Travel in my Star Wars and D&D Games

This is part of this month’s blog carnival. I have a few different subjects to talk about on the matter of travel, so this is probably the first of many.

Hyperspace travel is the perfect way to get caught up on all those novels you've been meaning to finish.

In my games (predominantly Star Wars and D&D), I have varying methods of handling the subject of travel.

In Star Wars, I will often have whole sessions taking place while the characters are en route to their next destination. After the initial Astrogate rolls are made, the characters will often interact with each other, play some Sabaac or Djarik, work on constructing modifications to droids and weapons, and monitoring the engines. I’ll often make up a map of the interior of the ship for the players to use as they traverse the ship in their various operations.

I’ve run a session where the travel was the plot, where their arch enemy had planted a bomb on the ship, and if they left hyperspace, it would blow, ala Speed.

But D&D is different. I’ve never really spent much time on the travel aspects of it all. Usually the group will go from location to location with some simple hand-waving. “Okay, you’ve left town A. A week later, you arrive at town B.” I’d like it to be different, but my players really have no interest in wandering monsters and side-treks.

I’d like to pick up the new book by Goodman Games: “From Here to There“, which my good friend Chatty DM has written an adventure in. It’s all about adventures that happen while traveling from one location to the next.

How about you? Do you include lots of travel time in your games? Or do you simply overlook it?

This post was written as part of the RPG Bloggers Blog Carnival. This month’s topic is Travel in Gaming as suggested by Daniel Perez of the Gamer Traveler.

4 Comments

newbiedm
January 19, 2010

I tend to hand wave travel… simply because of time constraints (REAL WORLD). If the encounter isn’t integral to the storyline, I’m more inclined to skip it now, which random wilderness encounters would fall in that category.

This has to do with the fact that I run a 7 man party, and encounters take a long time. So playing time is at a premium, so travel and related encounters suffer.
.-= newbiedm´s last blog ..On rpgKids… =-.
Argent
January 19, 2010

I tend to run both as Skill Challenges, at least in circumstances where the travel is significant.

In D&D this allows the PCs to take on side treks if they want to, allows me to expand upon my world and ensure the world is real to the PCs as well as keeping that sense of imminent danger ever present in their minds. You can easily include extra encounters as a reward for success or penalty for failure and offer hints of other places to explore that the PCs can follow up or ignore as they wish.

In Star Wars this covers making the original jump, obstacles in hyper space, ship malfunction, maintenance etc.

As long as its interesting to the players and the GM its much better than just arriving at the destination.
.-= Argent´s last blog ..Handling a Major Battle in 4e Part 4 =-.
Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler
January 19, 2010

Thanks for participating.
One of the bigger issues I’m looking to raise awareness is specifically brought up by your (and Newbie’s) D&D example. In real life, the act of travel is an integral part of the process–more about the journey than the destination–yet we don’t take this approach in games, myself included at times. How can we make it about the journey? How can we make the journey itself the destination? That’s what I’d like to explore.
.-= Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler´s last blog ..Blog Carnival: Games & Travel =-.
Rook
January 19, 2010

Back in the day (I can’t believe I wrote that, am I getting old?) we, the players, would always have to take turns rolling for a “chance encounter” as we traveled. Usually three rolls per day of travel. But these days we usually hand wave most travel unless the DM has something specific in mind, a side trek or to show off a part of the game world. If we are at a lull in the game session or some of the players are getting restless (I’ve got two teen-agers in my group), then I’ll throw something random in, just to liven things up a bit.

I have no problem with making it more about the journey than the destination. To me, that can only add to the story. But if the journey doesn’t have anything substantial to add to the plot, and if your group is like mine and your game time is short, just skip it and get to the “good stuff”.
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.-= Rook´s last blog ..How DO you keep an all “evil” party from imploding? =-.