Great advice, mate! I always have a hard time making travel feel exciting and my players tend to focus more on the locations they visit. I usually only do something during travel if those mid-way places hold value. I do however do make a tax for them to make these travels: it takes 1 Ration/per person/per day, so that they can't just fly around like crazy. They pay the "fast-travel tax", if you will. I've found this method to work for balancing it.

All of that is really interesting ! I'm trying to gather the courage to start my own campain in the world i've been crafting for a while. I don't have problems worldbuilding and I know what the campain is gonna be about globally, but I want my players to explore and discover the world that surrounds them and really live inside it. They have to save it after all ! So day by day travel is going to be the way to go for me I think !

It's also super great for character backstory development, especially if you're running a module and don't know where you can put in nuggets for your player's backstory. Cleric looking to convert worshipers to her obscure god? Have them come across a group brainwashed by a conman to treat him like a prophet to a made-up deity so they can defeat the conman and convert the citizens. Player looking for his long lost adventurer father? Have an NPC claim to know him and can take them to him if they help him with a task but as it turns out, hasn't actually seen the father in ages but may still inadvertently offer some clue. Got a Warlock who wants to please his patron? Have them stumble upon a cult from the patron's rival whose plans they can put a wrench in to please the patron. Of course there's fun to be had in truly random encounters too, but travel encounters are so good for adding elements to the story the characters were missing without necessarily forcing a tie-in to the main campaign plot.

Thanks for teaching this way to run travels. I always disliked random encounters, but the way you suggest looks amazing.

Ahh fast travel, so that's what happened in the later seasons of GoT, not the showrunners trying to speed up the clock thinking they were better than show and everyone else learning they weren't.

In a game I'm starting soon I'm going to get my players to give me ideas of things they'd see along the road. Some good things some bad then pull one from a hat and run it. It let's them add some personal fluff to the game to make the travel fun. And for longer trips I can draw more.

My next campaign is going to get down to the nitty gritty of travel; rations, roadside encounters, the works. A continent that will take 6 months to walk the longest straight line from east to west, and the players will have something to do for every day of their 10 month (or more) pilgrimage to find out why magic is becoming harder and harder to access. Obviously it will be up to the players to an extent, I have no idea what those bastards will do, but I'm excited to have a super grounded, very detailed campaign on our next go around! You've mentioned in the past that you run your travel this way, so I'm excited you timed this video when you did, should be helpful! Also, new camera looks great, bruv!

One reason to put in the time to portray travel well: It's literally one of three pillars of the game. The Survival and Nature skills are next to useless if you handwave travel. The whole Ranger class, as well as several subclasses (like the Scout Rogue), lose much of their benefit without detailed travel.

I don't like skipping travel either. I find that skipping travel makes my enormous world feel tiny. Its too video gamey for my taste

Awesome video as usual man :D Your philosophy on the journey being a huge part of the adventure is something I really feel and you're great at giving advice for how to improve that aspect of the game!

Great video, without reading any other comments I would say that most people would do fast travel in half a minute not half a session. My slow travel is half to one session, maybe two for five days. I think your approach is almost “Outdoor Dungeon” or “Universal Dungeon”.

Im running my first campaign and I have a whole plotline figured out, after our first session my players said they were excited for traversing the mountains theyd have to climb to reach the city theyre searching for, apparently they thought the journey to said city would be the campaign. So now I have act 2 completely planned out and ive been looking for a guide to help me figure out how to make the treck less boring. This video popped up at the best time

I enjoy all of Tales Arcane videos

i really like this, im thinking il be adoptting this for my game that im working on

Great content! I’m pleased to learn that this is almost identical to how I was running travel already. I especially love when the party travels through locations where they have been before and they get to see what impact they have had on the area since they were last there. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, usually a mixed bag. Either way, showing them the impact they made is a fantastic way of getting them engaged with the world you’ve built. I love it!

Thnx for your great advices❤.

Hey love the videos, short and long. Thanks!

Great advice. I do the same.

I think you need to make sure your main plot is not overshadowed by filler content. I was in a game like this recently and it felt like a chore to get from point a to point b in 5 sessions while the main story I was invested in was dead on its tracks. I just wanted to get back to the main story. When I try really hard to make the main story move at least an inch and feel like it adds to the whole, even on side missions. I guess it's storybuilding vs worldbuilding. Different approaches, both valid

Excellent suggestions & info, thank you! Congratulations on the new camera! You're off to a great start using it.

Thanks for the content.

I really enjoy your videos and your content friend!!! Your channel deserves way more fame! Thank you for sharing these interesting ideas with us, you make me wanna jump straight into preperation! xD

This is so inspiring

Very inspiring! I love how every session becomes a little story in itself. I guess it also takes a group that isn't laser focused on the final goal. Should the party stop to interact with the encounter, which they could, it would be a tough session to run.

Thanks for the video!

I've noticed I render encounters and places only per session as well. Sometimes even to the point I make certain NPC's more important or informative as the players go along and show interest. Or if they stray from the main quest too much I will try and incorporate the presumed side-quest into the main quest by making it useful or lore relevant. I have several locations that are interesting lore-wise, or main quest wise, but are not set on the map, so I can dump them whenever the players seem to wander too much :P

I learn everyday

Good advice! However, I feel having things happen every single day would cause a kind of activity overload, and could even stretch credibility. Like, if every village and town is in major trouble, how does the world even function? Depends on the campaign and the group, of course.

Fantastic ✨

Awesome!

Sounds interesting but like...how do you make maps for this type of travel system? Also how long do your sessions usually last? New Dm here.

My 30th time watching this video lol.

Would you use this method in your Riftwater Isle setting? Either for travelling between islands, travelling on the islands and heading out into the open sea for piracy.

I haven't done this since OSR days. It's too time consuming and really takes the emphasis and tension from any plot. If they are going to spend five sessions getting to some ruins, plus having shipwrecks, lycanthropes, etc. then the ruin encounters won't seem memorable. Encounters in 3e+ are just too slow that you don't want to 'waste' them on things which sideline your main story as it risks making everything seem random as you really don't want a five session dungeon crawl at the ruins just to make it 'epic'. Something can't be memorable if it happens every day. It also raises suspension of disbelief if 'settled' lands and roadways have encounters several times a day. I use metagame it, but on a day by day basis. Like movies, travel is a type of flash pictures giving them an idea. I write a sentence or two about every six hours or so -- working in terrain, weather, general people they encounter, where they sleep, etc. Four sentences make a short paragraph -- one per day. Maybe 3-5 minutes to read. I often have real-world pictures of terrain to show them or describe in detail if they ask. IF (and only if) the players want to do something at that moment, then I'll stop and let them roleplay it. I may work in some of their classes and abilities -- such as a ranger or hunter background player catching some game or a druid talking to some animals. I may work in changing languages, customs, dress, borders, etc. Maybe I'll put a short encounter in, but generally it's not to distract and is typically (depending upon the safety of the area) roleplaying or easy. This gives a sense of travel. If they travel back through it, I'll typically cut the amount of description in half as they've seen it. If the area is unsafe, then I'll pre-roll a few 'random' encounters and have them prepped and/or switch to three hour time chunks -- possibly describing encounters they bypass, give warnings of upcoming encounters, and then run a few more for a sense of danger and not to take up much table time. Exploration, equal level combats (let alone those though enough for a fully rested party), decision making, etc. is just too time consuming in modern systems and really take the attention away from the game. I've seen games take so many sessions to get some place that players literally had to look at their notes to remember why the heck they were going there and certainly didn't care about it anymore.

I like your method. How often do you have sessions?

Off the wall question - Where can I find that map in the background with the village showing Pinepyre Potions, Bitterbrew Tavern, Traveller's Temple? I love the maps and hope to use them.

So, they created an inter-planar travel agency?

Love this video! Question, how quick do your pc's level up? If it takes 7 sessions to complete that task would they level up along the way?

Do you feel that this style can mess up urgency of the players? I always come back to fallout 4, with this type of thing, where the narrative and play style are at odds. Urgency of trying to find your child, but the game keeps putting side quests and non story beats in front of the player. I’ve found some players are so “main quest” that they go against “distractions”, or is it more about taking this approach when suited (so pulling back from this approach if the players are trying to beat someone else to a place or similar narrative focus, even if it’s days and days away?). Or would you use this approach regardless?

This sounds really interesting, I'm starting a campaign with my friends in about a months time so will definitely be using this. Can I ask what you use to design your village/town/city maps? I'm currently using wonderdraft for the world map, and dungeondraft for battle maps, but neither seem to be suitable to draw out general towns and villages where the minis won't actually be on the map - anything you use would be appreciated :)

What do I do on 45 days journey?

Nice Video ! You're really handsome, as always!

The way you described those sessions it sounded like they were not 4 houers long? Or was one 4 houer session them finding a ship and fighting there and then going to the town?

Te ves muy guapo. Gran video, muy útil.

How do you handel ocean voyages for this?