Overland Travel for the Party

[Weeble]

How do you handle overland travel for your PCs? Do you follow everything in the DMG and PHB for this? Do you tend to just fastforward the PCs to their destination if your adventure doesn't have any random encounters or there is no random encounter table in a published module?

 

[Crothian]

I will have set random encounters if I thing it's needed. I never roll for random encounters in the game, that is all done before hand. And they can be missed, because they wondering giant is not always there. So, a party that is thinking can track and fing out he's around and avoid him or seek him out. Sometimes I'll have weather or none combat encounters. It really depends on the campaign and what is going on at the time. Some of the encounters I just sum up and don't role play out because they are either unimportant or routinue. I mention them to allow the PCs to know they didn't journey 500 miles without seeing anything.

 

[Artoomis]

The easiest (?) way to handle this is to to think about what happens to "regular" folks going the same way. Are they sometimes attacked by monsters or bandits? If so, the same could happen to the PCs. If not, then it should not be an issue for the PCs either.

I do not think you game should be ruled by dice, it should be ruled by you, the DM. If you think their should be an occasional "random" encounter - put some in. Add in true randomness if you want (it can be exciting for all concerned), but try not to let dice rule you game - most of the time it really is more fun if you don't.

 

[Vaxalon]

I preroll the encounters in monster-prone areas. In more civilized zones, I simply create interesting people for them to meet.