How do *you* do wilderness travel?

[Radiating Gnome]

I used to hate the idea of random encounters, and never used them as a DM in my campaign.

Then I played in another guy's game, and he used random encounters very heavily, and it was a revelation. He spent a lot of time developing his random encounter table -- it included barriers and obstacles, other travelers and monsters, ands encounters that would advance one or another plot in his campaign.

But given the carefully developed tables, we still had to roll randomly as we traveled, and that added a feeling of tension that you can't get without the random encounters.

That tension, and the periodic rolls for encounters, created a palpable sense of the distance we were traveling. If we rolled for encounters every 6 hours, and we knew a trip from one location to another would take 5 days, we knew we would have to make 20 encounter rolls . . . if we didn't roll encounters, the time would pass quickly, but making those rolls gave us a sense of the relative distance between places.

I use random encounters now in a very flexible way. In some cases, I use them for overland travel, but I still often hand-wave that travel. I've also used random encounters for special circumstances, like an episode when my PCs were trying to escort about 2000 refugees out of a city that was being attacked by an army of men and dragons.

What has always bothered me about random encounters is the simple randomness of them, so I have a system that I use from time to time for characters who want to try to avoid encounters as they travel, rather than just put up with the pure randomness of the encounters. Again, the system needs to be flexible, allowing for rolling every few minutes, hours, or daily, but the random encounter chance is repaced with a move silently roll (for overland travel) or a hide roll (for times when the party is camped ) and modified for the number of companions traveling with the party and other factors (terrain, presence of camp fires, etc). I require fewer rolls (maybe one skill roll to replace 2-4 random encounter rolls). Traveling to avoid encounters is slower, but safer, in most cases, and allows the PCs to take more active control over whether or not they have encounters while on the road.

 

[Quasqueton]

First, I'll quote myself from the other thread:

For my games, I roll for encounters and weather. "Playing out" a day doesn't really take much time, and I've asked the Players to let me know if they get bored with it. They tell me they like the way I do it.

I like to play out the travel time for a few reasons:

1. It gives a sense of the effort and time to get from point A to point B. Glossing over two months travel time through wild, unmapped land just seems anti-interesting.

2. It lets the terrain obstacles and weather events mean something. Traveling through the desert feels very different than traveling through the jungle. I want the PC and Players to *know* they are traveling in a desert.

3. It makes the Players consider taking a shorter route, as their PCs probably would/should in game.

4. It gives me a chance to feature monsters that they probably wouldn't see if all they did was dungeon delves. There are monsters and stuff that really only make sense or feel right in a wilderness encounter scenario.

5. It lets the druids, mounted paladins, rangers, etc. use their abilities. Even if the whole campaign is just dungeon after dungeon, or city after city, the travel time in between lets the "other half" show off their abilities.

6. It lets spells like teleport, windwalk, etc. actually *mean* something tangible. "Wow, it took us two months to get here, but now that you're 9th level, we can get back to Big City in a moment."

7. From my earliest days of D&D, I've always loved the feel of overland travel, mapping the terrain, getting lost, etc. Think Isle of Dread on a continental scale. D&D is, to me, all about exploring.

8. It also lets the Players have some time to play their characters just among themselves.

The PCs in my campaign gained a level during the 60+ day trek. They also said they are *not* walking back to the city -- the "ship-hater" who insisted on land travel has already changed her mind about it (in character - saying how much she has come to hate the jungle). They were one day from running out of food and having to live off the land --and they had no wilderness-type character, and no cleric. In the 60+ days, they had about 10-12 monster encounters with 6 or 8 different beasts. They probably would never encounter those creatures otherwise.

I played as a PC in another campaign a while back (completely different game group) that had us travel from a city under seige by an undead army to a small fortified town. The wilderness between was crawling with undead. We played out every day (~14?), always on the look out for undead beasties, and sometimes fighting them off. When we got to our destination, we were really ready to get out of that wilderness. I loved it. Playing out that travel time really set the mood for the campaign.

Second, I'll say I agree with Radiating Gnome and caudor.

Especially in a campaign world like mine -- a New World, unexplored and wild -- wilderness travel, encounters, terrain, weather, etc. are half the adventure (or at least a quarter).

My first adventure as DM with D&D3, had the party follow a map to a forgotten fallen fortress. They treked for a week from the base city -- but I just glossed over the travel time in 5 minutes. The party entered the dungeon and foolishly just jumped right into a tactically unwise battle. One of the PCs died. The party packed up and headed back to the base town. They resupplied and picked up a new PC, then headed back to the dungeon.

So the party spent a week game-time traveling to the dungeon, an hour in the dungeon, and then another week back to town, then another week back to the dungeon -- three weeks travel time in potentially dangerous land covered in a total of 15 minutes. This felt so wrong. No verisimilitude at all. I swore at that time to never gloss over large travel time ever again. Dammit, the PCs and Players should *feel* the travel time. There's adventure to be had travelling.

Quasqueton

 

[devilbat]

I normally run them through the first night of travel, to set up watches, etc. Somehand waving follows and 1-2 encounters to set the type of area they are traveling through. At higher levels this includes handwaving of nonchalleging encounters with bandits, wolves, etc.

Same here

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Last session we covered a day or two of overland travel in a half hour. That included two minor encounters and one major one. Afterwards, I apologized for taking so long. But our setting's based on the Amber novels, so travel is supposed to be easy.

I handwave travel in every game I run. I know there's adventure to be had in long, epic treks, but I'm just not interested. Now if they were exploring, and didn't have a set destination, I'd definately stretch things out.

 

[Zappo]

"You leave Theramore's port. After three days of navigation you reach a small village on the coast. From there, you pick up horses and leave for Bael Modan. You reach the dwarven city after two weeks of travel. The trip is uneventful, apart from a few brigands which you easily rout."

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

It's rare to find unbroken stretches of wilderness. There's always a cave for resting in (mind the kobold rogues and sorcerers), a village with a mystery (mind the lifeleech otyughs), etc.

 

[Crothian]

I try to make it interesting. I don't do random encounters, they just don't feel right so I do planned out encounters that have plots and a place in the campaign even if it is a side thing. The wilderness is a forgotten about place in most campaigns since most people do skip it.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

As fast as possible. I'm not a fan of random encounters so I tend to just hand-wave the actual travelling.

This could have been my answer.

Although from time to time I like to have encounters on the road for a couple purposes. 1. Setting the mood of the area where you're in or headed to. 2) Advancing or anticipating the plot. 3) Shaking up the players in their complacency about my handwaving.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Long distance- Roll d% everyday to figure out random encounters (not necessarily combat encounters mind you). Come up with 1-2 side quest or interesting battles. Lot of hand waving if nothing interesting is happening.

 

[DonTadow]

New and unexplored territory always gets its own adventure or sidetrek. Its my way of introducing the new elements of the terrority with a player. However, I do not believe in random encounters. I'll usually setup some type of side quest that will only take an hour or two out of their journey.

EX:

Two sessions ago the party finally got to the elven lands and to show how different the land was and how more dangerrous the cerebrus was compared to their regular environements, I first had them encounter strange creatures in a non-combatant way. Then I had them meet a man left to die on the road by a traveling band, it was an optional puzzle that rewarded the pcs with a relationship to a very powerful future NPC. The cerebrus prevents divine magic, so they had not healed magically in a few days. If they left the man in the cage, they would not have been healed. Since they freed him, he healed them. I had them do some roleplaying for a few minutes then had soul sucking aberations attack them, nearly killing several of them. Now they know the dangers of the land.

If they have encountered the land before I'll make them play out each day for a couple of minutes, telling them things on the journey. But keeping them on their toes as they never know when the battlemap is going down.

I had them fight a bunch of aberrations whom still souls. T