How can I change my campaign two sessions in to focus more on travel and survival? | DMAcademy | Page 1

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:04 PM

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Basically, I have a campaign, and we're two sessions in, but they haven't left the starting town yet. I want this campaign to put a focus on the travel through a large world. This is why I made my WIP map. I say it's WIP because I still will need to add things like dungeons and potentially villages or inns as they become relative. I want the party to need to prep for long journeys, make sure they get long rests at night, etc. How should I go about this? Also I'm sorry for asking so much, as I struggle to retain info.

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:13 PM

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If the goals are travel and survival, then you'll want to focus on a couple of things.

Make travel interesting. That usually means random encounters, interesting waypoints, unexpected adventure sites, NPCs (and quests), etc.
Make survival mean something. This is much harder to do in 5e, because even at low levels PCs have pretty good access to survival tools, skills, and magic. There are things you can do to reduce the effectiveness of these survival resources, but some of them are built in to the character archetypes.

Keep in mind that switching to a resource game puts focus on things a lot of groups like to gloss over these days.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:16 PM

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sour linden If the goals are travel and survival, then you'll want to focus on a couple of t...

I can do random encounters, what do you mean by interesting waypoints and the rest?
We fortunately don't have a druid or anything like that to cast goodberry or create food and water.

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 7:18 PM

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Interesting waypoints means places that the players can find in the wilderness that have enough fun adventuring content for at least a session’s worth of play.

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And simply not having a druid is not enough. You’d have to outright ban those spells and edit some ranger features too so they don’t trivialize foraging if they ever do come up.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:19 PM

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We don't have a ranger either. We have a bard/warlock, a monk, and a wizard.

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 7:20 PM

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Irrelevant. If a character dies, they could be replaced by a druid or ranger later on.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:20 PM

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right

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What kinds of places? Things like ruins?

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 7:25 PM

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Ruins, strange bits of natural landscape, monster dwellings, anything really so long as it can be the focus of an entire session.

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I used Worlds Without Number’s random tag system to come up with a variety of points of interest for my game, though I’m still sorting out to best implement it.

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It’s better to go high density, small scale in these sorts of games. Otherwise the wilderness feels to empty and players can easily miss these points of interest.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:27 PM

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So would you recommend I increase the size of the hexes on my map?

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What exactly is "high density, small scale"?

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 7:28 PM

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Every hex should have something interesting in it and the total area of land that the map covers is relatively small.

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I’m slowly developing a future campaign that in all likelihood will only fill 19, six mile hexes.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:33 PM

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Does this look better?

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 7:34 PM

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Simply changing the hex size doesn’t really help.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:34 PM

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oh

ornate tide Sep 7, 2023, 7:35 PM

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Spooky I'd really recommend you try to get at why people are saying things, rather than looking for the quick thing that you can do immediately

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:36 PM

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That's the hard part. I struggle with this.

ornate tide Sep 7, 2023, 7:36 PM

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Yesterday we talked a lot about this and you heard "make an encounter table" and immediately did that and asked if it was good
Today we're talking more and Kermit says "make the hexes dense" and you immediately try to change the map without understanding why

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Why is it hard for you to engage with the why as opposed to the what?

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:37 PM

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I don't know. My mom always said it was because I'm neurodivergence, but I try not to go with that answer.

ornate tide Sep 7, 2023, 7:37 PM

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To be honest, it would probably behoove you to look into that

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:38 PM

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Some of this, though, only becomes more apparent as you start using it.

ornate tide Sep 7, 2023, 7:38 PM

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You remind me a lot of a friend who struggled with a similar issue and is far happier now that she understands this part of herself

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:38 PM

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But suffice it to say there is a "why" to all of this.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:39 PM

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alright. I have no clue what that is.

ornate tide Sep 7, 2023, 7:39 PM

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On the subject of travel, maybe let's consider it this way. What do you want an adventure with travel to look like? Let's say we're trying to go from Hyrule to Faron. Do you want that to take a few days? Do you want the players to have to struggle to survive the travel, or to encounter magical wondrous things? What's at the end of the journey in Faron?

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Imagine how you want the "mouth-feel" of the campaign to be, and then we can come up with rules or processes to implement that will give you that desired feel

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:42 PM

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God and here I thought I was ready to start the campaign. I got nothing. I suppose I'd want it to take a couple days to a week. I want them to not struggle, but not steamroll to the point where I might as well have just skipped over everything.

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:43 PM

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If their goal is to travel from point A to point B, then travel isn't the goal you're going for.

ornate tide Sep 7, 2023, 7:44 PM

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What's at the end of the journey?

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:44 PM

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Not sure, maybe a dungeon or a village.

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:44 PM

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Travel-focused campaigns generally work best when there's a strong element of exploration, going into the unknown.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:45 PM

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I think you're right. Right now I just don't want it to be glossed over. I'm okay with it not being the central focus, but I want it to be interesting. Like, "Hey we made it, but that was neat how so and so happened."

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:45 PM

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(That's not to say, btw, that you can't make travel interesting if they aren't exploring)

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So if you're adding complications to a point A to point B travel situation, then it's more about thinking through interesting things that could happen to them along the way, perhaps even derail them if they choose to deviate.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:47 PM

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I think I understand?

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:48 PM

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If you set up a dozen or so possible situations that you can sprinkle on the path, you'll start seeing some jumping off points that the players could grab.

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Maybe not even a dozen.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:49 PM

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So like the encounter table I made?

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:51 PM

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Yes, an encounter table is a start. You'd probably want to detail the hexes between the start and end locations as well, each of which should have some potential point of interest in it, and some way to access that point of interest, whether that's a rumor picked up in another hex, sometihng an NPC said on the road, enemies use it as a base, or they can see it from a distance, etc.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:52 PM

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Why's that? Just so I can understand.

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:54 PM

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fathom radish Why's that? Just so I can understand.

Ultimately I'd say it's so that the players feel like there's a living world around their characters. There's stuff happening. They can get involved if they like, but they don't have to.

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 7:54 PM

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I say there are three major approaches to travel:

Travel as obstacle.
Travel as adventure.
Travel ignored.

Now for option 1, you can get away with very little in the way of prep. Random encounter tables and maybe a weather table would be most of what you need. Travel here fills up time and presents occasional dangers, but it’s not what the game is about.

Option 2 requires a LOT more prep, like filling up hexes with points of interest as described previously. Campaigns like this tend to be sandbox campaigns and as such are dependent on a lot more preparation ahead of time.

What you want is up to you.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:55 PM

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Right. I'm leaning to filling up the hexes with small encounters or adventures.

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 7:55 PM

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Now because your campaign seems to be about going to these far off places and adventuring in them, it seems like option 1 might work better for you.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:55 PM

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Oh

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 7:56 PM

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Because if the campaign is about going across Hyrule and adventuring in these major dungeons, you’ll want your game to focus on that. Having an extremely dense wilderness detracts from that.

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:56 PM

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Agreed

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:56 PM

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That's a fair point if I think about it.

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:57 PM

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It's not that you can't do #2, but it's probably wasted development.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:57 PM

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Yeah

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That said, should I plot down dungeons and such now, or wait until they become relevant. With the structure of option 1, it seems like I should, no?

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:57 PM

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So yeah, develop some random encounter tables that provide intersting obstacles, events, challenges, etc., to your players.

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If the PCs aren't really going to leave the road they're on, then no, up front dungeon development is not necessary.

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Unless they're on the road.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:58 PM

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I don't actually have roads marked down on my map either.

sour linden Sep 7, 2023, 7:59 PM

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The idea is that the PCs have some sort of path in mind, right? If they have to discover it, well, you're halfway back into option 2

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 7:59 PM

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I don't mean making the entire dungeon, just putting its symbol on the map so players know where it is.

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 8:01 PM

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Hyrule is a developed kingdom, so it probably should have roads obvious to the players.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 8:01 PM

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Yeah it does

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 8:01 PM

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Meaning you’ll need to mark them down on the map.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 8:02 PM

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The paths or the dungeons?

muted swan Sep 7, 2023, 8:03 PM

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The paths.

fathom radish Sep 7, 2023, 8:04 PM

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I see. I was considering that.

#How can I change my campaign two sessions in to focus more on travel and survival?