So, I'm running into the issue planning my next game that to do what I want for the plot, the party will likely need to travel for a few weeks to get to the next plot point. The travel passes multiple notable locations. City here, town there, that sorta thing.
So, how would I go about running that? I don't want to skip all that travel, given I feel proud of my world and want to let my players experience it properly. I also don't want to bog down the story by having nothing happen for like, an out of game month. From you DMs with more experience, what would be the best balance of getting to the point, but also allowing the party to experience the world?
So, how would I go about running that? I don't want to skip all that travel, given I feel proud of my world and want to let my players experience it properly. I also don't want to bog down the story by having nothing happen for like, an out of game month. From you DMs with more experience, what would be the best balance of getting to the point, but also allowing the party to experience the world?
Unfortunately, the answer is "discard your pride and provide a brief summary, which you'll expand on if the players ask or otherwise choose to interact with your description". Most players are not actually particularly interested in RPing tourists.
So then, with that, is it a good idea to sprinkle in side quests? I have genuinely no clue how to run travel. What's too much and what's too little. How do I make the cross country journey feel like an actual treck without it getting drawn out. That's what I struggle with understanding
So then, with that, is it a good idea to sprinkle in side quests? I have genuinely no clue how to run travel. What's too much and what's too little. How do I make the cross country journey feel like an actual treck without it getting drawn out. That's what I struggle with understanding
It's often a good idea to sprinkle in side quests or obstacles. The point is mostly that players want to be playing, not watching, so anything that winds up being a long DM monologue should be avoided.
Travel is kind of the eternal question of how to run it. Go into details, or fast forward, it’s really a table preference kind of thing. One question is, what’s the party like? Is there an outlander or someone with goodberry that lets them keep moving quickly without worrying about food? If not, do you want them to worry about food? Those logistics issue can make it an adventure on its own, but lots of tables prefer to hand wave it.
What I might do is say, after 3 days you come upon a ruin. Then I’d describe it briefly and see what they do. Pro tip: they will always explore everything you put in front of them. But you do give them the choice. If they’re on a deadline to get to the final destination, they might skip it and plan to come back later. Same deal with the towns, they arrive at town and you give a brief description. Let them decide how much they want to explore it. Maybe it turns into a side quest, or maybe they just stay the night and move on.
One thing to watch for is them getting distracted. If you put lots of shiny things to explore in their way, they may lose the thread of the main plot. So try to keep any side quests short, or character backstory related, or both. And find ways to remind them of their main goal.
Have enemy assassins or random robbers besiege them in a town. Not literally, but drove them into it, similarly to the black riders in lord of the rings. If they are proud and will not run, make some more people running away telling them to run
Have enemy assassins or random robbers besiege them in a town. Not literally, but drive them into it, similarly to the black riders in lord of the rings. If they are proud and will not run, make some more people running away telling them to run.
Is the travel part of the adventure? Are there events that will occur that will be fun and interesting .. more like sidequests than just random encounters? If there are interesting events that will happen then feel free to run the travel over a few sessions.
If the travel is just a scene transition from one location to another and nothing much of interest is likely to happen (eg travel through civilized lands) then spend 5 minutes describing some of the cool places they see or experiences they have and move the adventure to the new location. Mention sites of interest in case the PCs want to come back later but in this case the travel is not part of the adventure but just a setting transition.
If you want a mix, you could throw in a couple of random encounters along the journey to set the tone of the travel and take one game session to run it. In this case, the PCs have a feeling of having spent some time traveling with some events happening without taking up a large amount of game time. However, the encounters should still be interesting and fun.
I only speak for myself, but I tend to decide early on what type of adventure I'm setting up. That informs the world.
My Eternarii setting is designed specifically for players to cross large distances and experience the different cities and towns. It's the kind of 'Lord of the Rings' style adventure. You cross an entire continent and have stop offs here and there, but the journey is where most of the adventure happens. In designing the world then I design loads of towns and settlements in medium levels of description, only fleshing them out as the party draw near or show interest in diverting there. More important is the wilderness and known stoppiung places where the party will encounter the macguffins and set pieces that fuel the adventure.
My Forsceta setting on the other hand is set in and around a single city. The party never get more than a day away from the city's walls and as such the city is drawn in incredible details. The adventure is designed to be a more social, more close up and personal adventure than Eternarii. As such I've got hundreds of NPCs and merchants, and unique little places in the city just waiting to be explored. Around every corner is an alehouse or a street performer.
Your world should fit your adventure and not the other way around. World builders often make the mistake of crafting every inch of a world before working out what adventure to set within it. Here's a hard won secret - that's piling in more work than is strictly necessary. There's a writing addage known as 'killing your darlings'. Often a writer will craft a line, character, or scene that they are immensely proud of and find difficult to cut - it more often than not should get cut however. Unless something serves the plot or character development it's not really necessary. Similar holds true in the TTRPG space. Unless it serves your player character development, adventure development (don't forget you as DM don't write the plot, your party do as they walk through the world), then it's likely unnecessary.
You've already drawn the world however, and wanting to see the party explore as much of it as possible is great...you just need to return now to the adventure you had in mind to set them off in. Can you move any of the set-pieces that drive forward the adventure into one of these settlements you want the party to experience? Can you offer training, moral conundrums, or other interesting moments for character development in one of these settlements? If you can't then those settlements serve almost no purpose beyond somewhere to rest up and restock in safety. That doesn't mean that what you created wasn't good, it just wasn't of interest to the party - and that's okay.
In my most recently completed campaign I had a door. Behind this door was an entire optional area to explore where you could find out about the origins of runic magic in this world. You'd find out that the last and only Gem dragon in existence was trapped behind there by the long extinct giants. By rescuing her, or rescuing an egg that she had long since concealed the party would be able to get a bonus feat and some cool loot. I had two parties running in that adventure setting - one chose to open the door, the others chose to carry on walking past it. It was only three sessions and twenty in-game hours later that they realised that there might have been something cool behind the door. But that's the point. The party write the plot as they adventure - not the DM.
So, I'm running into the issue planning my next game that to do what I want for the plot, the party will likely need to travel for a few weeks to get to the next plot point. The travel passes multiple notable locations. City here, town there, that sorta thing.
So, how would I go about running that? I don't want to skip all that travel, given I feel proud of my world and want to let my players experience it properly. I also don't want to bog down the story by having nothing happen for like, an out of game month. From you DMs with more experience, what would be the best balance of getting to the point, but also allowing the party to experience the world?
Unfortunately, the answer is "discard your pride and provide a brief summary, which you'll expand on if the players ask or otherwise choose to interact with your description". Most players are not actually particularly interested in RPing tourists.
So then, with that, is it a good idea to sprinkle in side quests? I have genuinely no clue how to run travel. What's too much and what's too little. How do I make the cross country journey feel like an actual treck without it getting drawn out. That's what I struggle with understanding
It's often a good idea to sprinkle in side quests or obstacles. The point is mostly that players want to be playing, not watching, so anything that winds up being a long DM monologue should be avoided.
Are there any good resources for that? I tend to come up pretty dry.
Have a look here: https://koboldpress.com/category/tables/
playing since 1986
Travel is kind of the eternal question of how to run it. Go into details, or fast forward, it’s really a table preference kind of thing. One question is, what’s the party like? Is there an outlander or someone with goodberry that lets them keep moving quickly without worrying about food? If not, do you want them to worry about food? Those logistics issue can make it an adventure on its own, but lots of tables prefer to hand wave it.
What I might do is say, after 3 days you come upon a ruin. Then I’d describe it briefly and see what they do. Pro tip: they will always explore everything you put in front of them. But you do give them the choice. If they’re on a deadline to get to the final destination, they might skip it and plan to come back later. Same deal with the towns, they arrive at town and you give a brief description. Let them decide how much they want to explore it. Maybe it turns into a side quest, or maybe they just stay the night and move on.
One thing to watch for is them getting distracted. If you put lots of shiny things to explore in their way, they may lose the thread of the main plot. So try to keep any side quests short, or character backstory related, or both. And find ways to remind them of their main goal.
Have enemy assassins or random robbers besiege them in a town. Not literally, but drove them into it, similarly to the black riders in lord of the rings. If they are proud and will not run, make some more people running away telling them to run
Is the travel part of the adventure? Are there events that will occur that will be fun and interesting .. more like sidequests than just random encounters? If there are interesting events that will happen then feel free to run the travel over a few sessions.
If the travel is just a scene transition from one location to another and nothing much of interest is likely to happen (eg travel through civilized lands) then spend 5 minutes describing some of the cool places they see or experiences they have and move the adventure to the new location. Mention sites of interest in case the PCs want to come back later but in this case the travel is not part of the adventure but just a setting transition.
If you want a mix, you could throw in a couple of random encounters along the journey to set the tone of the travel and take one game session to run it. In this case, the PCs have a feeling of having spent some time traveling with some events happening without taking up a large amount of game time. However, the encounters should still be interesting and fun.
I only speak for myself, but I tend to decide early on what type of adventure I'm setting up. That informs the world.
My Eternarii setting is designed specifically for players to cross large distances and experience the different cities and towns. It's the kind of 'Lord of the Rings' style adventure. You cross an entire continent and have stop offs here and there, but the journey is where most of the adventure happens. In designing the world then I design loads of towns and settlements in medium levels of description, only fleshing them out as the party draw near or show interest in diverting there. More important is the wilderness and known stoppiung places where the party will encounter the macguffins and set pieces that fuel the adventure.
My Forsceta setting on the other hand is set in and around a single city. The party never get more than a day away from the city's walls and as such the city is drawn in incredible details. The adventure is designed to be a more social, more close up and personal adventure than Eternarii. As such I've got hundreds of NPCs and merchants, and unique little places in the city just waiting to be explored. Around every corner is an alehouse or a street performer.
Your world should fit your adventure and not the other way around. World builders often make the mistake of crafting every inch of a world before working out what adventure to set within it. Here's a hard won secret - that's piling in more work than is strictly necessary. There's a writing addage known as 'killing your darlings'. Often a writer will craft a line, character, or scene that they are immensely proud of and find difficult to cut - it more often than not should get cut however. Unless something serves the plot or character development it's not really necessary. Similar holds true in the TTRPG space. Unless it serves your player character development, adventure development (don't forget you as DM don't write the plot, your party do as they walk through the world), then it's likely unnecessary.
You've already drawn the world however, and wanting to see the party explore as much of it as possible is great...you just need to return now to the adventure you had in mind to set them off in. Can you move any of the set-pieces that drive forward the adventure into one of these settlements you want the party to experience? Can you offer training, moral conundrums, or other interesting moments for character development in one of these settlements? If you can't then those settlements serve almost no purpose beyond somewhere to rest up and restock in safety. That doesn't mean that what you created wasn't good, it just wasn't of interest to the party - and that's okay.
In my most recently completed campaign I had a door. Behind this door was an entire optional area to explore where you could find out about the origins of runic magic in this world. You'd find out that the last and only Gem dragon in existence was trapped behind there by the long extinct giants. By rescuing her, or rescuing an egg that she had long since concealed the party would be able to get a bonus feat and some cool loot. I had two parties running in that adventure setting - one chose to open the door, the others chose to carry on walking past it. It was only three sessions and twenty in-game hours later that they realised that there might have been something cool behind the door. But that's the point. The party write the plot as they adventure - not the DM.
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Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.