They are approaching the adventure and plot so sloooooowly

[Rel]

For those suggesting simply "cutting to the chase", I think that's fine if the players are directionless and bored. But I also think that sometimes established background for the campaign world pushes the GM toward postponing what he thought was going to be the adventure for something else. And sometimes it's just fun to let the PC's go in an unexpected direction.

If Quasqueton has established that the overland route between point A and point B is frought with danger or has interesting points along the way then it seems a bit of a shame to just say, "Ok, time passes and you're there..." Instead I think he's done an admirable thing by putting aside his expectations to meet what he seems to think the player's expectations are.

I say that if the PC's take an unexpected turn that one of the worst things you can do is to "force them back on track". That's the very definition of Railroading. Instead, you try to make wherever they DO go full of adventure and excitement.

As a sort of weak example, I'll take what happened in my last session: The party was asked to explore the ruins on Oaktop Hill, a dangerous place where previous groups have not returned from. They went there and discovered the ruins of an old, collapsed lighthouse, guarded by an evil Treant. They managed to defeat him and set about searching the lighthouse, which I had planned as a very simple, small scale ruin. The players clearly expected something more extensive and stated their willingness to search beneath the rubble to try and find an entrance to the catacombs they were sure lay beneath. That's how the session ended.

Now I had planned nothing of the sort and was all set for the group to move onto another adventure in a nearby valley. But then I figured, what the hell, this is as good a place as any to expand the adventure a little. And so I'm now planning on them finding a small dungeon beneath the place that will let me foreshadow some events they'll run into later in the campaign.

With that said, if they had encountered and defeated the Treant and begun searching the ruins earlier in the session, I would probably not have done this. I am ok at coming up with stuff on the fly but not an entire mini-dungeon. But since I've got the time between sessions to work on it and it will only enhance later events in the campaign, I'm happy to do it.

 

[William_2]

When i want my players into the meat of an adventure without a long ardous trip, I do it 1E style:
"After a long ardous trip, you find yourselves standing before the imposing gates of the Black Vault of Kerarn. What do you do?"
Nuff said!

I agree with this whole-heartedly – this was the way to go in your situation. Have done it many times. Maybe spice it up with “You travel uneventfully for 30 days…on day 31, a Landshark attacks!” Resolve encounter. “After 29 more uneventful days of camping, you arrive at yada yada…”
Unless the actual adventure itself is about the trip, I say skip the travel. As a player, if I suspect a session is going to be traveling, facing random encounters (always fully rested), foraging, etc., I give it a miss…


The perspective of the post above this one has lots of merit too, though.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I've been sitting on a plot hook for two years,

I know your pain. I gave my party a magic axe named the Key of O'Tarr that had, surprise, a key hidden in it. A six-party group including a rogue, a rogue/bard, a ranger/druid with high spot/search skills and NONE of them would so much as look in the direction of the axe. The MAGE ended up weilding it!

When I described the axe it was "a mithral axe head reminiscent of a fire axe, with mithral spiraling down the long duskwood handle. A dull, iron staple appears embedded in the end of the handle." You'd think once would say "hmmm, wonder why' there's an iron staple on a mithral-headed axe?"

It was more than 2 years they carted that blasted thing around until I finally managed to get them to say "You knew O'Tarr? We've got his axe!" to an NPC who would notice the staple and pull out the key. The key, btw, went to an odd door they encountered during the first session! I was at least rewarded with the rogue's eyes lighting up as bounced up and down in recognition.

 

[Quasqueton]

For my games, I roll for encounters and weather. "Playing out" a day doesn't really take much time, and I've asked the Players to let me know if they get bored with it. They tell me they like the way I do it.

I like to play out the travel time for a few reasons:

1. It gives a sense of the effort and time to get from point A to point B. Glossing over two months travel time through wild, unmapped land just seems anti-interesting.

2. It lets the terrain obstacles and weather events mean something. Traveling through the desert feels very different than traveling through the jungle. I want the PC and Players to *know* they are traveling in a desert.

3. It makes the Players consider taking a shorter route, as their PCs probably would/should in game.

4. It gives me a chance to feature monsters that they probably wouldn't see if all they did was dungeon delves. There are monsters and stuff that really only make sense or feel right in a wilderness encounter scenario.

5. It lets the druids, mounted paladins, rangers, etc. use their abilities. Even if the whole campaign is just dungeon after dungeon, or city after city, the travel time in between lets the "other half" show off their abilities.

6. It lets spells like teleport, windwalk, etc. actually *mean* something tangible. "Wow, it took us two months to get here, but now that you're 9th level, we can get back to Big City in a moment."

7. From my earliest days of D&D, I've always loved the feel of overland travel, mapping the terrain, getting lost, etc. Think Isle of Dread on a continental scale. D&D is, to me, all about exploring.

8. It also lets the Players have some time to play their characters just among themselves.

The PCs in my campaign gained a level during the 60+ day trek. They also said they are *not* walking back to the city -- the "ship-hater" who insisted on land travel has already changed her mind about it (in character - saying how much she has come to hate the jungle). They were one day from running out of food and having to live off the land --and they had no wilderness-type character, and no cleric. In the 60+ days, they had about 10-12 monster encounters with 6 or 8 different beasts. They probably would never encounter those creatures otherwise.

I played as a PC in another campaign a while back (completely different game group) that had us travel from a city under seige by an undead army to a small fortified town. The wilderness between was crawling with undead. We played out every day (~14?), always on the look out for undead beasties, and sometimes fighting them off. When we got to our destination, we were really ready to get out of that wilderness. I loved it. Playing out that travel time really set the mood for the campaign.

Quasqueton

 

[Joshua Randall]

Q -- you love the exploration aspect of D&D, but not all of your players may feel the same way. (Cf. the DMG II for an interesting discussion of different player desires.)

Even though they've said your way of doing things is okay -- they might have just said that to be agreeable to to avoid hurting your feelings.

I think it would be fine to experiment with glossing over the trip details. You could either narrate or send an e-mail decribing the harsh conditions, the lack of food, the frequent attacks by wild animals, etc. Let the players' imagination fill in the details.

 

[Quasqueton]

Q -- you love the exploration aspect of D&D, but not all of your players may feel the same way. (Cf. the DMG II for an interesting discussion of different player desires.)

Even though they've said your way of doing things is okay -- they might have just said that to be agreeable to to avoid hurting your feelings.

I think it would be fine to experiment with glossing over the trip details. You could either narrate or send an e-mail decribing the harsh conditions, the lack of food, the frequent attacks by wild animals, etc. Let the players' imagination fill in the details.

Well, I've asked them directly. More than once. And they say they like this. Because I regularly ask what they think and how they like the game, I assume they tell me the truth (and they've been showing up to my games for over 2 years like this).

If I assume they are lying to me just to be "agreeable", and I change to the zip-through method, what if they aren't lying to me? And they don't like the zip-through, but they don't tell me to be "agreeable"? In a game group, I'd rather err on the side of assuming my fellows are telling me the truth about what they like and don't like, than to second guess them and do something that none of us like.

They lost two mounts on the journey (a horse and a dog), and almost lost a PC. When they arrived at the base town, several folks were amazed that they took the overland route, saying no one had ever done it before. It became an adventure of its own, with bragging rights at the end.

Quasqueton

 

[Rel]

Even though they've said your way of doing things is okay -- they might have just said that to be agreeable to to avoid hurting your feelings.

This could well be the case, Joshua, but I've got to say that if you ask the players a direct question ("Do you like the way that overland travel and encounters are handled?") and they give a direct answer ("Yes we do. In fact we're even opting to take a longer route to have MORE overland travel.") then I'm pretty unsympathetic to their dissatisfaction. I'm a GM, not a mind reader and I suspect that Quasqueton feels the same.

If the GM runs the game a certain way that you don't like based on your own faulty feedback then you've got nobody to blame but yourself.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

You may be doing this, but one thing you might consider is giving them a more clear cut view of methods of getting from A to B. Did they consider the 15 day ship voyage and choose to go over land for a practical reason, or did the players just not think about it? That can happen sometimes. Sometimes the DM needs to be a little more active in outlining the players options.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

There is also a factor of how often the group gathers..

I have a once a month game, the best I can stir up at the moment. 30 days between 6 hour sessions makes it very difficult for me to pace out any lengthy plot line. Most of the 'dungeons' we have completed took 2 or 3 sessions. Its hard for them to remember what encounters they had, let alone slyly hinted foreshadowings of the metaplot line to come. {starting Deserts of Desolation soon... }

This next session I am faced with almost the same problem. The mission the team accepted in in the Shadow Marches, a bit of travel from Ringbriar in Breland.. and with some cool places to see in between. This is our first Eberron game so I want to showcase the variety and history built into the setting... *but* I know that if I run the travel there in any detail, I will end up having to remind everyone why they are in the swamps in a month or so.

My plan is to pre-script the travel and run a highlight reel, possibly with a 'random' encounter midway to clarify the hazards of walking about the country. However, I want to be able to finish off the module in one session.. and it has 5 combat encounters. Thats a hell of alot of combat for a 6 hour game. At most split into 2 sessions, as there are two distinct parts to the module.

Anyway.. I hope your game comes out well.. and the big key is having fun anyway!

Have a great day!

 

[Quasqueton]

You may be doing this, but one thing you might consider is giving them a more clear cut view of methods of getting from A to B. Did they consider the 15 day ship voyage and choose to go over land for a practical reason, or did the players just not think about it? That can happen sometimes. Sometimes the DM needs to be a little more active in outlining the players options.

In this case, it was a definite choice to not take the ship route. One of the PCs has a strong aversion to sea travel.

The PC is a sorcerer (high Charisma), and their first adventure was an "incident" on a ship. Since then they have traveled by ship twice, both times no longer than 2 days there and 2 days back. She put her foot down at 15 days by ship.

* * *

It's kind of weird how any thread I start about my game gets into a discussion of how I'm probably a bad DM.

Heck, I wasn't even really *complaining* about my Players or my game. Just a humorous scenario that sometimes plagues DMs.

Quasqueton