At its core, Lord of the Rings is a three-book series about a group of people walking to a place. I know I’ve just made a lot of people very angry by saying this, but when you break it all down, the main plot of the story is a very long walk. Sure, there are things that happen in between, but if you had to sum up the series in one sentence, this would probably be it. And we love it anyway. It is the primordial ooze that so much of our modern fantasy sprung from. It is one of the primary inspirations for Dungeons and Dragons itself. So why is it, that in D&D, travel can be so boring?
This question is more complex than it may appear at first, as the problem is there’s no one reason for this. Often, it’s the DM who gets the blame for this. They may feel they haven’t prepared enough, the pacing is off, or the random encounters are a bit too out of nowhere.
When I was running Curse of Strahd, I certainly felt this way. The party is leaving the Amber Temple, barely escaping with their lives and forging their way back to the relative safety of Vallaki. After such an epic encounter with the lich within, it would have felt a bit odd to throw 1d6 wolves at them. On the other hand, when travelling from the Tser Falls to Vallaki, they see a glowing orb through the trees, floating gently towards a dilapidated tower: a random encounter they avoided, but kept calling back to. They became convinced this random tower, created from a dice roll, was the key to the whole campaign.
This led to me avoiding random encounter rolls for most of the campaign. I was worried it would throw off the tone or the pacing of the whole adventure, but it meant that Barovia started to feel a lot smaller as travel time reduced.
As a player in a recent campaign, when left with nothing but the open road, things really started to slow down as each player (at this point in a group of 8) had different plans, ideas and agendas for what they wanted to do. A one-on-one scene is fine, but when there are 6 other players waiting and 8 one on one conversations to get through, it can quickly take up an entire session.
The problem is, there’s not a simple answer to this question. There are a lot of factors that can lead to travel fatigue, but I’m going to try to outline a few ideas that may help us out of this.
Let's start with the issue of group focus. This won't be a problem at every table, but for a newer party, or towards the start of an adventure when characters haven't had a chance to get to know each other, players can sometimes fall into the trap of going solo. This seems to be a problem with larger groups, where it can sometimes be hard to get the spotlight. I've recently been playing with a group of 8 player characters, and while the sessions are fun when we're all united, when we're travelling by ship, people take this opportunity to explore the backstories that we haven't had chance to get to yet.
This has led to entire sessions of characters wanting one-on-one conversations with various NPCs about aspects of their individual backstories, and while this would be fine in a smaller group, it can sometimes feel as a player that you don't have much input into what's going on while you wait in line.
This happens when the party don't have a clear goal that they need to achieve together. So, my solution to this is to give them something to keep focus on the group goal, rather than splitting into eight different stories.
Task based travel
At the start of each adventuring day, rather than asking the party what they would like to do each morning, we instead start with a task or problem for the day that the party will need to resolve before they can move on. This gives them a common task that they can focus on and each can use their own skills to help address the problem.
Some examples may include:
All of your food has spoiled and you need to find more before nightfall.
The wheel of your cart has broken and you need to get it fixed.
If travelling by sea – your crew have food poisoning and are unable to work – you need to sail this ship with just the player characters.
A travelling bard has asked to shadow the party and interview members as they travel – they may hear heavily exaggerated accounts later on in the campaign.
They're not combat focused, but each can involve combat if that's what your party are looking for. Say for example, in the third example of ship travel, while the party are trying to pilot the ship with minimal crew, they get attacked by a group of sahagin. This now means that the party need to balance sailing with combat. If the captain needs to leave the wheel to fend over attackers, the ship could veer off course, leading to them becoming lost or delayed in their travel. They then have a new problem to find the course to proceed.
In the fourth example, tales of their exploits being told across the land could raise the group's reputation with certain groups, or make them out to be arrogant braggarts. Here the thing to remember is, make travel a consequential part of the story. A lot of times, the story only happens at the destination, but remember that everything the party does should have some effect on the wider world. Try to tie this in to make travel feel like a more integral part of the game.
This can help if you feel that you need to bring the group together, or if certain characters are getting too much of the spotlight over others. However, if the issue is with pacing, this still keeps the group on a day by day schedule. Alternatively...
A week in a day
If travel is becoming an issue and it's taking weeks to see any progress, there is always the option of the fade to black travel time, otherwise known as travelling by map. This can especially be useful if the party just want to get to the high points and neither the DM or players are too concerned with the in-between parts of the adventure.
When travelling by map, you ask each character what they would like to achieve during the journey. Say for example you are travelling by sea, the druid may want to spend the time brewing all the potion ingredients they acquired, the wizard may want to spend their time in the cart transcribing spells, and the barbarian may want to talk to the cleric about how their anger issues stemmed from their difficult childhood. Whatever it is, go around the table asking each person what their focus is and play these out. Then, once you've gone round once, the party have arrived at their destination.
This approach isn't for everyone, but it can really help keep the pace of the story up and keep the focus on the narrative that you have set up for the locations in your world. When players know they only have one opportunity per travel, this also helps them to focus on what's important to them at this moment in time and can lead to more streamlined character action.
If travel is becoming an issue in your game, the best thing to do as always is to talk to your group and find out how they would like to see travel play out. You may discover that others around the table share your concerns, and while you've been doing day by day for most of the campaign, the group would actually prefer a fade to black travel style. As with most things in this game, communication is key.
The beauty of this game is you can run it however you want, so whichever approach works best for you, remember the point is to have fun. If travel is taking away from that, remember you can always rework it and make it your own.
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