What makes a fantasy 'journey' truly epic?

[hong]

That's often hard to do in role-playing games if the players just see the journey as an interlude until they get to the real adventure.

"The journey is in the trip, not in the destination."

I said almost exactly the same thing to one of my players last session, and he replied, and I quote, "bloody Taoist crap". I have very down-to-earth players.

To the OP: so you want to make a long journey exciting? Exciting to who? I assume the answer is your players, since you probably already know how to make the journey exciting to yourself. And if that's the answer, then how you do it depends on what your players want.

Lo, again I pull out the 7 gamer types as listed by Robin Laws: powergamer, buttkicker, tactician, method actor, storyteller, specialist, and casual gamer. By considering what their emotional kicks are, you can decide how best to engage those kicks, and thus make the journey interesting. Let's forget about the casual gamer for now, because they're not really relevant to the question (anything you do will be fine by them).

Powergamer: wants to collect shiny new toys.
Buttkicker: wants lots of fights.
Tactician: wants to overcome challenges by using their brains.
Method actor: wants dramatic scenes that bring their defining character traits to the fore.
Storyteller: wants a coherent storyline, so that their actions make sense.
Specialist: wants to do whatever it is they specialise in.

Thus, the answer to your question depends on the makeup of your group.

Mostly powergamers: give them opportunities to collect treasure, level up, and basically grow in strength.

Mostly buttkickers: fights, and lots of them. Buttkickers and powergamers are easy to DM for.

Mostly tacticians: use environmental challenges -- snowstorms, getting lost, running out of food, etc. Make sure that any encounters you include have ways of evading them, and let the tactician try to figure them out.

Mostly method actors: encounters with NPCs that provide opportunities for character interaction. Moral dilemmas (should we execute the orcs we've just captured, should we burn the plague-infected village, etc) are great opportunities for method actors to shine.

Mostly storytellers: make sure any encounters you do include have some sort of link to each other, and the overall campaign goal. Storytellers hate random encounters, whose only discernible purpose is to mark time.

Mostly specialists: throw in encounters that let them do their thing. If you have a ninja, give him opportunities to sneak around and backstab people. If you have a knight, give him enemy knights who challenge him to duels. If you have a magic girl, give her chances to be ethereal and mysterious.

I wouldn't take Kengar's list too seriously. He's talking about how to make things interesting to the DM, and in particular, the stereotypical "low magic, keep the players hungry" DM. Since your players aren't DMing, it's irrelevant.

 

[mmadsen]

The people you meet along the way...

While I agree that interesting characters (often not people in the strict sense...) make for a good story, I'm trying to decide whether they make for a classic mythic journey.

I think that "snow-capped mountains, dark forests, shattered ruins, [and] raging rivers" seem more central to a mythic journey. The characters along the way are there to demonstrate how fantastic the setting is (much like the terrain).

 

[tonym]

If my character passed through an area that nobody in their right mind would pass through, I'd say 'that' part of the journey would be epic-like. Even if, afterwards, there were no battles to speak of.

Like crossing a vast toxic swamp capable of draining a little Constitution every day.

Or passing through a valley beneath an ancient Red Dragon's lair.




Tony M

 

[mmadsen]

What makes these journeys epic in feel isn't necessarily the distance traveled, it's the hardships and challenges that must be overcome. These challenges aren't all necessarily combat. Getting a useful piece of information from an NPC, locating a hidden path through the swamp, etc. The difficulty here is that these challengees are -- all too often -- simply resolved by a quick die roll.

Anyone have any suggestions for translating "snow-capped mountains, dark forests, shattered ruins, [and] raging rivers" into more than "a quick die roll"?

 

[hong]

Anyone have any suggestions for translating "snow-capped mountains, dark forests, shattered ruins, [and] raging rivers" into more than "a quick die roll"?

A random adjective table.

01-10 pristine
11-20 rearing
21-30 putrescent
31-40 shattered
41-50 forbidding
51-60 inopportune
61-70 concupiscent
71-80 intractable
81-90 retractable
91-95 timeless
95-98 infinitude
99-00 nigrescent


Hong "lo, the forbidding nigrescent retractable forest of DQQM!" Ooi

 

[LostSoul]

Anyone have any suggestions for translating "snow-capped mountains, dark forests, shattered ruins, [and] raging rivers" into more than "a quick die roll"?

Those obstacles, I think, are physical representations of emotional obstacles. Once you know the feeling that you want to get across to the players (and yourself), the encounter with the obstacle should write itself.

 

[hong]

Those obstacles, I think, are physical representations of emotional obstacles. Once you know the feeling that you want to get across to the players (and yourself), the encounter with the obstacle should write itself.

Hence the incredible utility of the random adjective table.


Hong "transcend your forbidding nigrescent retractable feelings of hate, young Skywalker!" Ooi

 

[fusangite]

For a journey to truly work as a memorable thing, the scenery and terrain should be made memorable. When I run long treks, I always make sure that the encounters reflect the landscape in a very specific way. For instance, my characters reached a lake full of flamingos; to make this relevant, the next monsters they met were flamingo-harpies who lived in a giant pink hut on stilts at the edge of the lake.

I find that linking terrain to encounters not just in a causal way but also in a thematic/aesthetic way helps.

 

[Schmoe]

This is a topic that definitely interests me. In my current campaign, the group is trekking across a vast wasteland on a quest to find the parts of an artifact. What I've found works to keeping the journey interesting is to treat the journey and the terrain as a backdrop for the adventures, that is, it should stay in the background.

Most books that you will read where characters undertake a great quest use the journey in the same way - the terrain is great for setting the mood and providing an inspiring mental picture, but it generally stays in the background. What makes the journey interesting are the adventures that the group has as they travel across the land, it's not necessarily the land itself. If you treat the journey as a series of obstacles that need to be overcome, it seems to relieve the tedium of "another day, another great view, and another wandering monster." As an example, here are some of the encounters I've placed along the way to keep my group occupied:

1. A group of gnolls who are thralls to a vampire that lairs in a ruined keep in the side of a mesa. The vampire spawn attack by night, by day the gnolls approach and try to arrange for the party to get rid of the vampire. They attack if the party refuses.

2. A widespread clash between two gnoll tribes. One tribe has found a way to transform themselves to ghouls ("Dead Eaters") upon their death, and that tribe is in the final stages of destroying the other tribe.

3. An ancient crypt, uncovered by erosion, that holds a fiendish terror to be unleashed by demonic forces when the time is ripe. If the party tries hard enough, they can open the crypt and unleash the terror themselves (most likely unwittingly).

4. A gnoll village, occupied entirely by females and children. Male warriors pass through, mate, and recruit young warriors. The village is ruled by a gnoll crone who can tell the PC's their fortunes, for a price.

5. The Valley of Kings, where the kings of the ancient Wystorian empire were buried in great tombs. A treasure map the party has uncovers the secret entrance to one of the tombs and leads to great treasure and a tragic, deadly family secret.

6. The Boneyards of the Devver-Na. The site of a climactic battle from the War of Ending hundreds of years ago. The party meets the Order of Silver Light, who have fortified themselves at the edge of the Boneyards and pledged to contain the undead horrors that lurk in the valley. In order to continue their quest, the party must find a way through or around the Boneyards, carefully weighing time versus risk (their quest is time-sensitive).

In between these "mini-adventures", the party had several random encounters, and they were constantly travelling, but the travel was in the background. The effect has been that the journey can be long enough to feel "epic" without becoming tedious. Each new adventure presents another challenge to the progress of the party.

Anyway, that's just one approach that I've been trying to use, and I am interested in hearing what others have to say.

While I'm at it, another thing that I've been toying with is including a sort of philosophical journey along with the physical. As the party comes across strange and foreign places and peoples, each has a lesson of sorts for the PC's to think about. It's definitely not heavy-handed, it's only there for the players to pick up on if they want to, but I'm hoping that by the time they reach their goal, what at first seemed to be a straightforward quest with a clear-cut goal will have much more significance and present some interesting philosophical dilemmas.

 

[Hammerhead]

Whatever you decide, make sure you plan this epic journey before the party gains access to teleportation. Once of sufficiently high level, the party has better things to do than to trampse around some dangerous wilderness and will just teleport.