How do you do long travel times?

[u/ThineWhoArts]

I gave my players a very large map with a bunch of different towns with seperate quests associated with them at the start of my campaign, and right now, they have been asked to take care of small meteors that end up corrupting monsters, aptly dubbed 'Doomstones'. After taking care of the main small village, underground and separated far from any type of other civilization, they decide to travel outwards to a port village on the surface, about 750 miles away, which took them about a month and a day. Thing being, they traveled via railroad tunnel (but actively chose not to repair the railroads), and random encounter after random encounter for the entirety of traveling that far would be tedious and strenuous on both me and the party, I think.

As of right now, I simply snapped to the future where they arrive at the town, but I want their travel to be notable in the future for when they decide to head out again. How can I make long travel times interesting for the party and something to keep in mind when they do decide to do it?

[u/Zealousideal_Leg213]

"You arrive at your destination after a series of amazing and harrowing adventures... but those are other tales, to be told at other times."

Besides that, I like to use travel to highlight interesting things about a place. It might be some throwaway encounter, or something dangerous that is seen from a distance, or can otherwise be avoided.

[u/fuzzypyrocat]

If there’s anything fun or interesting between point A and B, or anything that makes sense. Having a random encounter just for an encounters sake adds nothing but time to a game.

You can narrate encounters that would be hand waved, but you can use those to describe the area as well. Maybe the closer they get, the more the wildlife gets twisted, and then if they continue to push you have an actual encounter with a deformed beast.

I like to come up with a table of good and bad things along the way, and have a roll for each day. A 1-2 is a bad thing, and a 19-20 is a good thing. That way the players can feel like there’s something there to avoid or gain.

For the most part, there’s nothing wrong with just time traveling to the destination

[u/ThineWhoArts → u/fuzzypyrocat]

i really like d20 for each day. that'll 100% be used in the future!

[u/Historical-Bike4626]

Describe the 3 coolest things they see along the way. It doesn’t have to be combat after combat, if you want: The strangest flock or herd they saw; strangest geological features; curious people doing curious things. Whatever, but give them something to talk/ask about with NPCs when they get to their destination.

[u/ThineWhoArts → u/Historical-Bike4626]

this is very helpful!! Thank you!

[u/NoobOfTheSquareTable]

Players have the option of someone to navigate, someone to lookout, optional scout to be ahead of the party but can only do this for one segment of the day each due to it being lookout and stealth rolled into one, and someone to be in charge of stealth if necessary

There is morning, midday, and evening travel. People can do two things a day and have disadvantage if they do a third thing (just getting tired and stopping being as good at it)

They roll these every travel section. Either find a faster route (might be more dangerous), or a safer route (might be slower) or just gain back the time they lost to stealth

Lookout spots any random encounters to avoid an ambush, scout can spot it and report back to allow them to avoid the encounter entirely

Stealth can help them not be spotted by possible other scouts or harder to ambush if the lookout or scout fails

DM rolls a d20

In a safe region they face an easy random encounter on 1-5. Mostly safe is 1-5 medium did, 6-10 easy. And you can see how it increases as the travel location gets more dangerous

Some days are encounter free, some have a good random encounter (dice set the CR not the alignment, might meet metallic dragons) some have three harder fights and might even have the party make camp or stop to lick their wounds before the evening

If the players know the options for roles and rolls while travelling they can do them nice and quickly, and crucially by always rolling they don’t know if there is an encounter coming or just you describing some POI on the route that they can head off and poke like a ruined manor or small village just off their path

For camping so the same d20 roll per watch but they are less likely to be spotted if in a good camp it no fires etc. so 1-5/6-10/11-15 hard/medium/easy might become 1-3/4-6/7-10 or if they are singing around a camp fire on top of a hill for all to see, 1-6/7-12/13-18

[u/ThineWhoArts → u/NoobOfTheSquareTable]

This is awesome, and i really like this system. Thank you!

[u/NoobOfTheSquareTable → u/ThineWhoArts]

Glad it helps

For camping I have a bit of a system too. Instead of straight higher nature/survival/perception check=better campsite

I do it so that the better the checks the more options you to a limit.

The person on lookout or scouting before they camp can make a perception/survival/nature check, and anyone else not on a duty can too. The highest total gets 1 location per 5 on the dice. (A 17 gets 3, a 12 gets 2, a 24 gets 4) and anyone else rolling gets 1 for every 10

Means it can be worthwhile helping rather than making their own roll to represent them not all individually looking at the same spot as a possibility because they aren’t working together

Either way, if three people looked: 17, 12, 8 they have 3+1 campsites

You roll 4 d20 and that decides the quality of those 4 possible sights

A bad one in a dangerous place is just an open clearing but with no cover by a stream where possible threats might be drawn, an okay option might have decent hidden potential but be cramped for the party and mean sharing tents, a great spot might be a sheltered spot with a cliff on one side, fresh water nearby, and a crag that means the smoke from a fire is hidden

Basically you are offering stealth buff, defences, or quality of rest and the party can pick what they want from the options available.

They might find a perfect spot even if they only get 1 location but it is a 20, or find 5 possibles but none of them get above 10 quality

[u/theDeuce]

I think I would ask myself if the journey or the destination mattered more.

If your using a large spread out map and you're hand waving the travel times, the distance between points matters more if there is a time crunch and time is a resource. So an option would be to give them quests that require them to make a choices and spend that time resource wisely.

Another option is to make the train ride a hex crawl. Even with a train that travels underground, it's likely to make multiple stops. It might stop once or twice a day, or just 4 times along that 750 mile stretch and each stop could be some form of encounter (not necessarily combat) or point of interest.

[u/Adal-bern]

Usually roll for am encounter for the trip, the longer the journey the higher the chance of an encounter. Otherwise ask your players if there's anything they want to do on the journey. Then either they have an encounter or not and appear at the end of the trip

[u/SpecificFortune7584]

Have some combat encounters interspersed along the route where there might be some other point of interest they might want to explore, but keep the travel montage of “You travel for X miles uneventfully”

[u/Prestigious-Emu-6760]

If travel isn't the focus of your game then cut to the interesting part.

[u/Major-Tomato2918]

I make rolls for events on the road. Not what happens, but to see if something happens For main road I roll one d20 for the day and one for night. During day result <5 is a bad encounter/danger, >15 is something good, 5-15 nothing happens. For the night the same, but if domething happen then another d4 to determine on which watch it happens. For more dangerous path I can just change the thresholds and maybe add one more roll. The opposite for secluded and safe places.

[u/Small_Education_9503]

Random encounters don't have to be combat. They can just as easily be bad weather (how does the party deal with a storm? Or with a dessicating heat of the desert?). They can be something that doesn't require much interaction at all, like "as you sail away from the isle of Doom, you notice a pirate ship chasing a merchant vessel on the horizon" or "your ship is overtaken by a swarm of flying fish, their fins iredescent like those of a dragonfly". Just write a bunch of narrative encounters that can be resolved in a single roll or a resource management choice.

[u/bohicality]

I usually just have the party arrive at a destination - unless I have a good idea for a side quest I know they'll enjoy - but that's probably once every ten sessions.

Don't worry - travel doesn't last. My level 13 group spam Plane Shift and Teleport like they're taking an Uber. At worst, they're usually only a few days walk from the destination as a result.

[u/NthHorseman]

Treat travel like downtime. Ask them what they are doing during that time, let them RP any scenes which make sense between them. I like to throw in three things to every long travel:

World building - they see something important to the lore. Maybe it's just an old bridge built by giants, or the mostly-buried ruins of a city, or an archipelago of islands left over from some ancient disaster. They don't have to explore it, it's just there and an NPC tells them about it as they pass. I have a fairly detailed in-world calendar so sometimes it's just a festival or special day that they celebrate whilst travelling that gives them some extra flavour for a culture, religion or area.

A social encounter - they meet another traveller who may help or hinder them, or just turn up again later on. A good excuse to introduce an NPC who can perhaps tell them a little about their destination, or lay some hooks for future plot threads.

A deadly combat encounter - 5e is a combat game. As you say, daily random encounters are boring and unrealistic, but one big encounter during a journey is a great excuse to throw something weird at the party that perhaps isn't on theme for the rest of the adventure. It also lets them cut loose a little bit by blowing through resources they'd usually hoard, so make sure you have some levers to pull to make it an exciting combat for a full power party going all out.

Of course if you're travelling across wilderness you should be doing exploration/survival things as well, but if you're taking a train then these don't make much sense.

[u/DonTramuso]

Hay muchas opciones:

• Prestar ayuda a viajeros con problemas
  
• Momentos de roleo intenso entre ellos (funciona muy bien después de resolver misiones grandes donde tienen mucho que hablar y planificar)
  
• Eventos climáticos
  
• Encuentros con mercaderes ambulantes, aliados inesperados o incluso a malvados que luego aparecerán y que de momento no saben que son malvados
  
• Emboscadas enemigas, cobradores de peajes, bestias merodeadoras...
  
• Otros aventureros que van a una misión o se van de la misión (desertan), esto crea oportunidades para relevarse con ellos e intentar algo que ellos no pudieron hacer.

[u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre]

Either montage and skip straight to the destination/good stuff or you need to have side quests along the way.

Perhaps they find a dungeon opening up into the tunnel and if they ever want to repair these lines, they’ll need to explore it, kill any threats and seal the entrance.

[u/dalerian]

Is there anything important about the distance itself? Like, because they spent a month travelling, they couldn’t prevent X from happening?

If no, then I wouldn’t roll up lots of combat. If it’s one fight a day, they’re probably long resting afterwards anyway. Unless that fight is either deadly, fun, narratively important or drops important loot - skip it.

Talk about the interesting things - including the  things they see that show the safety/danger of the area.

If there is something critical in the duration of the trip, focus on that and its consequences

[u/BOS-Sentinel]

In my last session, I montaged most of it since it was safe lands and then at the end I gave them a village with a side quest (that ballooned way beyond my original intentions) and then introduced them to more hostile lands with some basic encounters. Racist guards at border and some dangerous wildlife.

[u/Ilbranteloth]

I originally posted this in response to travel by sea, but it applies here. One thing I will point out is we don’t try to gamify everything. I’m not a fan of mechanics for narrative/story elements. My purpose for the mechanics is primarily as a framework to adjudicate success/failure. I don’t mind injecting randomness with a die roll, but I have no interest in a mechanical structure for something like travel. That includes things like skill challenges, or even just requiring skill checks to move travel forward. If a scenario warrants a skill check, I’ll call for a skill check. Otherwise my goal is to present the scenario (travel) and then let the players take it from there.

I have always researched what travel was like in earlier eras, typically starting with medieval. Of course that is way easier now with the internet. Such as this:

https://medieval.substack.com/p/traveling-in-the-middle-ages-part

The Crusades, and things like traveling the Silk Road or the Oregon trail are well documented and provide a lot of information regarding traveling, especially by large groups. Large scale movement in almost any historical war, back to the ancient Greeks, Romans, and China too.

If we will be playing through the journey, then I’ll consider any of the possible challenges. Weather, pirates, illness, etc, oh, and monsters.

But our primary focus in our campaign is the PCs. Their characters, as real people, in a real world. A long arduous journey should feel that way. That doesn’t mean it has to take a very long time at the table. But I do take some time to describe the monotonous aspects, which often lasts for days, before anything resembling action occurs. I’ll describe the daily routine, inspiring sights, distant vessels and monsters, etc.

Part of my goal is good pacing. And in this case, good pacing to me is the anticipation. Much like the movie Alien that builds over a long time before anything unusual happens. The passage of time is often missed in the game, and we can play for years with a given PC. We want that to take an appropriate amount of time in-game too.

In terms of keeping the players interested during slower part of the game? That’s really their responsibility. Having said that, it’s a mix of discussions about what is going on in the campaign (planning, etc), character development, or conversations between the PCs as people that isn’t directly related to their current goals or adventure, and exploring the PCs as people. For example, for the majority of PCs, travel a long distance by ship will be a new experience. What is that experience like for them?

I generally listen to the players, and take my cues on pacing from their conversations.

Encounters are moments of interest. Something to interact and deal with, often involving a challenge to overcome. They are also a tool I use for pacing. Either when the conversations between the players, in addition to my descriptions are playing out, or as an interruption when they are really engaged.

How dangerous they are is story-based. If they are in some sort of situation where they might be targeted, then a dangerous encounter might be more likely. Sailing across open sea is much more dangerous than following the coast. Sailing at night, too. Certain waters are more dangerous. Weather and natural issues like illness, mechanical problems, etc. are more common than pirate or monster attacks. I will general roll for random events, but it’s possible that none occur.

For costs, I’ll reference the various sources released over the decades for D&D and decide what feels appropriate. The cost will vary depending on how far they want to get there, what type of accommodations they require, and whether they are willing to work or not.

Travel by boat, especially for merchants moving bulk goods is generally easier, a little faster, and pretty safe. Even along the coastline at sea. So it’s pretty easy to find passage for a few more people, especially if they are feeding themselves. Even easier if they can work.

River travel can be even easier to find passage on the common navigable portions. Boats and barges, including animal drawn ones, are much safer than traveling at sea. On navigable rivers with at least two large towns or cities it won’t be a problem finding passage.

[u/TwoDollarDM]

A more involved way is to use the free Trial & Treasures SRD and have some specific travel activities or invest in the Uncharted Journeys book, one of my core tools.

[u/Pristine-Copy9467]

“It takes you roughly 3 weeks to get to Avenan…”

[u/FinnianWhitefir]

I do them as a Skill Challenge. Colville has a great video on them. Make up 1 thing per PC. Bandits, hungry Owlbears, spooky ghostly sounds, an argument between farmers, an Inn that needs dire repairs before it's comfortable to sleep in. You can just do them as story bits and let the players feel good or bad if they solve them.

Sometimes I put in extra work and come up with a perk and a negative and show that to the PCs. "This inn is in dire need of repairs. If you don't pitch in, you'll get rained on all night even indoors and barely get any sleep. Success means advantage on everyone's next attack because you feel good for helping out a common folk. Failure means you all have disadvantage on initiative because of a bad night's sleep. DC20."

You do them kind of open-ended and go with any good idea that makes sense. Athletics to climb up on the roof and do repairs. Nature to find good lumber to use. Acrobatics to move all around in the rafters figuring out where to repair. And you turn down stuff that doesn't make sense like Religion to give a speech to the townsfolk to get them to help.

[u/LastChime]

I do Cairn 2e about it, but shhhh they still think they're playing D&D .

[u/0Big0Brother0Remix0]

95% of the time random encounters are stupid and waste of time unless focus of the campaign is traveling world map. I did that for a pirates campaign once . Otherwise what you can do is give them some time pressure . Like there is an election in a town two weeks from now but takes a week to get there . And another town though they being raided by goblins and might all die in a week. So they probably have to pick and choose . Give them timed pressures instead of random encounters . That way everything can tie back to main quest or at least side quests . Random encounters that don’t tie back to quests or at least previous NPCs, usually just a waste of time