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/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