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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8342933" data-attributes="member: 42582">A lot of this seems to be about the burdens of convention.If the players spend a week of downtime in Greyhawk, the GM probably doesn't roll random encounters for every day of R&amp;R. So why roll encounters for every day of travel if the PCs spend a week journeying from Greyhawk to Urnst? Obviously in resource-based hexcrawls, there's an answer: the journey is not meant to be resource-expenditure free. But in 5e D&amp;D, where everyone knows that (on the standard rest sequence) a 1x/day encounter is likely to just be a nova-fest, why bother? I'm serious here - what reason is there, beyond fetishisation of the tradition of random encounters?There are other options too. Eg in Burning Wheel, maybe the journey is interesting enough that it's worth resolving - so the GM calls for an Orienteering check and if it fails then the PCs encounter some obstacle to their successful journeying. (In my case, this was the spring they were hoping to find in the foothills on the edge of the Bright Desert being spoiled, meaning that they had to make more endurance-type checks due to a lack of water.) In 4e D&amp;D a skill challenge can be used in the same sort of fashion.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8342933, member: 42582"] A lot of this seems to be about the burdens of convention. If the players spend a week of downtime in Greyhawk, the GM probably doesn't roll random encounters for every day of R&R. So why roll encounters for every day of travel if the PCs spend a week journeying from Greyhawk to Urnst? Obviously in resource-based hexcrawls, there's an answer: the journey is not meant to be resource-expenditure free. But in 5e D&D, where everyone knows that (on the standard rest sequence) a 1x/day encounter is likely to just be a nova-fest, why bother? I'm serious here - what reason is there, beyond fetishisation of the tradition of random encounters? There are other options too. Eg in Burning Wheel, maybe the journey is interesting enough that it's worth resolving - so the GM calls for an Orienteering check and [i]if it fails[/i] then the PCs encounter some obstacle to their successful journeying. (In my case, this was the spring they were hoping to find in the foothills on the edge of the Bright Desert being spoiled, meaning that they had to make more endurance-type checks due to a lack of water.) In 4e D&D a skill challenge can be used in the same sort of fashion. [/QUOTE]

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