Travel Time
We talked about game changing spells way back here, and we already did teleportation shenanigans in this one. So rather than rehashing old talking points about not skipping the epic journey, what say we dig into the other half of this equation?
Overland travel is tough to do right. You’ll see the issue come up in pirate games with ships, Marco Polo style caravan treks, and any game that involves bouncing around a regional map. For me, the difficulty lies in the difference between dungeon delving and open world exploration. When you’re dealing with a dungeon you have narrow corridors, discreet chambers, and easy-to-compartmentalize encounters. It makes a certain amount of sense for the goblin guards to be next to the pendulum trap to be next to the fiendish dire bear which is the beloved pet of the local goblin king who’s waiting in the throne room. It’s all there in one convenient location. So if you’re going for the classic “deplete the party’s resources through multiple encounters” style of play, that setup works a treat. But when you’re outside of the dungeon, and when you’re in a big open landscape without convenient corridors to lead from Encounter A to Encounter B, it becomes a lot tougher to justify a series of encounters.
I mean, imagine a sequence of dungeon-like misadventures coupled with a normal day of travel. You’re just trying to make the trek from The Shire over to Bree for a nice mug of Prancing Pony’s finest, but your poor party of rosy-cheeked country squires gets waylaid by a griffin attack, then highwaymen, then a grove of angry treants, and finally (for the sake of variety) a dangerous thunderstorm. That mess defies belief. Unfortunately, in a resource management game like D&D, you have to include a high frequency of challenges to make the system “work as intended.”
Now that said, there are plenty of gamers out there who have no interest in the “working as intended” bit, and are more than willing to do one big encounter per day. That’s fine conceptually, but it’s a bitch to deal with for a GM. If you’re only throwing one encounter per day, then the PCs are always going to be at full strength and max resources. Suddenly those big spells and once-per-day abilities rain down all at once. No matter how fat your wandering hill giant’s hp pool happens to be, the big lug won’t be able to compete.
So here’s my take. You can put up with the exploding giant issue, invent a mini game like Jade Regent’s caravan system, or simply run more roleplay-centric encounters during travel. But for all the mechanical issues at play, I think the one thing you don’t want to do is handwave travel time. This is your big chance to make the world feel vast and lived-in. Mechanical headaches or no, it’s worth putting in the effort to make that happen.
So how about the rest of you guys? How do you like to handle overland travel in your games? Any hints or tips? Favorite encounters? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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Was in a campaign log I read rather than a campaign I played, but one of the best ways I’ve seen travel done was in an E6 Pathfinder game, level 6 party (tgere was also a houserule serverely limiting flight) The premise was that chaos magic was running amuck in the material realm, causing dangerous mutations, a huge increase in monstrous creatures, and a generally unsafe world. The PCs hailed from an island that was protected from the chaos outside by a magical barrier. Unfortunately the barrier was going to collapse soon, and the PCs had to get a replacement power source and return to the island within 30 days.
This setup is simply brilliant in terms of a travel campaign, and if I were to run one I would do something similar. First, the chaos magic, which not only explains why you are frequently facing tough and seemingly unrelated encounters but also gives an excuse to have some truly bizarre villages and societies for the players to stumble on (one for example was a lamia in charge of some grippli who would only give the players passage through her swamp if they helped deal with a giant awakened crocodile. And because it’s max level E6, not only do you not have to worry about some of the higher level abilities like teleport ruining your travellogue, but the players know they are peaked in their power, and since they have to make a return trip too they also have to contend with any enemies they’ve made who are expecting them and can’t just mow them over from getting to higher levels since they last met.
The time crunch also makes the players very conscious of managing their resources and picking their route. Do they want to go through the aptly named trollmoors or add three days to their journey by hiking the safer mountains around it? Are they sure they want to burn a fireball on the bugbears, or should they save it so they can march a bit farther without stopping to rest and have some strong resources in case of another fight? The players start regulating their abilities much more to get the most out of every last hitpoint and spellslot so they can travel just a bit longer between rests. The players are also much more conscious of their surroundings both on the lookout for danger and looking for things to keep note of that will make their return trip easier.
Soooo, basically you played the first Fallout game, only in a fantasy setting?
My desire to play an E6 game has increased.
Any thoughts on the E6 vs E8 debate?
I’m open to both but personally prefer E6. One reason is full BAB classes are the only ones who get that second attack, making them feel the most martial and prime warriors. E6 also allows a single level in most prestige classes, just enough to dip into their power without unlocking a lot if the strong stuff. Another reason is that 7th is when 4th level spells come online such as scry that can be a bit if a headache to deal with. I prefer to instead have a lot of the nifty 7th level class feagures available as feats.
Nice. I’m thinking about giving it a try for my next campaign.
Huh… A thought just occurred. Are there any E6 adventure paths out there? Because if not, that might be a market space that I could fill…
I’m not away of any, and that would be an awesome niche to see filled.
My respect for Wizard has increased.
The tenacity of the parasites clinging to your toes fills you with determination!
Wizard is a true role player. No way he’s going to miss a chance at hardship:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/drama
I got bored with running flat combat encounters during overland travel. If you ever play at my table, rest assured that the number of “Fight 1dX Monsters” encounters during travel will be next to none. Instead, as you mentioned, i’ll focus more on roleplaying encounters. I think i’ve shared some of my better ones here already, though.
Instead, I’ll talk about a travel moment we had recently that I had mixed feelings about.
In a current campaign, we had just acquired an airship, and were attempting to get it back home to fix it up and make ourselves its proper owners. Airships are a particular trope that I am rather fond of, so this made me rather pleased! The airship appeared to be in functioning order, so we settled in for our trip back.
However, the ship did turn out to be missing one rather important part: the trapped elemental that serves as its power source. Without it, the airship would only limp along on backup magic power at speeds so slow it was like driving a car that could only idle. This led to a very long period of downtime during the travel.
Our DM gave us the opportunity to RP amongst ourselves, which is something I very much support. We did, a little, but our party dynamic was off to a rocky start and so we didn’t have a whole lot of words to say to one another at that particular moment. We exchanged what words needed to be exchanged, and then that was that. We settled in to fast-track the rest of the slow travel time. But… the DM didn’t really let us do that. It continued to drag on, and he continued to turn it over to us to RP.
Unsure what to do, we attempted a little more RP we could, but there was really nothing left to say. I’m not 100% certain that the other players were getting bored at that point, but it seemed like it, and I sure was. When we were finally ambushed by sky pirates or whatever they were, I had already fairly well lost focus. In fact, I welcomed anything bad that happened in that encounter simply to relieve the tedium.
The reason I have mixed feelings here is because the DM did a lot of things right!
* The tedium of limping home an airship was certainly conveyed.
* It gave us motivation to fix our airship, and the trapped elemental will assuredly require a quest.
* A new party was encouraged to RP.
But overall, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as i’d like to have. I think that might partly be our fault as players, or even as characters; I think a party that had already meshed together would have found better ways to spend the otherwise dull travel time.
I think this is a good example of that whole “sandbox/railroad loop” we talked about back here:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/railroad
You were into the setting. You liked the ‘plenty of down time to RP’ aspect. But there was nothing to kickstart an interesting interaction.
You might recall that I’ve got my own flying islands / dragon riders campaign currently going. I made certain to include noncombat airship encounters to spice up travel time. This included stuff like fishing for migrating “luft eels,” dealing with a colorful crew of pleasure boat dandies who got shanghaied into helping the heroes, and a VIP noble on board who the PCs got to tease. None of this was groundbreaking stuff, but it was interesting enough that my PCs wanted to interact with it.
In my mind, it’s the difference between providing prompts for an improv exercise versus asking actors to begin a scene cold. It’s not impossible to make a great scene from scratch, but it’s one whole hell of a lot harder.
>dragon riders
Please tell me more.
Humor aside I’m a DM where there’s a nation led by a dragon emperor and dragons are everywhere (A lot of them are his kids.). I’ve considered that some of them might be willing to fly people to places for a *modest* fee with the price varying depending how far and important; knowing someone who’s done something similar would be appreciated to get a better idea.
Well hey, I’m flattered by the interest. For my dragon rider campaign, I decided to give every player two PCs so that everyone could each have a dragon and a rider. The plan was to let them pick at the beginning of each session which one they’d like to play. If I had it to do over, I think I’d have made ’em pick one or the other. That way they could have actually interacted with their partners more often.
Anywho, I used this to keep dragon PCs in line with the other PCs’ power level: http://paizo.com/products/btpy98db?In-the-Company-of-Dragons
Here’s a copy + paste from my 1st session notes.
**Intro: “The Arc de Vol”**
The Speech
“Fall in!” The order comes at a shout from Marrok Salvage, captain of the dragoneers. He’s a man of middle years, red faced, grey at the temples, and your tormentor this past month. Yet as you line up at attention, it is not Marrok who addresses you.
“You’ve done your country proud already. Every one of you has earned the right to stand here today.” Despoena Salvage paces before you, bright bronze in the rising sun. Her tail flicks out, adjusting her husband’s tabard in passing. “You have demonstrated your skill at arms, precision in maneuvers, and each of you…” (her eye lingers for a moment upon you, L–) “…an indisputable loyalty to king and country. However, before you are admitted to the storied ranks of the Dragoneers, there is one final rite of passage. As your names are called, stand forward.”
*Call out Dragon/Rider pairs. Allow players to introduce themselves*
“Your officers have watched you these past weeks, and the Corps has paired you according to ability. To temperament. To chemistry. There are no humans in the Dragoneers. No dragons. There are only partners. It is your honor to serve together, fight together, and if the Corps requires it of you, die together. But you are not dragoneers yet. If you wish to remove those cadet’s rings upon your forefingers, you must first learn to fly together.”
The dragonesse tilts her chin towards a crumbling arch of stone, a doorway at the edge of the gaping Faille de Tourbillon.
Marrok turns his gaze towards the dragons first, “Most dragons of your size cannot carry a full grown man. But you are not most dragons. Today, you will find the strength to lift your riders.” And to the humans: “Dragons are proud creatures. Believe me, I should know. If you would prove yourselves worthy of your mounts, you will show courage. Most importantly, you will all remember this: fly back together. If you do not fly back together, you will not become dragoneers.
“This is the Arc de Vol. Your path to the Corps lies through here. Right then. Humans first. Dragons will wait for the count of three.”
To the humans: You fall. The wind whips madly around your ears. The Faille de Tourbillon is a blurr, the sky a dwindling ribbon of blue…and those three seconds seems like an eternity
To the dragons: Marrock counts, “1…2…I say ma petite, do you remember when we did this? It seemed like an eternity before you came for me.” “Hmph. I remember your screams.” Despoena laughs. So does Marrock, but his eyes have no humor. They are specks of flint focused on you dragons. Fractions of seconds tick by. What do you do?
“Three!”
[Those cadet rings were one-time use feather fall items, and the humans had to hike up from the bottom of this bottomless fault line while the dragons searched for them. My players were suitably freaked out when they realized they’d have to go sky diving without parachutes. Good times.]
Why Wizard doesn’t have Prestidigitation enabled and active is beyond me, personally. I enjoy the dignity of wielding the Power Arcane and, on occasion, lording it over the poor Clerics who have no access to such physical comforts brought on by my years of intense and diligent study to the underpinnings of the universe.
But as far as overland travel goes, my DMs have been very good with it. Most recently, travel to anywhere at -all- is horribly dangerous, to the point where my wizard sacrificed a literal pound of flesh to bargain with the corruptive spirits and wraiths that populated the countryside for otherwise unharmed passage. He thinks. He might well have traveled safely and, in a fit of madness, burned a chunk of precious muscle on a brass plate in his inn room after having arrived perfectly unharmed. He has his suspicions that both scenarios are true.
One of my DM friends likes to say that, in a proper fantasy world, everyone would take at least one level of cleric or wizard for access to quality of life spells. I mean, if you’re a soldier on campaign, you’re going to want endure elements or create water or whatever. It would take an awfully ascetic-minded type to refuse that stuff.
In the case of Wizard, he allows himself to remain filthy because it “adds dramatic effect.”
Well, he’s not wrong. It’s like leaving scars as a reminder of past glory, albeit slightly more transient and Thief probably doesn’t want her bed buddy muddy.
I suspect you enjoyed a sensible chuckle while typing the phrase “bed buddy muddy.”
I‘d like to think that not everyone in the fantasy world has the choice of class.
PC heros have the choice,
NPC heros got lucky,
NPC mooks were evil PC heros in a previous life.
The wheel of reincarnation hates murderhoboes. Eventually you’re dung beetle #212/2000 in the swarm, and you’re the first one taking fireball damage.
Yeah, I hate handwaving travel time on the player’s side of things. Not because I’m missing out on neat travel encounters that flesh out the world, though those are nice to. But because I actually want to have some time to roleplay with other characters outside of in the middle of battle or in a building. Which is made all the more important because GMs will sometimes not actually give you a real opportunity to stop the action in a given day to do any real roleplaying at all. They just assume you want to cut from action scene to action scene.
As a GM I try to keep my inclinations as a player in mind. Though I will still sometimes skip the travel time if it’s nothing the characters haven’t seen before and I’m rather excited for the next upcoming bit. Of course my players have absolutely no problem stopping the action and roleplaying wherever they like even if I’m going “wait no, not NOW! I want you to encounter the thing right around the next corner!” in my head.
But as for stuff that’s thrown at them during travel, I like to do a mix. Sometimes it’s just character interaction roleplaying time, sometimes it’s random NPC traveler going to other way time, sometimes it’s a non-combat encounter of some kind, sometimes it’s a big encounter, sometimes it is an improbable series of encounters (because…. Mondays), and sometimes it’s just a little combat encounter and a little of something else. Because there’s really no rule that says every day actually needs to be an “expend all your resources” day.
That’s a good note. I think I’m guilty of this, mostly because I chafe under those GMs who only manage to fit half an encounter into a full session of “not much happened.” Still, I’ve probably gone too far the other way a time or two, so it’s nice to see that concern articulated.
Gotta be careful with Jade Regent, I hear. If half of the complaints about the caravan rules are true, then it’ll turn into a furnace powered by the party’s gold and tears:
http://designofdragons.blogspot.com/2016/04/death-dysentery-on-minkai-trail.html
But yeah. Traveling campaigns. I’ve been toying with this idea for a “mad max but with horses” idea for a post-apoc Golarion. The worldwound has overtaken the world. Natural resources are scarce. The moon has been replaced with the visage of Groteus, meaning the night is made dangerous by viscous “moonstorms” that drive you to madness or worse.
Still have to work out the details of travel, but I’m toying with a variation of the Chase rules that feels less like making love to a rusty cheese grater and more like… well, like Fury Road With Horses.
Funny story. It wasn’t the caravan rules that caused us to ditch the Jade Regent path. It had more to do with the relationship rules. You may recall this story:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/boring-origin-story
Still, I like that the caravan stuff exists as a pseudo random encounter table. Keep the flavor, but turn the caravan encounters into actual encounters. That was my strategy on the way to Brinewall anyway. Whether that could have sustained my group through an entire adventure path, I’m afraid I’ll never know.
As for your (wicked awesome) idea, you might wait for Starfinder to get some ideas. I have a suspicion that they’ll have more advanced vehicle rules. There’s also this thing I worked on, and I know that it’s got a vehicle system:
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/153361/Veranthea-Codex
Heck, I wrote up a literal “ogres on a motorcycles in the not-Thunderdome” setting, so you know it’s going to have the right flavor.
There is the pretty straightforward method of upping the CR or numbers. I mean if 20 goblins aren’t a challenge when the party is rested a band of 20 goblin rogues, rangers, druids, wizards and, for good measure, ninjas might do the trick.
Alternatively, the party doesn’t need to look for the plot hook. You could have the plot hook find them. It could be in the form of enemies or just worldbuilding RP. My favorite is both – namely I use these travel-time “random” encounters for introducing opposing factions and seeing which one the party is likely to side with.
Well yeah. The 20 goblin rogues might be a solid challenge for even a rested party. But the real issue with “one big encounter per day” gets us into the whole martial / caster disparity conundrum (which probably deserves its own comic and discussion). What I’ll say at this point is that martial / caster disparity becomes an even bigger issue when the caster can afford to unload all the finest in high-level spells for every single encounter. It’s the reason that I shy away from “one big encounter” design, even though single encounters are usually more dramatically appropriate.
Love your point about worldbuilding through combat though. There’s only so much time you get at the table, and a great deal of it is going to include rolling dice and hitting monsters. Why shouldn’t those encounters do some character development, worldbuilding, or thematic work for you as well?
There”s Adventure, and there”s slogging through stuff. Our GM once was mighty miffed, when, five minutes into the session, our party arrived at the edge of a swamp and did this: We stood on a rise, and could see the swamp going on for miles and miles. And on the other side the mountains that we neede to go to. None of us was looking forward to having to enter, and then slogging through it. So one of us had an ideae: Guys, I have the ability to change into a dragon. I’ll just do that, and we can then fly over this swamp, to the other side. So we did. After which the GM called it a day, as he had spent a lot of time mapping out the swamp, and preparing for all the encounters in it, expecting us to take at least two to three sessions to cross it….
So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starv’d ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers—as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You ’d think: fuck it, I’ll just be a dragon.
I try to make challenges in long-distance travel RP based, but there are a few die rolls thrown in to give the players some greater sense of agency. But the grinding “resource depletion” of slogging it through inclement terrain with limited resources is very real! My players should not be surprised to reach the next town with a few fatigue levels and nothing in their tucker bags.
It helps that in real life, hiking is my jam – alongside storytelling, of course. I’ll actually go out there and scramble up cliffs and down gullies, ford rivers and cut my way through thorn walls. And walk all day with the necessary kit to keep myself alive for several days without replenishment. I can’t hunt, unfortunately, but that’s about the only part I haven’t tried. I find that being intimately aquainted with the rigours of overland travel helps in bringing such scenes to life in game.
I joke that I am “IRL Ranger”. Only I don’t have an animal companion. I live in Australia these days, and while our wildlife still doesn’t reach American standards of lethality, it’s still not to be messed with!
I am more familiar with the opposite stereotype: https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/01/17/everything-in-australia-wants-to-kill-you-in-this-order_a_21657021/
A popular myth, it’s true, but totally baseless. Probably originated with the likes of Paul Hogan and Steve Irwin, and popularised by lots of Aussies as a running joke since.
But while we may have a higher density of poisonous snakes/octupi/jellyfish than America, they’re generally shy little blighters and their flight instinct is much stronger than their bite instinct. A lot of them even opt not to inject lethal poison when they bite people who threaten them – they save it for hunting. The big danger is that you startle a snake by accident when it’s to close to run away from you.
All the other so called killer creatures – including the kangaroos and cassowaries – are actually easily frightened of humans, with good reason, and never attack unless you go to a great length (in ignorance or stupidity) to upset them. We have only two animals that actively predate on humans – sharks and crocs – and since their hunting is purely aquatic attacks are rare. We simply don’t have anything like a bear or mountain lion, so overland travel is very safe provided you look where you put your feet!
Sure, Australian nature isn’t childproofed like New Zealand’s is; the bush is full of bitey bugs and prickly plants; it’s got a much harsher climate than most of the US and you’re harder pressed for food and water; but the animals are really a gentle lot.
What about the drop bears though? I don’t want eggs implanted in my liver.
Oh, well then, just look carefully at the canopy of any given gum tree before walking beneath it. If you see a bulbous grey mass improbably placed on one of the upper branches, you know to avoid it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
As a rule of thumb, I will describe towns and cities of civilized countries to actually be sensible distances to travel towards, with reasonable amounts of farms and small farming settlements along the way and along the river. Because someone has got to feed thousands of people in the city and I hate the lazy excuse of “magic, I don’t have to explain shit”.
In the same vein, as long as the characters are in ‘civilized’ space, they will rarely be ambushed at night if they even decide to make camp outside, instead of asking any number of farms or settlements if they can sleep in a barn, like travellers would.
In addition, I will make my own combat encounters, fitting for where they are travelling. Random combat encounter tables are a scourge upon this world and need to be thrown out a window along with alignments.
I don’t want the group to be fighting just for the sake of fighting in a white box, where one party is just trying to kill the other and as soon as one is obliterated combat is done and it gets to looting. This should be done sparingly, in my own, personal opinion.
If the party isn’t fighting for a goal, to further an intertwined story, it is just as tedious as just sitting in a car on the road travelling with no entertainment.
I do something similar, most of my cities and towns have literally hours of travel through farmlands before you reach the rough areas. The capital city alone has three entire days of farmlands and interconnected roads. Fifteen hours by foot, or four-ish by carriage, and you can go from the capital to one of the outlying towns. Sprinkled throughout the area are small hamlets of 3-7 families, or villages of up to 150 people. The towns might have 600-1000 people, and the capital might be at around 4k-10k population. This results in it covering a massive area, with a well developed and patrolled system of roads that takes a full day to transit through while mounted. This gives my party some downtime to craft, as well as an explanation as to why most of the wilder regions are empty of people. They’re dangerous, and the average person has the good sense to hang out in groups larger than six.
On alignment, I also agree. I absolutely loathe the Paladin/Anti-Paladin split. A defense/offense split would make way more sense. “Temple Guardian” would have lots of defensive buffs and auras from Paladin, as well as keeping smite evil for a touch of offense. “Crusader Knight” would be the offensive variant, following his greatsword attacks up with a lowest attack bonus iterative attack with his lay on hands screaming “Burn the disbeliever!” As long as everybody follows the right religious doctrine, there is not a major difference between good/evil and defense/offense.
I’ve also had bad luck with GMs actually enforcing alignment shifts. We were entering a temple and there were numerous warning plaques on the doors stating that “all who enter here are blessed with the power of chaos”. The party saw the cracked wall to the side, and the GM said “You’re pretty sure you could enter the temple through the wall here, but the creation of a large entrance would be loud.” We went through the door, because we’re a bunch of sneaky do-gooders, and after about two rooms, we get into a fight. Our Monk has lost his shiny powers, due to his alignment shift from Lawful Neutral to TN, and our cleric did the same. When you’ve lost your frontline, and your healer due to not realizing what the signs were actually saying, and you’re going up against a Mythic 7 opponent and his Mythic 1-3 goonies in order to snag that wonderful Mythic Rank 5 for yourselves, you’re going to have a bad time.
When it comes to random encounter tables, I actually disagree. I think that if you’re resting in the wilds some degree of randomness should be encouraged, and random encounter tables give a GM easy options to generate opponents without a ton of work. Sure, that random owlbear or group of tribal gnolls might be a “waste of time” but I make sure that they’re camped out at or near the quest location, encouraging players to move on. I also sometimes place a “random encounter” on the way out of a dungeon, with the party laden with loot and low on spells and abilities due to just completing a dungeon, and the locals have come to investigate the noise. I’ve had random encounters IN dungeons, where enemies will fall in through the ceiling, take some fall and bludgeoning damage, and combat begins with a group of bandits towing some poor NPC’s life savings in a chest that they had been dragging. Random encounter tables are great to create an IDEA of what could be in an area, and then I can tailor an encounter from there.
The greatest monster of them all.
Having nobody in the party with Knowledge (geography).
At some point, you’ve got to decided if dropping a skill point is more expensive than hiring a shifty goblin guide.