players hunting a red dragon are a lot more likely to find a burned down thorp than those on their way to the big city after their first few successful adventures in a small town, for example). But the majority of my players would rather get on with it before too long, and I tend to agree with them.

Demiurge out.

 

[Odhanan]

Voted "skip to the dwarven mountain", but that's more of a feeling of the moment than a true taste of mine. I like wilderness trecks when they bring something to the adventure. If there here to just say we played the session this week however well, I'd rather just play the actual game than side-treking to get further, quicker into the campaign.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

I like trekking through the wilderness for one reason, and one reason only... So that XP can jump out of the bushes at me.

Really, there are some valid reasons to play out extended travel time... I can think of two, offhand.

1. To exposit upon the natural state of the world and changes to it. If you want to show your characters that the world is a dangerous place, that nature is powerful, that things are changing for the worst, or whatever... One of the best ways to do that is to stick them out in the world, preferrably far from any possible assistance, and trample them with the way that things are. Batter with a hurricane. Smash them with a stampede. Boil them with heat. Starve them with a drought. Break them with a tiger... and so on. You can go a long way towards setting the tone of a campaign by allowing your players to see how their characters interact with the forces of nature. If you make their first few wilderness excursions easy, they will understand that they operate above the laws of nature. If you make them difficult, they will understand that the laws of nature are powerful and not to be trifled with.

2. To explore the nature of the characters' dealing with themselves and each other. nothing can tell you more about the nature of your players and what they want out of a game than how they react when you tell them that a day (or a few days) of travel has gone by, and that it's time to make camp and (describe the scene, make it engaging, but non-threatening) ask them what they would like to do for the rest of their evening. It is often useful to toss an NPC or two into the mix when you do this. Have them hook up with some traveling salesmen or pilgrimaging ... pilgrims... or whatever. Give them some idea of the sorts of activities you are looking for (perhaps the pilgrim whittles wood), and see where they go with it. Tacticaling players will do tactical things... Immersing players will immerse... and so on. There will, of course, generally be some mixing and matching going on, but this is a pretty good tool for quickly figuring out what your players really want out of a game.

In general, though, unless you are looking to give your players an opportunity to do something specific (whether that be relaxing and interacting or accomplishing some more specific goal) or unless there is something that you want to demonstrate (the harshness of the wilderness, the presence of the divine, whatever) about your world... wilderness trekking should be kept to the minimum amount necessary to get your characters from point a to point b.

There is nothing that I hate more than listening to/watching a DM roll wilderness random encounter chances while saying, "time passes uneventfully... time passes uneventfully... time passes uneventfully..." you either have an encounter planned, or you don't. Let's get to the good stuff.

Later
silver

 

[VirgilCaine]

Teleport, Air Walk, Wind Walk, magical flying devices, exotic mounts...once you get beyond tenth level or so, the PCs don't have to ride if they don't want to (seven or eight if they want to push it and train their horses to Air Walk or get some hippogriffs or something).

Personally, I'd like to have the PCs advance slower overall so I could put in little things like that and not think they would be missing out on a nifty adventure.

 

[Dog Moon]

I wouldn't mind maybe one encounter on the way that's random and/or a couple that have a decent reason for being there [like foreshadowing as mentioned above], but I think what soured me on random encounters and stuff like that was when we had to travel a week to get to our destination and in an 8 hour session, we spent the first 6 hours just on random encounters.

I never was a big fan of random encounters beforehand and that totally ruined them for me.

 

[Brother Richard]

I Really Think DMs Should Flesh Out Travelling

I believe DMs should have sidequests or interesting things to do on the way to a destination to make the experience more real and because advebtures often find other dangers then from their quests. My DM recently obtained Glades of Death, which I think is very useful to making trekking fun. However, there are ways to abuse the book....

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Given the outlined trek I voted 1-2 encounters, but generally it depends on what I think might be interesting between point A and point B. And I never do random encounters! They're just a waste of time unless you've got some made up beforehand. Going from town A to town B through civilized lands? Nothing much, just describe a few things they see on their way and be ready to improvise if they want to interact with them. Going halfway across the continent to save the world? Depends on how much time they have. Not much fun for them to get there a day too late because you kept throwing uneccessary encounters at them!

 

[the Jester]

It really depends. The longer the journey takes, the more I'd like to see go into it. And really, the quicker advancement is, the less I want random encounters; I prefer my levels to come from the "important stuff".

But I sure do like a few random encounters now and then.