D&D Ideas — Travel

5E D&D travel out of the box kim van deun

D&D Ideas — Travel

December 22, 2019

Dungeons & Dragons/ Editorial/ Game Master Tips/ YouTube

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is travel, and we’ve got a few more new segments including a Product Spotlight from Nerdarchy the Store, an update on our end of the year mega giveaway and changes coming to our content release schedule. Speaking of travel check out the image below from our wildly successful Out of the Box: Encounters for 5th Edition Kickstarter. In Down on the Farm, adventurers encounter an unusual merchant with a very select clientele. The Out of the Box Pledge Manager remains open for late pledges. You can get your hands on the book and all the add-ons including presale badges for Nerdarchy the Convention, or upgrade your badge to Legendary or Artifact level. There’s also a FREE encounter Seizing the Means you can download for a sneak peek at the sort of content you’ll find in the book. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Travel in Dungeons & Dragons can be a huge part of the game. There is even a style placed based around it called a hex crawl. Runagame.net does a pretty good job of defining a hex crawl.

“A hex crawl is an open-ended sandbox-style adventure that originated in old school D&D games. In a hex crawl, the GM produces a map of interesting Points of Interest (POIs) for the players to explore within a fairly large geographic area.” — RunaGame.net

But that is only one of many ways of thinking about travel. This part of the adventure is a great place to incorporate randomness into your D&D game. Random tables can be your friend here. The DMG is full of useful tables for this. You can find other online resources like Donjon random tables and charts or Chartopia.

I love random encounters based on location or geography rather than the level of the characters. These don’t always need to be combat, but could be roleplaying or exploration encounters.

Characters might be inclined to sneak around a hostile monster that is beyond their capacity to handle. Maybe they’ll try to negotiate or trick it instead. Travel might pit the players against mother nature herself as they deal with foul weather.

The other place travel can helpful is level grinding. Characters could be on an important quest or mission, but they aren’t high enough level yet. You as the Dungeon Master need to power them up a little before they get into the main quest. Having unexpected adventures happen along the way is a great remedy for this.

Here are some of my favorites:

The earth collapses beneath the players casting them into darkness. They find themselves in a cavern or dungeon complex with the way they came in cut off. Now they are in a dungeon crawl until they can find their way out.
Traveling by ship? Above works just find with a whirlpool that sucks their ship down into the depths. Instead of drowning they find themselves in an abandoned city nestled at the bottom of the sea in an air pocket. Now they have to figure out how to escape and get their ship out.
Players wander into a fairy circle and exit the other side in Realm of Fairy. Now they must find their way back home. This works for other planes as well.
Travelling by air ship they fly through a bank of magical clouds and become mired in the clouds like a giant web spell. Turns out it’s a cloud island the characters can explore and go find the means to free their ship.
Whether traveling by airship or watercraft an enormous vessel appears and swallows yours ship. How do you get your craft out?
Have your adventures scooped up by a giant bird of prey like a roc. It deposits them in it’s next and flies off. There may or may not be babies in the nest the characters will have to battle or escape from. The nest could be in a gigantic tree or on top of a mountain. Now they must find their way down.
Have them get eaten by a giant monster. The inside of the monster is the dungeon.
They stop at a roadside tavern. It’s a trap devised by hags to be a funhouse of horror.
A magical accident transmutes the party into something else. They must find a cure before they can move on.
Mistaken or not, the party is being hunted and must elude or defeat their attackers. Perhaps many different threats keep getting after them until they can resolve why they are being pursued.

These are barely the tip of the iceberg on what a Game Master can do with travel in their games.

From Ted’s Head

Whatever roleplaying games you are using, travel is highly likely a part of the game. Travel by its very name speaks to the exploration pillar of the game but we are all very aware of the potentially dreaded random encounter that can happen when we travel, getting the combat pillar into the mix. A random encounter can involve talking to another creature too so it can add to the social pillar of the game.

With all of that being said, I have changed the way I run my games to differ from the style in the past, before I started running games on Nerdarchy. I used to care a lot more about combat and specifically what happened in each combat. I am not saying I treated my monsters as a child, and was sad when they died, but I certainly wanted them to always make an impact and that need not be the case.

Travel can do a lot of things you might not consider. It can be a time of reflection. Do the players have anything they need to say to each other? More importantly do the characters have anything they need or want to discuss. In the heat of battle and in the depths of the dungeon things can happen, and it is not always good for the adventuring party, but it might be hard to discuss when danger could lurk behind any corner. When the danger is potentially passed the characters can get into these discussions or arguments. The person who died and was brought back to life can say thank you. The one who needs to confess their feelings for another party member can unburden themselves of their secret. Many things can happen.

Travel can of course be used for any method of combat. Whether you want something designed to humble the players, capture them to alter the story’s direction, give them a solid victory over an inferior foe or just something for them to test their mettle.

You of course have the ability to get into the exploration pillar and give them something they have never seen before. Here, be sure to invoke the senses. We often get sight and sound, but the other senses are often overlooked. Taste and smell are easier to include, with touch only working when they examine something but feel free to work out textures when prepping your material so you are ready to invoke touch if appropriate.

Now as I stated, I have changed the type of game or the way I run games. I do not do a lot with travel. I almost never do a random encounter. Unless something drastic happens, in or out of game, I tend to use things I have prepped to add the maximum enjoyment into the available time slot we have all set aside for gaming.

I have on occasion offered player agency into the game to allow whoever takes control for the moment to add into the story exactly what they feel they are needing at that time. Since I started doing this, my players have surprised me. I have found more often than not they are looking for more roleplaying, not more combat. It could be just my group of players, so test it out with your own groups and see what they want you to add. However you use travel, have fun with it and hopefully you all will enjoy the trip not the destination.

Down on the Farm is one of the encounters from Out of the Box. [Art by Kim Van Deun]

From the Nerditor’s desk

One of the perspectives about travel in Dungeons & Dragons that came up during the live chat was how relatable it is for the players. We feel exhilarated playing D&D when we slay fearsome monsters and discover incredible treasures. Our characters explore fantastic locations, perhaps being the first living creatures to gaze upon these vistas.

But getting there and back again can sometimes become tedious or boring. There’s a saying I heard a few years ago about D&D: a 30 second fight takes two hours and a 100 mile journey takes two minutes. The travel time seems mundane by comparison, but I’m of a mind for travel as maybe the most engaging part of a D&D adventure. At the end of the day sure, some people tangle with dangerous creatures and environments in real life and discover or explore ancient ruins and certainly people acquire vast treasures but it’s not the norm.

Everyone can relate to travel though, both the highs and the lows, so when you lay the trappings of fantasy overtop you start from a relatable point and players seem to have an easier time putting themselves in their characters’ shoes.

One example I thought of while Nerdarchy was at PAX Unplugged is the notion of currency. We went out to a restaurant where the only accepted forms of payment are cash or Venmo. What if the next time the adventurers go shopping or stay at a roadside inn, the establishment only accepts electrum pieces, or agate?

Another important tool in my D&D travel toolkit is Pinterest. Endless pieces of fantasy artwork await a Dungeon Master to help create engaging travel. Check out our Pinterest RPG Inspiration board for some truly fantastic vistas. When you describe these to the players in your game they’ll almost certainly grow curious about the world around them. Take note of the things that draw their interest and you’ve got easy pickings for future adventures.

Travel in D&D can be as exciting or boring as you and your group make it, so if you want your travel expeditions to become fascinating interactive parts of your game try to focus on aspects of travel you’ve experienced in your life. Then add some fantasy flair on top and enjoy the characters’ experiences.

ICYMI

The Out of the Box Pledge Manager remains open for late pledges. You can get your hands on the book and all the add-ons including presale badges for Nerdarchy the Convention, or upgrade your badge to Legendary or Artifact level. There’s also a FREE encounter Seizing the Means you can download for a sneak peek at the sort of content you’ll find in the book. Check it out here.

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