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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quasqueton" data-source="post: 2469643" data-attributes="member: 3854">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</blockquote>

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