Making Journeys and Cities interesting as DM

[Jurble]

Hi guys!
Just started out as a DM and ive got abit of a hurdle im trying to cross. Was wondeirng what you think about the topic.

At the moment my PCs are in the first town of the story getting ready to head off on thier mission. I am hoping they dont just say "we leave the city" and thats that. I want to give this city a personality wihch ive been working on and i want tthem to be motivated to explore it abit check out the markets the dodgey side, etc. Im trying to make it unique (instead of *insert typical fantasy city here*) like putting in ramshackle middle eastern markets selling everything from urns and dates to weapons and clay wares. houses basically on top of each other and tiny lanes. Anyway city encounters/situations is something i havnt had alot of luck with. Any ideas to spruce up time within the city (especially not realted at all to the storyline could be cool)

The main thing im really worried about playing out is travel.

For instance from the city they have to go to the town where the actual adventure is located. How do you keep that sort of journey interesting rather than "ok so you walk down the road for X time *bang random encounter* keep walking *random encounter* and just elave it at that?

Im not sure what depth to describe the surroundings the changing landscape as they go and also what sort of interesting encounters (combat and non combat) to put onto them in their journeying. When they make camp should i make them set up camp etc? Guard shifts? Hunt for food?

I guess everyone has their own style which i will find for myself after a few sessions but im guessing there are "basic" guidelines which most people semi-stick to in terms of keeping it interesting but not getting bogged down in minute stuff

eg: *roll d20 or a snake bites you on the bum while ur releiving yourself*

Thanks for all the help, i think when i DMed the first session i realised what ive gotten myselfinto Im excited to play it out but atm im still at the worried about buggering it up stage

thanks guys!

Jurble

 

[alsih2o]

Google image search some landscapes. Let them see where they are travelling.

Add the weather. Let them get soem benefit form their gear outside of the sword, shield and wand.

Add non-encounter encounters. Wildlife, pilgrims, nomads, whatever is appropriate.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

I tend to gloss over travelling unless osmething interesting happens. "over the next few days, the forest begins to thin, and you find yourself moving into the wide open plain. We have a watch order pre set up, and we just use that. While they're on the road, I pre-emptively ask for a bunch of spot/listen checks, and apply them to road hazards as they come up.

For making cities interesting, I tend to try and find the overall layout. One was built in rows of height, carved into a cliff face, with the highest being the upper class areas and the lowest being the dock. They had a decently sized dwarven population.

Local food/personality helps too. In the town they're currently in, there's the local staple of fachos. As it's by a river, there's plenty of fish around, and there are a lot of goats in the area. Fachos are small cut pieces of breaded fish, with melted goat's cheese and a pepper sauce poured over it. That's the customary serving item, cheap bar food, and snack for entertaining guests. The reactions to it were great, ranging from "I'm not eating that." to "They're bringing us more? Yay!"

 

[carpedavid]

Hi Jurble,

I can give you a few tips that have worked well with the groups that I've DMed. My group tends to be very story focused, in that they don't spend a lot of time "idling" anywhere, so if I want them to explore something, I generally create some sort of plot for them to explore. If you want to have them explore the city (which it sounds like you've spent a lot of time creating), try tossing in a sub-plot. It might be easy to resolve (e.g. a run in with a cutpurse or a group of drunken thugs), or it might be a setup for future encounters (e.g. the cutpurse is actually the young cousin of a high-level rogue who likes to hold grudges, or the drunken thug is actually a well-regarded priest who's fallen onto hard times and taken to drink).

You might get lucky, and your group will be the kind that likes to explore every nook and cranny of every town they visit, but mine isn't, so I have to accomidate for that.

With regard to overland travel, I treat it like I'm editing a movie. I may show my audience the mundanity of travel (like building a campfile, hunting for food, and setting up watch) the first couple of times in order to set the scene, but after that, I edit it out. I try to focus on what's interesting, so I frequently say "the next few days fly by," or "you spend a few hard days on the road before you reach..." Once they get higher in level, you can even gloss over the types of encounters that would be easy for them. For example, "The next three days pass by without incident, save for a few goblins that you take out handily."

As a general guideline, use random encounters to illustrate what kinds of threats are in the area. Is the forest they're travelling through famous for being infested with fiendish dire-boars? Throw one or two at them while they're passing through - just enough to give them a good idea of what the local wildlife is like. Otherwise, random encounters are good for keeping the PCs on their toes and for spicing things up.

Again, my group is very story and goal-oriented, so YMMV.

P.S. You may want to check out the story hour in my SIG. The party is on an extended road-trip, and this chronicles their adventures along the way.

 

[Delemental]

The best thing you can do is talk to your players. You may want to have more descriptive scenes between adventures, but the players may not. You should see if you're on the same page before doing a lot of work crafting evocative panoramas of wilderness that they are just going to see as filler between point A and B.

I wouldn't overdo random encounters between cities, or rather random hostile encounters. If the roads were so dangerous that even experienced adventurers have difficulty getting through unscathed, then normal people wouldn't even try, and intercity commerce and communication would grind to a halt. Traveling across untracked wilderness is another matter entirely.

As far as the cities themselves, the best way to put across the flavor of the city is through the people they meet. Tavern owners in seedy parts of town will be gruff and suspicious. Merchants in open-air markets will pressure the PCs to make a sale. Nobles will look down on the scruffy mercenaries. Make sure people react differently to the characters based on their role; try to avoid what commonly happens, where NPC's somehow sense the "PC aura" and treat the characters the same way no matter who they are. I won't call the "PC aura" a mistake, because it's perfectly legitimate for some types of game.

Along the same lines, if your players have particular kinds of NPCs they interact with regularly, give them a personality beyond "dispenser of goods and/or services". Give the smith that the fighter regularly visits to get his weapons and armor repaired a wife and kids that he talks about constantly. Make the old alchemist that sells spell components to the wizard a bit senile and prone to rambling stories.

Names of places are also a good way to establish a setting. Inns in high-class neighborhoods are called "The Shining Unicorn" or "The Golden Griffin"; in less reputable areas they're "The Dirty Badger" or "Six Daggers Tavern". Keep the environment of the city in mind; a port city is going to have more nautical names, while a city in the middle of the forest is going to gravitate toward names evoking fey creatures.

If you want players to notice the physical aspects of your cities, give them cause to interact with them. Plan a game with a chase scene through the city where the characters have to deal with crowded markets, narrow streets, and twisting alleys. Plan to have a major holiday or festival going on in the city when the PCs arrive. Also, give the players reasons to hang around in the cities and check them out. If you set up a situation like "okay, you're all in city A, and there's an adventure waiting at location B, what do you do?", I'm willing to bet that they'll say "we go to location B immediately". Once given a concrete objective, most players will proceed to that objective with little delay. Don't feel like you always have to have something ready for them to do the moment they finish the last adventure.

Probably the best thing you can do to get players interested in interacting with the enviroment is to award some form of roleplaying XP, and letting the players know about it. That way there's a tangible reward for their characters putting up with the barkeep's dirty looks at the Dirty Badger, or for listening to Alzrius the Herbalist ramble on about how he almost turned lead into gold... again.

Well, now that I've rambled on long enough, I think I'll post, so that I can see the 37 other posts that came in while I was typing telling you the same thing or even better advice.

 

[Nathan P. Mahney]

When there is a journey in my adventure that I know I want the PCs to take, I roll everything beforehand. The first thing I do is figure out how long the journey will take, and then I roll up some random weather. Then I roll for random encounters.

In my last session, my players were travelling through a forest for a few days. The third day's weather came up rain. For random encounters, I got two groups of kobolds in quick succession on the first night, and a troll on the third day.

Figuring that the two kobold gangs were encountered close together, I decided to connect them. There were two options: I could have had the first group as a vanguard for the second, but I didn't think there was much role-play opportunity in that. I made it that the second group was chasing the first. I also decided to tie it into a larger plot I had going about a kobold queen's quest to reclaim a whole host of dragon artifacts - the first group was working for her, and had stolen one of the artifacts from the second. This encounter went well - the first kobolds stumbled into the party camp, frightened out of their wits. The PCs parleyed, and ended up defending them from the second group. The first group managed to slip away during the conflict, much to the annoyance of the PCs! They'll be back, though...

The troll encounter I just played as a set-piece, combined with the terrain and the weather. With the rain and the high mountain road, it made for a pretty exciting encounter.

I suppose it depends upon the style of campaign you want to run, though. My home-brew is a pretty deadly place in terms of the wilderness, so I don't skimp on the random encounters. If you want the PCs to get where they're going quickly, don't use them much unless you can tie them into the ongoing scenario. And don't describe the wilderness too much - just a quick gloss over the major points. If you dwell on too much detail, the PCs will probably think there's a reason, and run off on a wild goose chase.

 

[deltadave]

Think about the things you look at when travelling... the road doesn't just go thru an empty wasteland. There are always fellow travellers and people living alongside the road. These are a good source of news, gossip and rumor. When they set camp, have it be at a wagon caravan camp, not to get their things stolen, but for protection and gossip. talk to the NPC's and be friendly to the PC's. it makes the world feel alive if there are events going on that the pc's aren't involved in.

Just be careful to remind the pc's that they are on a mission. If things sound more interesting elsewhere they will forget what they are doing and run off there unless you have a compelling reason for them to stick with their current task.

 

[gizmo33]

I suggest preparing ahead of time, and trying out the various suggestions in this post, in some form. For example, try a weather description and see if the players are bored or not. Between the variety of games I've played in/DMed, and the variety of suggestions in this post, I really believe that what is an "interesting" overland travel scenario is in the eyes of the beholder. Start with things that interest you.

As a general rule, I wouldn't try to simulate the boredom of uneventful overland travel. In fact, this goes as a general rule of DMing - IMO if you don't have anything interesting to say, move on. So "you get to the dungeon after two weeks of travel through the woods" is just dandy as far as I'm concerned. If your druid player's eyes light up at the prospect of talking to a squirrel about his life, then by all means, run these kinds of encounters. I guess you won't know until you try. Or you could ask players, but IME, they don't exactly know what will entertain them, they're showing up to your game to find out.

 

[Hand of Evil]

See some of the threads in this list: DM ADVICE

 

[LostSoul]

I might have some NPCs talk to the PCs, and ask them to meet later on at a spot that you want to showcase. One NPC might say, "Hey, I might have something interesting for you, meet me later at the bazaar." Another might invite the PCs out for a night of drinking and carousing.

This would be a good time to introduce NPCs that will show up later on, and to give PCs a view of the "bigger picture" - pass on rumours, politics, wars going on in another land, feelings towards other races, etc.

When you travel, you should just stick to the encounters. As they did in Lord of the Rings. Not every encounter has to be about combat, though. (I think that one of the big things missing in most games is role-playing down time, where PCs get a chance to develop their relationships.) You could describe how the Ranger or Druid kills a nice deer and everyone chows down. Or the PCs meet some pilgrims travelling to a holy temple, or refugees fleeing war or goblin raids. Or just a few quick lines about the weather.

Good luck!