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Running Overland Exploration and Travel Adventures

by Mike on 18 March 2024

This article is one in a series where we look at types of adventures and examine

how we prepare them.
how we run them.
what pitfalls we might run into.
how we avoid these pitfalls.

These articles include:

Your own adventure types and how you run them may differ from mine. That's totally fine. There are many right ways to enjoy this game.

Robin Laws's book Adventure Crucible – Building Stronger Scenarios for any RPG inspired my thoughts on this topic.

Understanding Travel Adventures

For the sake of this article, overland exploration and travel adventures follow the characters as they travel from one place to another, usually over significant distances across the surface of the world.

Sometimes the characters know clearly where they're headed. Other times they might only be following vague rumors. The paths they follow might be well known or something they discover as they go.

Travel adventures might be run as hex crawls, pointcrawls, or linear paths of connected locations. They could be a quick journey during a single game or run over several sessions.

Resources for Travel

Your chosen RPG might include material for running travel scenes. Two books offer excellent guidance and systems for running travel adventures for 5e games: Uncharted Journeys by Cubicle 7 and Trials and Treasure for Level Up Advanced 5e by EN World publishing. Uncharted Journeys offers a solid system for travel and a huge range of potential encounters. Trials and Treasure includes excellent random encounter tables, character roles, weather options for various climates, and more. If you choose only one book, start with Trials and Treasure.

Preparing Travel Adventures

Preparing for an overland exploration or travel adventure might include

defining the starting point, the destination, the distance, and the path.
understanding how you plan on running the journey – point crawls, hex crawls, a linear series of encounters, or a single encounter during the journey.
defining potential paths.
preparing a list of roles and activities the characters engage in during travel.
preparing a random weather table.
writing down potential encounter locations along the journey for each node in the pointcrawl or within one or more of the hexes along the journey.
preparing a list of encounters – random, fixed, or a mix of both.
writing down secrets and clues, NPCs, or treasure the characters might discover along the journey.

Running Travel Adventures

Like dungeon crawls, travel adventures can follow a particular model of gameplay. This procedure includes

clarifying the starting point and destination for the journey.
asking each player to select a role for the journey – scout, pathfinder, quartermaster, etc. Characters might instead choose to aid someone else.
roll on a weather table each day to determine what weather the characters deal with that day.
expend daily resources such as food and water.
have the characters roll ability checks based on their role. A scout may notice creatures before the creatures notice the characters. A pathfinder may stay on course or get lost. A quartermaster may give the characters temporary hit points or lose resources.
roll for monuments or other notable features as they travel or use one of your predetermined locations.
roll for random encounters. Even if they don't encounter something, you might roll to see what came by recently or what might be coming. You might roll twice and mix two encounters together.
move on to the next day.

Pitfalls for Travel Adventures

Here are some common pitfalls for travel adventures:

Too much time is spent on travel when the real story is happening at the destination.
Too many downward beats or hard encounters – it feels like a slog.
Travel feels like a needless chore or time-wasting filler.
Travel doesn't offer meaningful choices or actions.

Avoiding Travel Pitfalls

Here are some ways to keep travel on track.

Drop in relevant secrets and clues the characters discover during their journey to tell them about the world, its inhabitants, and elements of the larger story.
Include interesting monuments to solidify specific locations and encounters and act as catalysts for secrets and clues.
Include roleplay and exploration scenes, not just combat encounters.
Run some easy encounters the characters can resolve many different ways.
Let characters get the drop on monsters and give them the choice to fight them or not.
If travel isn't interesting or challenging, shorten it or skip it completely and get to the more important scenes the players care about.

A Bridge Between Other Adventures

Travel adventures are often a bridge between one part of the story and the next part. With careful planning and execution, travel can offer stories just as interesting as other types of adventures.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Last week I posted YouTube videos with Thoughts on Obsidian for TTRPG Prep and the Lazy DM's Companion Sale.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs. Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video:

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers:

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Challenge high-level characters by attacking several vectors: AC, various saves, area attacks, advantageous terrain, flippable environmental effects, and so on.
Benchmark encounters with the Lazy Encounter Benchmark: A battle may be deadly if the sum total of monster CRs is 1/4 the total of character levels; or half of character levels if they're 5th level or above.
Tweak the Lazy Encounter Benchmark based on what you know of the characters. Really powerful? Pretend there is one additional character of the party's level.
Warn players when they're going to enter a long fight. Change the fight midway and keep up the story to make long battles interesting.
Include switchable terrain that works against the characters at first and for them later on. For example, an unholy effigy gives evil creatures advantage but gives characters advantage when turned into a holy effigy.
Level characters after significant accomplishments in the story.
Damage is the biggest threat a monster offers that doesn't take agency away from the characters. Want a bigger threat? Do more damage.