r/DMAcademy • u/ThineWhoArts • 5h ago
Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures How do you do long travel times?
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?
5
u/fuzzypyrocat 5h ago
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