How do you deal with traveling

[Gundark]

I was wondering how you all deal with travel in your DnD games. In our group we have two DMs, myself and another of our group. Anyhow we played the other campaign (the one that's not mine) in the game the party had to make a 14 day journey by ship. Anyhow to make a long story short the travel took up nearly the entire 4 hour session. Nothing really important happened role-playing wise, just combat (random monsters). The group was super bored at hte end of the night. Anyhow when I do travel I gloss over the trip high-lighting any important things that may happen, thus we get on with the game. I'm not saying that I'm better at it either, I think the trip can be exciting in itself. The question I'm asking is how do you handle travel and/or make it exciting?

 

[Imagicka]

Greetings...

Well, a friend of mine and I both agree that travelling should be difficult, and tiring. After all, the word 'travail' and 'travailling' has evolved into the word 'travelling' to mean a slightly, and then eventually, totally different meaning. As such, we have houserules where we start giving subdual damage for travelling. If you push beyond the 8 hours, you start taking subdual damage, dependant upon the terrain and conditions.

But, with that said. How do you make travelling interesting? Well, first, I like to emphasize on things that would be relevant to the players. Rangers and Druids, I would have them roll for spot/awarness checks and tell them they notice tracks of various potientally dangerous creatures. If they tell me that they are looking for food, I also mention animals that might be good to hunt for dinner.

If the players like to roleplay, or things get boring while they are roleplaying a particular situation. Such as, the Wizard says he's going to memorize his spells, and the Fighter is off doing his morning sword practice... Any characters, such as Wizards or Clerics and especially Bards who take Knowledge (History) I will throw in little tidbits about the locals, just off the top of my head: "This field is probably where the battle of Gundark was fought. Where the nearby town ambushed and fought a large number of orcs, out-numbering them 3 to 1. It's become quite famous in local lore."

For the ship travelling, you have a number of NPCs that are exposed to the players for at least a fortnight. I would allow the players to explore roleplaying situations with them. Some sailors talk about phantom ships, lost treasures, the wonderous things they've seen, pirates and battles. Perhaps start the characters by overhearing a couple of sailors talk about 'what strange folk are aboard with us'. Or they talk about seeing a phantom ship, or hope they won't see it this voyage.
Also giving you chances to either foreshadow upcoming adventures/events in the current campaign, or plot-hooks for future adventures. Allow the players to also interact with the NPCs to gamble, or improve skills, or if they go out their way to roleplay, and make things a little more interesting, rewarding them. Since the wizard has gone out of their way to talk with the crew, one of the crew gives them a scroll that they picked up somewhere that they have no use for.

Generally though, I don't get a party of players who are interested in roleplaying the travelling and resting for the evening at the local inn too often. So, as for the travel itself, if nothing really important happens, I normally just glance over the whole trip. But sometimes I get the occational player who wants to roleplay more than the average player, and I generally reward them, and the other players if they start roleplaying more. I feel that roleplaying shouldn't be a reward totally onto itself. It should get XP just like combat and problem-solving. So, I give little bonuses here and there.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Kind of similar to Imagicka, but like him I usually don't have people who want to roleplay small things like this.

If the party knows where they are going (following an obvious road, on board a ship with an experienced crew) I skip over the bulk of the travel time. There might be some random (or occasionally planned) encounters along the way. If they don;t know where they are going exactly, then I take more time and see if they get lost, nter a dnagerous area etc.

Sometimes I have hooks for side quests along the way that get thrown out there, and to keep the party on their toes I also sometimes throw in completely irrelevant encounters. Just because I suddenly interrupt three skiped days of travel and ask them where they all are does not mean they are heading into combat. I love watching the party take a defensive posture or hide as a farmer comes over the hill pulling his turnip cart.

 

[Hand of Evil]

You should have encounters based on the road traveled, lots of people, few, type of people: wilderness type or urban types. You should also consider things like equipment failure; shoes strings break, backpacks, horse throw shoes, pick up stones, then there is illness; bad water, strain ankles.

Then there is getting lost, reasons for it; signs get knocked over, new paths/roads are cut for lumber or homesteading. This could also be one of those times language comes into play, the sign is in draconian!

Rules of the road: Think about them, travels must help other travels, you share camp sites, you never enter a camp site unannounced, you discuss road conditions with those you pass, and you share news of the current events.

 

[Janx]

Unless it's low level characters, where the trip is an adventure itself, I usually skim over travel. Last game, they sailed 44 days to get to an island. At the end of that game, they sent the Paladin back for reinforcements. He'll be back in 88+ days. I sure as heck don't plan on role-playing that out

In practical terms, as a GM you don't really want to play out encounters every day. Not in terms of having to do them, but in terms of XP progression. I played in a game where in about 3 months of game time, we hit 20th level. This happened because nearly every day of our characters' lives was adventure and encounters.

Whereas, in my current campaign, with travel times coming into effect, some serious time is passing between adventures. This can make your characters a bit more seasoned.

Unless you WANT something interesting to happen during a trip, don't bother having any encounters. Or if the players had planned on interacting with the crew, set up a scene for that to happen. But otherwise, keep it to "44 days pass and you reach the island of Karnos." It's just not worth the effort.

Janx

 

[MoriaCatlinChattal]

Traveling is a good time to throw in side quests, romantic subplots and issues from the character's pasts.

 

[Maliki]

Usually I use a mix of glossing over the trip and playing out the travels depending on the distance traveled, type of travel and the area the PCs are traveling through. Often times I insert "random encounters" into travels to provide clues to further adventures or to give a party a chance to show off against weaker foes.(A party of 5th or 6th level characters against a small group of orcs or such just to show the party how far thier characters have grown in power.)

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

Chalk up another one in the "run a few interesting highlights of the trip, gloss over the rest" column.

I'd say that I've gotten too old to enjoy playing out every moment of every day and sticking as closely to "realistic" as a fantasy game with spells and monsters can get, but the fact is that even when I was younger I thought that was a dreadfully boring and uninspiring way to play the game. I suppose that all aging has really done is make me sound more bitter and vicious when I criticize it.

Y'know, if there's nothing actually interesting that happens, I'd just as soon not waste any of my valuable leisure time describing it in exhaustive detail. Our last D&D game handled it pretty well, I thought; the GM knew when we were about to be setting off on a trip, and he'd use his time appropriately, figuring out what interesting scenes would be happening during the trip in advance. When we would finally hit the road, we didn't have to sit there through "okay, on the first day, what do you do?" tedium; instead, we just dealt with the challenging and important decisions and situations that arose during the trip, and when those were handled, we went back to "the rest of the trip goes without any serious incidents."

And honestly, it was really, really nice to have a D&D session where going to a new location wasn't the only thing you got to do.

--
but we were still all relieved when we finally got to use teleport instead
ryan

 

[Hand of Evil]

Another way to look at travel is the dungeon, the road is a long corridor, events are rooms, traps are hazzards of the road. The only thing that changes is scale.

 

[Dagger75]

Well now that my current group has a Spelljamming ship travel is going to be pretty easy, or so they think

I had one game where the players escaped from a pirate with literally 1 scimitar and the clothes on there backs in the dead of winter. For 3 months of play time we played every single day of travel the characters did. It was fun watching them survive, we all had a blast. Sometimes the players can travel across the ocean with just a single sentence.