Interesting Travel

[Upfish]

This is my first time DMing. I've been doing it for a few months, and something I've never managed to figure out is how to make traveling from place to place or between locations interesting. What I mean is if the party enters a forest, I will say "you're in a forest" and go on to describe the immediate area. The players will then have some sort of goal, or simply say "we walk around". And I tell them about the interesting area that they're near. It almost seems as if they want me to just tell them when they should stop walking and look at something. As a result, they end up jumping from interest point to interest point without incident. Which isn't their fault, but it's still frustrating and boring.
I don't like random encounters, but I tend to make things up as I go along instead of planning everything out. Which works well as long as the party is actively doing something rather than just walking around.
Last session, I experimented with making the players advance through "fog of war", undrawn areas on our battle pad. When they got to a point where line of sight would allow them to see, I would fill in more of the map. It worked alright, but I still wasn't able to really describe anything. Which is mostly my fault, because I just couldn't think of anything interesting to say about this forest they were traveling through.

What could I do to make this sort of thing more interesting? Despite not being very good at it, I appreciate slower periods, and I want to be able to describe where the players are.

I suppose the solution is pretty much to be more descriptive, but I'd be interested to hear how other DMs handle this.

 

[Gilladian]

I find that two things make travel more interesting; description and planning.

Plan out the weather, the possible interesting little things they see, etc... ahead of time. Even if all you have written down is a string of phrases, it will help:

Day 1 in forest: rainy, dull, fungi everywhere; pink fungi high in trees gives +1 to heal checks when used in wound poultices. Possible Boring Beetles.

And also remember - you don't have to describe every moment. You're telling a story, not narrating an experience. Skipping the dull parts is expected. After all, you don't narrate every campsite pitched, every meal cooked, every bathroom break, every stone in the dungeon... so if you say "three days of wandering in the woods passes uneventfully", it just means you avoided an hour of boring lecturing by the DM with nothing going on to advance the FUN.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Gilladian's points are excellent. What I do when I'm doing locations (of any kind) is to come up with a fairly simple, hopefully evocative description that the players can kind of hang on to, and then if I want the chance of "random" encounters, I'll try and prep one out that enhances the players understanding of the area. If the forest is known for dragons, they should in some way come across evidence of the dragon - dead carcasses of beasts attended by vultures, a silhouette flying overhead followed by spooked herds of animals fleeing for their lives, etc. If the forest is known for dangerous indigenous peoples, then they should feel that they are being shadowed and watched at night, possibly ambushed, or given a chance to interact with the tribes...

As for help with descriptions themselves - I do a lot of image searches online (try "primeval forest" for some neat forest pics) to get ideas, or I'll use things that I've seen. A city might have construction like English Tudor houses, or it could look more like whitewashed Greek Island villages. It could be all stone, or all wood, depending on the local resources (forest nearby - wood, in the mountains - stone, etc). A forest could be primeval and untouched, pine or deciduous, lots of undergrowth or clear under the tree canopy.

Description is one thing you'll undoubtably get better at as you get more experience DM'ing, but some rudimentary prep along these lines, even if its just a couple of sentences - if you tell your players that the forest is "old-growth forest, with lots of undergrowth around the massive trunks of fallen trees, mostly oaks and maples with a few massive trees the size of sequoias," they'll all go, "Wow!" and really all you did was spend five minutes (at most) and wrote down one sentence in your notes. And then next time they come back to that forest, you just have to remind them of the description.

 

[RangerWickett]

In the Lord of the Rings movies, the characters travel hundreds of miles. Typically, a trip of a hundred miles takes about a minute of screen time. Sure, while they're traveling often the movie cuts to some other group of people doing stuff elsewhere, so it feels like a bit more time has passed, but you only really watch people traveling for short snippets.

When travel gets interesting -- evil wizard sends down an avalanche on you, or your campsite is attacked by orcs, or you're accosted by horse-riding guardians of the wilderness -- then you actually devote game time. Otherwise, you just gloss over the travel and get to the good stuff.

Or, as one of my players told me about thirty dozen times in one campaign, "So we travel, resting every so often, until we get there."

 

[S'mon]

This should help from:
http://judgesguild.net/guildhall/pegasus/pegasus_01/wilderness.shtml

To use the table, roll 3 die: one d4 and two d10, using the d4 as a hundreds digit and the d10 as normal percentile die a number between 101 and 499 is obtained. Simply match up the rolled number with a table entry.

Not included in my version but also possible or desirable for individual Judges to add could be: Army Patrols, Surveyors, Miners/Loggers, River Boats/Rafts (as applicable), Adventurers, Cavemen, Stockades, Gullies or High Ridges, Nomad Tribes, Travelling Religious Officials, Travelling Nobility, Tinkers and Craftsmen, Companies of Actors/ Musicians, Walls (as per Great Wall of China or Adrian’s Wall in Northumberland, England) and Geysers. This is simply intended to show that my lists are not even close to exhausting all of the logical possibilities.

By using this list, or one based on it, your wildernesses may not be any more safe, but they also may not be as predictable either. This bit of local color can make a better, and more realistic game for everybody.

Roll Encounter
101 – 110 Castle
111 – 130 Well or Cistern
131 – 140 Temple or Shrine
141 – 170 Monestary
171 – 190 Villa
191 – 210 Village
211 – 239 Cave
240 – 255 Mine
256 – 275 Graveyard or Crypt
276 – 300 Creek or Stream
301 – 315 Bridges
316 – 330 Tower
331 – 355 Herdsmen
356 – 394 Peasants
395 – 400 Animal Packs
401 – 410 Mills (water, etc.)
411 – 419 Road Sections
420 – 430 Small Lakes
431 – 437 Crater
438 – 443 Hermit
444 – 450 Hunting Party
451 – 464 Merchants
465 – 470 Barns
471 – 479 Pilgrims
480 – 490 Druid Groves
491 – 499 Ruined Forts

 

[LostSoul]

You need to have some description, but to make it really interesting, throw in some conflict.

Just a couple of wandering orcs out for blood can work.

If you tie the conflict to the location - a couple of wandering orcs are hacking down a dryad's tree so their shaman can bind the spirit - then you get more punch.

To get even more, tie the conflict to the location, and make the conflict an obstacle to what the PCs want.

 

[Terwox]

Sounds like you need to plan it out ahead of time for a bit.

Decide what would be interesting for them to encounter in the woods, have that happen. See if the players go for it. If they don't, change it up.

You also don't need neat things to happen during travel. You could always just let it go.

 

[Logos7]

travel = boring

in real life you have beauty and the other senses to help impress, not so in dnd. If the Pc's are traveling for no particular reason I skip large chunks until they reach something interesting (a town, a npc, an encounter, etc)

if they are traveling for a reason have them reach their encounter. Theirs a reason why book 2 of the lord of the rings triology blows from gimli,aragorn, and legalas its traveling and lots of it.

Logos

 

[cr0m]

I gotta chime in with travel being boring. The reason they're skipping the points of interest is that only conflict is particularly interesting. You can get away with some foreshadowing, but generally you should use terrain to achieve a mood. For example, you don't have characters trotting over sunny meadows on their way to the vampire's castle.

Another thing travel is good for is tension. Want to create paranoia? Have one of them see something watching them from the trees, or a strange creature flying overhead. Or the ultimate in paranoia inducing weather: fog. Put them in a creepy location, where they know they're being watched or followed and then drop a fog on 'em.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It kind of seems like your players are telling you what they want: they want something to happen.

Flavor can be added to the travel by making something happen.

This doesn't have to be an encounter, though it often is. A monster, a traveler, a merchant, a town, any opportunity for the players to make choices and have consequences is good.

You should also consider weather and temperature and night and day and other constant effects, even in combination with encounters. A rainy encounter with reserved centaurs in the woods, meeting an elderly looking dryad in the dead of winter...they don't need to be combat related, or even much of a contest, but if you use encounters, someone should want something from the other party. Does the Dryad have something that could warm their bones? Do the Centaurs perhaps offer safe passage and advice? Do the goblins just want a handful of copper?

Even just rolling a saving throw against frostbite or heat exhaustion can add some dimension to the journey.

You're giving them stuff to look at. Give them stuff to do.