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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7387502" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, lets just say that there was AT LEAST one PC (Gimli) who was QUITE well served in his interests by a more detailed exploration of Moria. Several scenes also developed various characters. Pipin made a fool of himself, Frodo was 'dead' for a while (testing the other characters), Gimli discovered the fate of Balin, Sam discovered a bold streak, they discovered the nature of Durin's Bane, Gandalf fell, Aragorn became the party leader. These were all fairly interesting scenes that certainly relate to these characters, have a close tie to the general campaign theme, etc. It was more than a journey. I would note, OTOH, that Tolkien equally skipped over the trip through Dunland which came right before Moria (and was 3x longer in time, and probably 100x longer in distance traveled). He merely touched up much of what the various PCs saw/did in Lothlorien as well. Later much of the travels of the 9 Walkers were summarized. Sometimes even parts where they faced significant danger, adversity, and in a few cases even outright fighting. Does travel through the Underdark involve serious risk? There is no answer to this question. Any answer is simply invented by whomever answers it, as there's no such thing as the Underdark, and most of what might live there is utterly fantastical and thus also made up. It is exactly as risky as is required to elicit the type of story that is wanted, no more, no less. This is true regardless of what story-telling technique you use. I mean, in D&D genre lore, the Underdark is a place which certainly contains a wide range of exceedingly deadly foes, and is usually thought of as a location for fairly high-level adventures. Moreover, drow, kuo-toa, duergar, etc. are generally held to exist there and be some of the more 'mundane' of the creatures to be found. That doesn't mean that every trek of 10 miles or even 50 miles is filled with actual danger. It seems to me that, in many cases, color could be created by explicating this danger somewhat. This could take the form of encountering the remains of unfortunate travelers, signs of powerful malevolent creatures, possibly even seeing such creatures, meeting other non-threatening travelers with tales of danger, etc. etc. etc. Obviously ACTUAL dangerous encounters, difficult/dangerous/deadly terrain, etc. is also a possibility, IF you want to spend more time on this element. That might be true if the players have evinced a desire to explore this region, if such an encounter serves some useful story purpose, etc. IN GENERAL when PCs have a destination with story significance in mind, there's little reason to fiddle around delaying them more than to describe what they see, and maybe require a check as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] did. Honestly I don't even go for the check stuff anymore. I just tell the players "You can spend a Vitality Point (HS) and reach your destination without further incident, or you can play out an SC to get there, but in that case failure might have bigger consequences."</blockquote>

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