I'm looking for ideas or tips on what to do during the traveling on my campaign. My campaign takes my travelers somewhere 15 miles away from their location. I'm not sure what to fill this up with. A battle, A side quest? Yes for the sake of progression i can tell them "you guys got to your location and nothing happens , prefect day etc., etc. But i cant do that all the time, it'll get underwhelmed.
What do you all advise I can fill this space up with a little fluff.
The occasional fun side-quest is a good way to supply the party with a needed magic item or some fun consumable loot or spending money. If you have a Wizard in the party, it might be a good way to supplement their spells by making a small spellbook in the reward pile for them to peruse and copy spells from.
As for the adventures themselves, I find the best resource is mining old Dungeon Magazine adventures (https://adventurelookup.com/adventures) for some short side-trecks. The adventures will take a little bit of converting to 5th Ed, but the narrative structure is what is important.
My personal favorites:
- The party find a lost little dog, bruised and beat-up on the roadside. It takes to them and follows them around. Each night a member of the party begins to have nightmares and wakes up with a level of exhaustion...but the dog is doing better. Turns out the dog is a familiar of a recently killed necromancer. It has been using some odd necromantic power to sustain itself now that its master is slain. The party can fight it if they want to try to scare it off, but it will continue to stalk them until dealt with. Near by where they found it, the party can find the dead necromancer along with his gear (maybe a spellbook with some choice spells in it).
- As the party is traveling in a mountainous region, a flying horse crashes to the ground near them delirious and poisoned. If they help it, the horse tells them it was fighting an "evil cloud" in the sky above in order to save its herd of sky horses. If the party investigates, they find a rust-colored cloud rising up from a nearby mountain. The hole the gas rises from is effectively a vent-shaft for a recently formed derro smelting facility, complete with slave labor from the Underdark and a fire elemental bound to a blast furnace for smelting metals. The party must work out how to infiltrate and disable the facility, maybe cause a slave uprising, and stop the continued pollution of the sky realm. The derro have also captured some sort of air-fae that come to investigate previously. Those fae may reward the party for their rescue.
- (Not a Dungeon Adventure, on the DM's guild) The party stumbles across a very frustrated woman trying to replace a broken wheel on her cart. She has a number of problems that she is struggling with. She is a choir director due for a concert in a nearby town. Her cart is broke and her choir, a collection of singing mushrooms called Campestri have wandered off and gotten lost in the nearby woods. She needs the party to help find her choir before they get into trouble (spoilers, they have already all gotten into several different kinds of trouble). Also there is a bit at the end where the party is rewarded by a quick concert of a new song the director was given by a strange man in a previous town. Turns out the song is a ritual that summons a demon, much to everyone's surprise. The party must fight the demon. Who was the stranger who gave her the music scroll? Why did they want a demon to be let loose in the nearby town? Can the party wizard use said scroll to learn a spell like Summon Lesser Demons or Summon Fiend and add it to their spellbook? You decide! (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/380490/Musical-Morels?term=musical+morels) (It's free!)
the party happens on a section of landscape where EVERYTHING is alive and sapient. only problem is, some kind of evil wizardTM is building a device that peirces the Ley-line that gives the landscape its life. the device is an arcane cannon/superweapon that's being aimed at some incomprehensible thret in the sky. What Do? if they party stops the wizard, the landscape remains alive but Shub-niggurath (or whoever) enacts some plot. if they don't stop the wizard, the landscape dies, but so does yog-sothoth.
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Pronouns: Any/All
About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Fun Fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Depends heavily on the story beat. If they are preparing for a slog, make it a slog - terrain challenges, highwaymen, wild animals, that sort of thing. If the route is a well-tended road in safe lands, then look more for other travellers, like alchemy salesfolk or traders.
If they will be going back & forth between a base and this location, add something halfway which will develop over time - two rivals building houses opposite each other, each time they go past they are getting bigger and competing with one another. The last time they do, have one house having fallen into the other, and they are fighting over whose fault it is.
Well, then use a little fluff. ;-) Describe the terrain the group is passing through. Is it wilderness? Add wild animals seen from a distance. Is it farmland, then it's inhabited. Inhabited by who/what? In an inhabited area, there will be other travelers: farmers, pilgrims, soldiers, merchants, tax collectors, adventurers, et al
Old school random encounter tables are great for this type of thing. :D
Tip: Not everything happens for a reason and has something to do with The Main Plot (TM)! A random encounter with a broken-down wagon can be exactly that! Will the PCs be helpful? Apathetic? Kill the villagers and loot their wagon? ;-) Such encounters can be fun little role-play sessions.
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Hi everyone,
I'm looking for ideas or tips on what to do during the traveling on my campaign. My campaign takes my travelers somewhere 15 miles away from their location. I'm not sure what to fill this up with. A battle, A side quest? Yes for the sake of progression i can tell them "you guys got to your location and nothing happens , prefect day etc., etc. But i cant do that all the time, it'll get underwhelmed.
What do you all advise I can fill this space up with a little fluff.
The occasional fun side-quest is a good way to supply the party with a needed magic item or some fun consumable loot or spending money. If you have a Wizard in the party, it might be a good way to supplement their spells by making a small spellbook in the reward pile for them to peruse and copy spells from.
As for the adventures themselves, I find the best resource is mining old Dungeon Magazine adventures (https://adventurelookup.com/adventures) for some short side-trecks. The adventures will take a little bit of converting to 5th Ed, but the narrative structure is what is important.
My personal favorites:
- The party find a lost little dog, bruised and beat-up on the roadside. It takes to them and follows them around. Each night a member of the party begins to have nightmares and wakes up with a level of exhaustion...but the dog is doing better. Turns out the dog is a familiar of a recently killed necromancer. It has been using some odd necromantic power to sustain itself now that its master is slain. The party can fight it if they want to try to scare it off, but it will continue to stalk them until dealt with. Near by where they found it, the party can find the dead necromancer along with his gear (maybe a spellbook with some choice spells in it).
- As the party is traveling in a mountainous region, a flying horse crashes to the ground near them delirious and poisoned. If they help it, the horse tells them it was fighting an "evil cloud" in the sky above in order to save its herd of sky horses. If the party investigates, they find a rust-colored cloud rising up from a nearby mountain. The hole the gas rises from is effectively a vent-shaft for a recently formed derro smelting facility, complete with slave labor from the Underdark and a fire elemental bound to a blast furnace for smelting metals. The party must work out how to infiltrate and disable the facility, maybe cause a slave uprising, and stop the continued pollution of the sky realm. The derro have also captured some sort of air-fae that come to investigate previously. Those fae may reward the party for their rescue.
- (Not a Dungeon Adventure, on the DM's guild) The party stumbles across a very frustrated woman trying to replace a broken wheel on her cart. She has a number of problems that she is struggling with. She is a choir director due for a concert in a nearby town. Her cart is broke and her choir, a collection of singing mushrooms called Campestri have wandered off and gotten lost in the nearby woods. She needs the party to help find her choir before they get into trouble (spoilers, they have already all gotten into several different kinds of trouble). Also there is a bit at the end where the party is rewarded by a quick concert of a new song the director was given by a strange man in a previous town. Turns out the song is a ritual that summons a demon, much to everyone's surprise. The party must fight the demon. Who was the stranger who gave her the music scroll? Why did they want a demon to be let loose in the nearby town? Can the party wizard use said scroll to learn a spell like Summon Lesser Demons or Summon Fiend and add it to their spellbook? You decide! (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/380490/Musical-Morels?term=musical+morels) (It's free!)
the party happens on a section of landscape where EVERYTHING is alive and sapient. only problem is, some kind of evil wizardTM is building a device that peirces the Ley-line that gives the landscape its life. the device is an arcane cannon/superweapon that's being aimed at some incomprehensible thret in the sky. What Do? if they party stops the wizard, the landscape remains alive but Shub-niggurath (or whoever) enacts some plot. if they don't stop the wizard, the landscape dies, but so does yog-sothoth.
Pronouns: Any/All
About Me: Godless monster in human form bent on extending their natural life to unnatural extremes /general of the goose horde /Moderator of Vinstreb School for the Gifted /holder of the evil storyteller badge of no honor /king of madness /The FBI/ The Archmage of I CAST...!
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Fun Fact: i gain more power the more you post on my forum threads. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Depends heavily on the story beat. If they are preparing for a slog, make it a slog - terrain challenges, highwaymen, wild animals, that sort of thing. If the route is a well-tended road in safe lands, then look more for other travellers, like alchemy salesfolk or traders.
If they will be going back & forth between a base and this location, add something halfway which will develop over time - two rivals building houses opposite each other, each time they go past they are getting bigger and competing with one another. The last time they do, have one house having fallen into the other, and they are fighting over whose fault it is.
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Well, then use a little fluff. ;-) Describe the terrain the group is passing through. Is it wilderness? Add wild animals seen from a distance. Is it farmland, then it's inhabited. Inhabited by who/what? In an inhabited area, there will be other travelers: farmers, pilgrims, soldiers, merchants, tax collectors, adventurers, et al
Old school random encounter tables are great for this type of thing. :D
Tip: Not everything happens for a reason and has something to do with The Main Plot (TM)! A random encounter with a broken-down wagon can be exactly that! Will the PCs be helpful? Apathetic? Kill the villagers and loot their wagon? ;-) Such encounters can be fun little role-play sessions.