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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bullgrit" data-source="post: 5600917" data-attributes="member: 31216">Handwaving overland travel makes baby Farlanghan cry.When I DM overland travel, I use wandering monster rolls and charts. Generally:Roll for a wandering encounter 3 times for day, (morning, midday, evening), and 2 times for night. 1 in 6 chance of an encounter. Usually, if the traveling party gets an encounter, right after they finish it, (by defeating it or fleeing), I will roll once more to see if anything was attracted to the fight. It doesn't happen often, but occasionally, the party gets an immediate "follow up" encounter, and this is always interesting.If I roll no encounters for a day and night, the period passing at the game table in about 2 minutes. That's long enough to have the feeling of at least acknowledging that a game day has passed, but usually not long enough for Players to get bored.Basically, I like for overland travel to matter. I don't like skipping over a two-week journey. Skipping the journey makes the world seem less real, seem two-dimensional, only a painted backdrop.Sometimes wilderness encounters are easy for the PCs, sometimes they are hard, depending on the party's levels and the terrain/area of the campaign world.There are some PCs, (classes, builds), that shine in wilderness environments and wilderness encounters. I want them to feel useful. I don't want Players to think that only PCs designed for dungeon crawls are useful in my campaigns.Now, I know some Players totally aren't used to playing through overland travel. I have Players at my table who didn't bother buying food for a two-week trip. They were trained from previous DMs that travel is just given lip service. I remember one Player, who had just joined our group, had to bum food and water off the other PCs. We all had fun playing up the idea that he was having to sleep on the cold, hard ground because he didn't buy *any* gear for travel.I've also had Players who didn't think to just freakin' buy horses to make that week-long travel into just three days. They ended up getting twice as many wilderness encounters, and were at a disadvantage without good mobility during those encounters.In my opinion, a campaign that doesn't play through overland travel with overcoming outdoor obstacles and getting wilderness encounters, is only half a campaign. Just a two-dimensional campaign.Bullgrit</blockquote>

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