How do you deal with traveling in your games?

[howandwhy99]

I don't much care for random encounters because they do require a bit of prep, and they might not happen, which would have wasted my time. What I do do however, is plan some non-random encounters and pass them off as random. Basically, whenever there is some travelling happening, I work out how many days it will take, and tell them as much, then roll a die for each day, paying no attention to the result. Either something happens, or nothing happens, and that's all been decided before hand. Player's get the risk factor, because they don't know that it's not random, and I get some actual mileage out of prep work.

I do something similar, but still account for the wandering monster checks. I roll these checks prior to play.

Say a Forest terrain is 1 check every 6 hours. This has to do with the wildlife density. This can change as some creatures are diurnal others nocturnal. I roll out a number of checks accordingly for days and nights and determine encounters.

If the players then enter into this forest terrain, then I know when they have wandering encounters and these are tailored to the wilderness level they are within. Terrain area matters here for difficulty. A large forest may take days to cross following a river, weeks or more by dead reckoning. A road should take less because road terrain enables faster movement, but it may meander depending upon its construction method. Its length is a difficulty rating too.

So let's say 6 hrs in the forest is 1 check worth of prep, 1 day is 4, 2 days 8, etc. I make the rolls beforehand and prep the creatures, etc., which stay prepped until something either changes the pop. density of the forest or are met by the PCs. If any monsters survive the encounter, they become "named NPCs" and are tracked separately.

NPC wandering encounters are even easier because they happen "off screen" and can be resolved with a few aggregated rolls.

EDIT: monster encounter prepping in earlier editions really is quite easy and I think it can be very easy in 4E too. The Monster Manuals already have most of the statistics generated. It's simple generation rolls that need to be made and recorded. Things like HPs per creature and treasure.

 

[Hautamaki]

I too find it somewhat dissatisfying to simply say something like 'okay, you're there now' to hand wave long periods of travel. So I generally do my best to come up with a couple of ways to make a long travel time actually feel like a long travel time.

1) 'random' monster attacks. These are good but in some systems every combat is meant to be a major event that can take quite a while to resolve, so you have to be careful that you don't start to slow down the gaming session with meaningless encounters that do nothing to advance the plot with systems like that. Just make the encounter ridiculously easy if that's the case.

2) optional encounters; the party comes across tracks left by a cave bear. The party spots a gryphon flying high over head. They can choose to track these animals to their lair, for whatever reason, or just ignore them. My PCs include a ranger who hoped to tame the cave bear and gain it as a loyal battle companion. It didn't work, so they were forced to kill the cave bear. Then discovered its lair led to a long lost underground dwarven kingdom. That was pretty cool; it made a great interlude on their 3 day journey to the army and made that travel time really feel more like 3 days. Other examples of this could be a village afflicted with some kind of plight the PCs can choose to clear up with a few hours work if they so choose, or not. The good thing about these optional encounters is that options not chosen by the players always remain available to be chosen at a later time. Even if they have levelled up and increased in power a lot, hopefully you can scale the encounters up by adding more powerful enemies.

3) Encourage role playing between the players by asking how certain characters feel about certain events, or asking a player to tell more about his backstory... in other words, just start up a conversation between the characters to pass the time while they travel. If you have good players this could be as simple as 'So your characters are travelling down the road; what do they talk about to pass the time?'

 

[Bob the Destroyer]

I tend to run games where important locations are a long way away from each other, so for my players actually traveling anywhere outside of town is a fairly big decision, and once they embark on a journey it might take them a session or two to complete it. That helps with the wilderness feel of a lot of my games.

Also, I try not to use many vanilla wandering monsters because I think that most of the encounters should be more planned out than that and should be tied in to the plot of the adventure. I have run games where I just glossed over travel, but it can really provide some good material if you let it.

 

[Jhaelen]

It depends on the campaign setting. In my 3e game set in an arctic frontier region travel and wilderness encounters were as important as the destinations.

Basically, I started by rolling up random encounters on a custom table for twice the number of days I expected the journey to take. Then I created all of the required stat blocks and hooks for each of them.

In the actual game session I selected encounters that fit best to the character's actions and decisions.


In my 4e game set in Eberron, travel is either glossed over or represented by an extended skill challenge with failures resulting in (pre-planned) encounters.

 

[baxterzeppo]

This approach intrigues me and I wonder how I could get my players to do that.

Offer them candy.

 

[CharlesRyan]

I think the key for me is to find a way of glossing over that doesn't feel quite as instantaneous.

One thing is to give the players a short narrative that encapsulates the trip--a bit about the terrain and weather and people encountered along the way. Not too much exposition--because exposition sucks--maybe just a few sentences. But something that lets the players feel like their characters actually experienced something rather than "OK, you arrive."

But an even better thing is to include an encounter within the journey that has something to do with the events that are likely to unfold at its end. Look at the encounters you have planned for the destination and ask yourself if any of them could be moved to the travel portion of the narrative.

That then makes the travel period more interesting and makes that brief narrative about terrain and weather and people functionally relevant.

 

[Rugsrat]

Travel is just not a big part of my adventures, mostly because there's a LOT of it. Rather than spend weeks detailing what happens, or doing random encounters (which I loath and refuse to do) it almost always ends like this:

"The rest of the journey passes without incident."

If there's a plot to be found along the journey, sure. But for the most part, no incidents.

 

[Rel]

Others have touched on most of what I'd have to say on this subject. The short version is that I view travel between more important places to be a place with lots of possibility to introduce the flavor of the game word, be it based on terrain, local custom, politics or simply throwing a few plot hooks at the party.

One technique that I'd specifically recommend, one that should make any exposition more than just white noise to the players, is to ask yourself, "What would these characters notice during the journey?"

Some systems support hobbies and other "minor" skills better than others but hopefully you have at least some sense of what sort of life the PC's have outside of being "adventurers". Take that information and use it to focus on different things that might stand out to the various PC's.

So if one of the PC's was the daughter of an innkeeper then you might comment that the inns along the route are relatively fancy, expensive and likely cater to the nobility. The PC who is skilled at mounted combat might observe that they are traveling through "horse country" and believe it possible to purchase a superior mount in such an area. If a PC is the party's cook then tell them about the delicious foods that are indigenous to the local populace. That might turn into a humorous bit of roleplaying as they try and cajole some granny out of the recipe to her delicious pepper sauce.

Depending on the players you may soon have them asking you about this stuff rather than you having to volunteer the information.

 

[David Howery]

as others have said, it really depends on where the party is traveling through. If it's on well-used and known roads inside a settled kingdom, I just gloss over it, have them mark off rations/water used, etc. If it's howling wilderness, I get into more details, have them tell me their planned route, roll for random encounters (I weight them heavily towards normal animals, not monsters), have them keep track of food and water used, etc. (as all who know me will attest, I was dearly fond of wilderness adventures back in my gaming days ). And even in the wilderness, it can be varied. If the PCs are traveling through a rather empty desert, I might gloss over parts of the journey too.

 

[Haltherrion]

I like the standard movie and book method: show a little bit of the travel with an encounter or situation to overcome and suggest the rest of it.

It depends on the campaign but often you can work something useful into the trip that might demonstrate something about the world, plot, NPCs. The players are new to a region? Demonstrate what the overlord is like by having the players encounter the lord's men: the men are shaking down a caravan, pursuing a dragon, on a quest, checking for unregistered mages, etc. The players are on a quest for something? Have them encountered someone else on that quest, someone who is coming back bloodied from where they are headed, and so on.

You can make the encounter very travel related from overcoming a travel obstacle (toll, flooded region, river crossing, forest fire) to dealing with innkeepers to "travel wonders" i.e., wildly different magical places. That establishes that travel has its perils and attractions.

You don't have to do travel encounters all the time; just occasionally to remind them there are hazards and to mix things up.

I like travel encounters myself. Often get to work fun terrain in like marshy ground, chasms and water obstacles, rough terrain, blocked lines of sight, and lots of other fun stuff.