D&D General How to Make Travel Meaningful and Interesting

[M.T. Black]

The party had to travel from Iskandar to Deepwater last night, which is about fifty miles on a well established road. Making these sorts of journeys feel interesting and meaningful has been a long running challenge for me, and I know lots of you have mentioned similar. I really dislike just handwaving this sort of travel ("Ok, you leave Waterdeep. 10 days later, you are at Neverwinter"). It makes your world feel small, and leads to nonsensical behaviour ("I left my signet ring behind? I really wanted that for next months ball. I'll just walk back to Waterdeep and get it. Yeah, 20 days round trip.")

However, a lot of attempts to gamify journeys through random encounters quickly become grindy in my experience. It's like I want people to feel the danger and tedium of a long journey - but without it being tedious! What is the solution?

I've concluded that "variety is the spice of life" in this regard. There is no one method that I can just use each time or it becomes dull. Instead, I have 4 or 5 little travel techniques in my bag, and I mix them up for each leg of the journey. The Iskandar journey above, I split into three legs:

1. For the first leg of the journey, I just rolled a random encounter table. They encountered a group of dust mephits causing trouble and had a short fight.
2. For the second leg of the journey, I asked one player to propose an obstacle, and another player to propose how the party overcame it. In this instance, the issue was a corpse on the side of the road.
3. While they were resting during the third leg, I used D'Amato's "Ultimate RPG Campfire Deck" and asked them to discuss a topic (their favourite meal), with the most popular reminiscence getting inspiration.

We spent a bit over and hour on the journey and the players seemed engaged. It made the journey feel "substantial" but it was also fun, so I was well satisfied with the outcome.

How do you handle travel in your game?

 

[Burnside]

I really, really like Level Up: A5E’s Journey activities: Journey Activities | Level Up

These really helped me make travel into a fun and engaging mode for my players, rather than the part of the adventure to be “gotten through” on the way to the “meaningful part.”

 

[Koloth]

Encourage the party to travel with a caravan. Perhaps as additional guards. Perhaps just the larger group is safer theory. Now you have opportunities for social events. Maybe the caravan has a 1/2 way there feast and celebration. If there is a hostile encounter, it isn't totally on the party to handle. Maybe one of the characters gets asked to cook when the caravan's normal cook falls ill or just because the caravan folks are tired of the same set of recipes. When the caravan stops to meet with a mysterious set of riders, what does the party do? Maybe one of the caravan folks wants to take up adventuring and asks to join the party once it arrives at destination. A non meet in tavern way to add a new character to the party.

 

[AlViking]

What I tend to do is the old 7 days of boredom interspersed with 15 minutes of terror. It depends a lot on where you're traveling, how well patrolled the road are and the level of the characters. Bandits that might hassle commoners for spare change aren't going to hassle with an obviously powerful group. A lot of it can just be straight role playing with my group, after all travelers from far away were a great source of gossip. People love gossip. Meanwhile the group may start hearing rumors about how nobody has been travelling a specific stretch of road, or that a dragon has been stirring up trouble (whether it's really a dragon, a wyvern or just an illusionist depends on the group). So you can have a mini adventure on the road.

There are also multi-step skill challenges similar to complex traps like avalanches, floods, collapsing bridges, forest fires, whatever fits the terrain and scenario. It all just depends on where they're travelling and why. Even during medieval periods a lot of people travelled far and wide on pilgrimages, if there were bandits around every corner very few of them would have made it far. So sometimes it should just be color and role playing.

 

[aco175]

I think some depends on what I have planned or how much real-world time I have. If I want/need the party to be someplace I might just handwave things.

I tend to have something along the road. Last time the party traveled from Westbridge to Waterdeep they tended to wander about. There was a merchant with problems at Goldenfields that the PCs could look into. In Amphil there was a festival and shopping. There was also a hook for orcs and a cleric of pestilence causing problems. When they got to Rassalanter there was a missing child and undead in the old tower that also had a portal to Waterdeep that they could get working again. The players took on some of these and left a few other behind.

I tend to not like a random fight since the PCs can just nova and regain everything the next morning. Sometimes fun though if things are slow or we not had a fight in a while. I know I could make the whole travel a single rest and not allow a long rest until the end of the journey, but that is too much tracking for me and the PCs.

 

[Stormonu]

I detest the old encounter tables for travel as they are just combat encounters. Over the years, I've generally made custom encounters, trying to a mix of color*, hazards, social and possible combats.

Nothing hard and fast, but I try to do at least one of each spanned over the journey, if its feasible. I suppose such things could be cobbled into random tables, but I like to curate my encounters for the most interesting and fitting bits.

* "color" tend to be unusual or interesting landmarks, meant to draw out some unique sight or trait along the way. There might be something worth investigating, but they are mostly to lend detail and uniqueness to a journey. For example, a "color" encounter might be a roadside milestone, with the names of travelers who have passed by it over the years etched into the stone. If characters investigate, behind the stone under a rock they might find a note left by a spy for a bandit group, meant to inform the bandits of a wealthy merchant who will be passing through the area soon - or a forgotten love letter left by a traveler who never returned, addressed to a nearby resident.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The party had to travel from Iskandar to Deepwater last night, which is about fifty miles on a well established road. Making these sorts of journeys feel interesting and meaningful has been a long running challenge for me, and I know lots of you have mentioned similar. I really dislike just handwaving this sort of travel ("Ok, you leave Waterdeep. 10 days later, you are at Neverwinter"). It makes your world feel small, and leads to nonsensical behaviour ("I left my signet ring behind? I really wanted that for next months ball. I'll just walk back to Waterdeep and get it. Yeah, 20 days round trip.")

However, a lot of attempts to gamify journeys through random encounters quickly become grindy in my experience. It's like I want people to feel the danger and tedium of a long journey - but without it being tedious! What is the solution?

I've concluded that "variety is the spice of life" in this regard. There is no one method that I can just use each time or it becomes dull. Instead, I have 4 or 5 little travel techniques in my bag, and I mix them up for each leg of the journey. The Iskandar journey above, I split into three legs:

1. For the first leg of the journey, I just rolled a random encounter table. They encountered a group of dust mephits causing trouble and had a short fight.
2. For the second leg of the journey, I asked one player to propose an obstacle, and another player to propose how the party overcame it. In this instance, the issue was a corpse on the side of the road.
3. While they were resting during the third leg, I used D'Amato's "Ultimate RPG Campfire Deck" and asked them to discuss a topic (their favourite meal), with the most popular reminiscence getting inspiration.

We spent a bit over and hour on the journey and the players seemed engaged. It made the journey feel "substantial" but it was also fun, so I was well satisfied with the outcome.

How do you handle travel in your game?

I use the A5e journey rules, for regions, exploration challenges, journey activities, random encounters, and scenery. My current game has been making extensive use of them as the party travels through an apocalypse-scarred American Southwest.

 

[Stormonu]

Brainstorming here:

ROLL 2D6
2 - Hazard - rocky terrain, bad weather, unexpected quakes, treefall, cliffside switchback
3 - Wilderness Encounter (Starting Attitude: Indifferent) - wild deer, hungry wolves, posturing bear,
4 - Social Encounter (Starting Attitude: Indifferent) - travelers, merchants, patrol, pilgrims, caravan
6 - 9 Landmark or No Encounter
10 - Signs of Passage (Indication that a person or creature was in the area, or an abandoned settlement)
11 - Unexpected Complication - lost gear, twisted ankle, where are we?, magic malfunction, replaced traveler, bounty hunter
12 - Hostile Encounter - bandits, raiders, crazed animal, dangerous monstrosity

I'm not sure how often a check would be appropriate, but I'd be inclined to do 2-3 a day (one in morning, one in midday, one at day's end). If I were to implement this, I'd probably draw up several subtables for each entry.

<Edit> The "Unexpected Complication" would probably be something of a skill challenge to mitigate or avoid a bad outcome or delay.

 

[DEFCON 1]

For me it comes down to the reason for the group taking the journey in the first place.

Are they going somewhere else because they have something they very much want or need to do at that new location? If so... then what the players want is to get to that location and start in on the adventure as quickly as possible. So anything the DM throws up during the travel is just slowing the adventure down. If the DM is going to do that... then to me it should be for a very good reason-- either there's a piece of useful information to be gained from whatever they encounter to them be used when they arrive at their adventure start point... or they are nearing a level-up and earning that extra level from an encounter during the travel means they are better prepared for their adventure at their arrival point. Or perhaps there's other stuff going on in the background of the campaign that an encounter or two during the travel will help foreshadow those events. Thus the party can perhaps learn about them and/or make opinions on them, so that after they complete the adventure they are traveling to, they have another direction to go already chambered up. But the one thing I would never bother with is just putting random encounters out there just for the sake of having random encounters, if the players have something they'd MUCH rather be doing once they arrived at their destination.

Now if the party is traveling to some location for no important reason, or no time-sensitive reason, or just because they are going just for the sake of going... then sure, throwing out a couple encounters along the way might be just the thing to create those story beats that the party is currently missing. They run into a forward gnoll scouting party that have a missive in their possession to clear the way for an invasion of the town that is the party's destination (for example). Now there's an adventure set up for them that the party can choose to engage with or not when they arrive. In cases like that, encounters during travel can be useful in putting up metaphorical adventure sign-posts for the party going forward.

 

[Micah Sweet]

For me it comes down to the reason for the group taking the journey in the first place.

Are they going somewhere else because they have something they very much want or need to do at that new location? If so... then what the players want is to get to that location and start in on the adventure as quickly as possible. So anything the DM throws up during the travel is just slowing the adventure down. If the DM is going to do that... then to me it should be for a very good reason-- either there's a piece of useful information to be gained from whatever they encounter to them be used when they arrive at their adventure start point... or they are nearing a level-up and earning that extra level from an encounter during the travel means they are better prepared for their adventure at their arrival point. Or perhaps there's other stuff going on in the background of the campaign that an encounter or two during the travel will help foreshadow those events. Thus the party can perhaps learn about them and/or make opinions on them, so that after they complete the adventure they are traveling to, they have another direction to go already chambered up. But the one thing I would never bother with is just putting random encounters out there just for the sake of having random encounters, if the players have something they'd MUCH rather be doing once they arrived at their destination.

Now if the party is traveling to some location for no important reason, or no time-sensitive reason, or just because they are going just for the sake of going... then sure, throwing out a couple encounters along the way might be just the thing to create those story beats that the party is currently missing. They run into a forward gnoll scouting party that have a missive in their possession to clear the way for an invasion of the town that is the party's destination (for example). Now there's an adventure set up for them that the party can choose to engage with or not when they arrive. In cases like that, encounters during travel can be useful in putting up metaphorical adventure sign-posts for the party going forward.

Admittedly my method works best when you let go of the idea of "the adventure" as a story element that has highest priority.