... Or fields, plains, desert, mountians, hills, or any other non-creature built area, and I lost the will to miticulously describe the surroundings except for the proverbial fork-in-the-road.
Hello, my name is Celric and I have difficulty with wilderness adventuring from both the player's and DM's points of view. Now, that's not to say that I don't enjoy being out of doors, it's just that it's a forest. Woopidy-doo. No, wait - it's a forbidding forest, avoided by all who don't enter under the most harshest of duress and then only during the daylight... You see before you... a tree! And there's another one behind it! They're everywhere the further on you travel and sometimes there's a shrubbery! You travel "for some time," no doubt ever watchful of dangers, when you stumble upon a trail of some kind (which you will follow) that leads to a (insert creature built/hollowed out area here).
Basically, I'm looking for advice as a DM on how to make a wilderness area, however large, seem more like adventuring through the wilderness, rather than "you go to point A on the map and do X, then travel to point B." I don't understand how the DM can have a well drawn out map (and they usually are) and then be completely inept when it comes to travelling within that map area. Yes, I might be describing myself here, but I doubt that I'm the only one.
I'm also looking for advice on how, as a player, I can use in character role-play to fill out the shabby wilderness that the DM is skipping to help him along.
If anyone out there needs the example...
One day my friend and I were headed out to the Frost Giants Keep to stop their visious pillaging of the towns around the tundra. We headed out and saw NOTHING the first 5 days - not even snow, ice, valleys, hills, cliffs, what have you - then an iceworm attacked us, then we traveled more days until something else occured, then traveled, then reached the fort.
I know that not a lot happens on a tundra in general, and there is certainly not a lot to see if you don't live there, but all too often the more open wild areas (desert, savanna, etc) are sorely under-described. I'm sure that more folks die in these areas than cross them with ease after a few randomish encounters...
Just looking for some pointers.
A subscription to National Geographic comes in handy here. The pictures give a lot of visuals for landscapes, environment, weather, plants, animals, etc.
A lot of unused skills can come in handy here as well:
Survival - search for water, food, hunting, avoid natural dangers, etc.
Knowledge (geography) - can find a shorter route
Knowledge (nature) - identify weather patterns to make travel easier
Profession (herbalist) - identify plants that can be useful to adventurers or can be sold in town, donated to a local church, etc.
"And so you begin your trek across the tundra towrds the Hold of the Jarls. The natives to these lands have a name for the barren, cold plain: The Howling Fields. They deserve it. Even within an hour of leaving the protective city walls, you begin to thank the gods that you decided to buy that extra heavy winter clothing. Even then, the smallest gaps in the garments allow a bitterly stiff breeze to penetrate and try to suck out all the warmth in your body. The air sweeps by in tortured cries, wracking your ears with the constant empty wail.
The plains themselves seem fairly unremarkable. For miles before your eyes, the drab grasses stand starkly against the earth, while the sky hangs over you like a steel blanket, low and menacing with snow.
In the distance loom the Ice Hills, gray lumps agaisnt the horizon. Beyond that is a thin, mishapen line, like a low crown with many small jags here and there. Those are your destination: The mountains known as the Crown of Glaciers. There, the frost giants hold sway.
After about four hours of walking across the barren landscape, it's probably about time to stop for a while and see if you can get something to eat. Is that what you wish to do? (The players say yes) Good. It's only a lunchbreak, so setting up the tent would probably be a waste of time. (To the characters with Survival) You set out looking for something, any thing, that can be found. It's certainly a better idea to forage when you can, rather than just ripping into the rations. You never know when you might need those later and foraging isn't an option. (The check is rolled) After about half an hour scrounging around the barren plain around the campsite, you manage to find a plant that looks as if it should be edible. What's on the surface is nothing to speak of, but there are tubers underneath. It won't be warm, but at least it will keep off the hunger."
Thus ends day one.
Day two- Reiterate much of the following. Is it boring? Yes. So are the endless plains of frozen winds. If you were doing this in a more exciting region, such as a forest, describe the various minor and major flora and fauna that the party sees and how it's different from what they've ecountered before. Describe the streams and the brooks, the trees, and the birds and the animals. Surely there are some towns around here somewhere. What are they like? What are the people like? How do they dress and talk?
Even the Howling Fields can be exciting:
"On the evening of the fourth day, near sundown, the drak clouds make night fall early. Though you can still press on, since there are few impediments to worry about underfoot, your visual range is severely limited. The wind becomes even colder. Suddenly, the clouds break over the horizon, and a fiery red orb peers at you just over the rim of the distant mountains. The sky is ablaze with colors: red, orange, violet, and shades thereof, greater and more virbrant, more beautiful than any painter could ever catch on any canvass. The faint rays go a long way to warming you, along with the fact that the wind sunddenly stops. The prairie is completely quiet, save for the ever distant call of a wolf across the darkening plain. Despite the lingering chill of the artic waste, the cessation of the howling, coupled with the appearance of the sun, fills you with cheer and joy that you can travel to such places and see such sights (if this matches the characters' dispositions)."
"The pass ahead is narrow and short, with crags to the left and right, as well as up and down the cliff faces of the mountain peaks the shoot over 300 feet above your head. The snow beats against your face, and vision is down to just a few dozen yards. (Spot and Listen checks) There, in those cavern openings, something moves. Peering on, you see through the snow a great mass emerging from the rocky hole: a frost worm."
Hope this helps.
I agree - subscribing to National Geographic helps, as well as watching the Nature Channel more...
When describing the wilderness, I can fall into the typical cliche's also - forests tend to be "forbidding, dark or tangled", deserts, tend to be "dry, dusty or parched", etc. etc... You can break these habits by looking at these types of terrain and draw out the details.
What helps me a lot is that I generate daily weather when the party is on the road; I don't even use a table - a simple d20 roll with '1' as totally clear, '10' as average, partly cloudy to cloudy and '20' ranging from severe storm to natural disaster of some degree to play out as an encounter in itself. This aids in your descriptions of the day's travel and breaks you of the habit to say,
"You travel for five days before you find (fill in blank)".
I also draw on terrain that I've seen and travelled through before; I once found myself walking through dense undergrowth in a wooded area years ago and began to question visibility rules at the time, since my line-of-sight was no more than ten feet at the time.
Describe what you can remember; movie references, books, TV - describe what you've seen throughout:
Example:
"You wake up and break camp on day four to the sound of rumbling thunderheads and an extended twilight that merges with a dimly lit overcast day. You all are miserable today, knowing that, by afternoon, you'll all be soaked to the bone.
At least you can travel in the safety of knowing that highwaymen, bandits and most intelligent threats won't be taking to the road today as well.
You all thank your respective gods over lunch, when the anticipated rains don't yet fall...
However, in the early afternoon, the skies open. Within minutes, your misery is made real. visibility drops to tens of yards, but at least with the constant rumble of the rain and thunder, you all are effectively invisible to anything outside your line of sight.
You decide to stop for the night when the rain slows and you are beginning to pass rocky crags and boulders that offer some measure of shelter. after gathering a couple of fallen branches to construct a primitive lean-to with your blankets, you huddle for the night and hope that the barren hills you are entering will not offer worse tomorrow."
Re-roll weather and repeat the next day...
You move through a game day fairly quick and yet avoid skipping it in game time entirely; if the party wants to do something in that day, it allows those with wilderness and nature skills to put those points to good use - hunt for food, gather firewood, build shelters, scout the horizon, predict tomorrow's weather...there's more to the game than the next encounter.
M
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Here are some things from a DM standpoint:
(1) Weather: The weather is a huge issue when travelling outside. Describe the weather, the wind, the cloud conditions. At night, mention the phase of the moon, the starfield and the quality of the illumination.
(2) Terrain: In the frigid regions, I would add descriptions of ice floes, boulder-strewn fields, odd cairn-like places or standing stones, or a trace of ruins. Perhaps a hot spring, or a sinkhole fits better, either of which could serve as a great location for a side encounter instead of a "simple" random encounter from a wandering foe. The point is, no place is devoid of feature simply beacause it doesn't have a castle sitting on it. Use resources from TV, magazines, books or what have you to invent dfetails that bring the place to life.
(3) Flora and Fauna: Not all plants are monsters, nor are all animals. Encountering a herd of reindeer or carribu is a great way to show that there is a food source for the frost giants ahead, or for the white dragon that supposedly lairs in the tallest peak of the nearby range. Near the sea, the PCs could spot whales or seals or even penguins. There may be a petrified forest, frozen for thousands of years due to natural (or unnatural) means. If you wanted something fantastic, what about a field of tundra that sports unusual flowers that retain a bit of light, causing a faint glow at night. Investigation of this phenomenon leads the PCs to find a breed of hardy insect that uses the light from the tundra flowers to locate food or as a beacon for breeding.
(4) Sound, Touch and Smell: Often overlooked, this is 60% of a person's senses. AS DM, your job is to bring a location to life, so neglecting these things is tantamount to providing the PC's with 40% of the information they could have had. Describe the springy feel of the tundra under their feet and the earthy smell that results as they destroy the tiny plants with every step. A distant cry (from an eagle?) or rumble (ice or a giant?) can be heard in the distance.
Draw upon every source you have to invent these things. As a DM, you can spend a free hour with a notebook and brainstorm a large number of descriptive details that will bring the location the PC's will be travelling through to life.
Those are some pretty awesome descriptions, congrats for spicing stuff up.
igi
In-character roleplay:
I suggest coming up with a "traveling personality." Perhaps your character is chatty, or perhaps she puts her head down and just marches silently. Maybe she hums a tune, or she is constantly looking over her shoulder. Some people hate to fly, others hate mules. Perhaps your character is like a "Cleric McCoy" who doesn't like to use teleportation spells.
I always try to have a character that does something to relax. Profession (cook) is a great way to roleplay in a campsite - especially the natural 20's and the natural 1's. It's either the party's favorite meal or food poisoning. I also came up with a Profession (tobbaconist) and had a smoker of various cigars: Elven Maidenbraids and Dwarven Stink-Stacks. Had a humidor of holding and everything.
Some questions to ask yourself might be:
What are her favorite ways to travel? Why?
What are her least favorite ways to travel? Why?
How does she pass the time?
Here are some things from a DM standpoint:
(1) Weather
(2) Terrain
(3) Flora and Fauna
(4) Sound, Touch and Smell
I agree with all of Lich-Love's points. The key is to build atmosphere and all of the above components definitely add to the atmosphere.
When it comes to the emotional response I'd leave that up to the players. Perhaps the looming low clouds that drives everyone to depression make the dwarf a little more comfortable and reminds him of stone over his head. Or the ranger loves the rain because she knows that it means cleansing and rebirth. Let the players decide how to react to the atmosphere.
Space... The final frontier... These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise... It's five year mission...
FIVE YEARS!!!
Imagine describing that to the players... "Ok, so, let's see, today it's just black, empty space. Just like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that one..."
In Star Trek, they don't actually describe the entire five-year trek. They tell a few stories that happened on that trip. Now translate that to Dungeons and Dragons, and you've got your answer.
If it takes fourteen days to get from TOWN A to CASTLE B, roll a few encounters (in advance) and gently narrate the trip, stopping for that one or two big fights or special areas (even really bad weather) along the way.
If you roll an encounter with four Kobolds for your 6th level party, just describe that, on day four, a small javelin landed near one of the characters. And when the party turned to look where it came from, four Kobolds screamed in panic and dissapeared into the woods, never to be seen again.
Of course you could write a detailed story every time the group travels, but a normal-sized paragraph should do. Just a simple list of events is really all that you need if your story-telling isn't that bad.
Ultradan
(Sorry for the Star Trek reference, I'm a fan of both Sci-Fi and Fantasy.)
As for Players using pertinent skills during expeditions, I think it depends on two things...
1) The DM.: The DM MUST insert a few instances where using a skill will benifit characters. If the DM just wants to get the players from point A to point B as fast as possible to get the adventure started, it's better to zip through without too many interuptions.
On the other hand, if the DM puts a few special places or events as encounters, such as a broken rope bridge, a quicksand patch, or even a simple river; he must also think of ways how making a good skill check (or multiple combinations of skill checks) would bypass the danger.
2) The Players.: Even if the DM hasn't prepared any special events for the five-day trek across the forest, it's still possible for a player to interrupt the "story" and ask if he could do a skill check.
Example.: As the DM is describing the uneventful five-day trek through bullywug swamp, Ultradan (playing a Druid) asks if the party could slow down to half speed for a day or two to check the surroundings for spell components. The party agrees, since the ruins they are going to will still be there if they arrive a day late. As the druid, helped by the cleric look around for spell components using the Knowledge (Nature) skill, the Ranger and Elf Fighter use the time to hunt small game using the Survival skill. So the party moves at half speed for two days, hunting and foraging along the way and arrive at the ruins a day later than scheduled.
Hope this all helps.
Ultradan
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White Wolf has a D20 book called 'Glades of Death' that you might like to flip through if your FLGS has a copy. It covers the different types of forests (rain forests to cold forests like the Burneal in Greyhawk), talks about applications of some of the PC skills and how they apply to 'off the beaten track', has several classic monsters that haven't been covered in primary sources (like Quicklings!!), and has several outdoor adventure scenarios. Personally, I liked it quite a lot and have been able to use it here and there.
Depending on circumstances, you may or may not want to have group make daily checks to find water, avoid getting lost in the sand dunes, make a secure campsite, etc.--it's a way of emphasizing the harshness of the environment, but players complain when you do it for the whole 28 day trip across the desert on the caravan road. Once they players have demonstrated they can solve a particular challenge with ease, there's no need to narrate it, ask them how they do it, or make them roll skill checks.
Even if I'm compressing, I try to describe noteworthy things that bring it to life--"the road follows the route of a dry riverbed for three days. You pass one or two seasonal campsites of the reclusive Pakhat tribesmen, the dry stubble of the cornstalks revealing that they have already left for their winter quarters. Then the riverbed, and the trail are swallowed by the encroaching sands, and you hope you can keep your sense of direction as you wind around and over the tall dunes." [make a survival check to avoid getting lost].
Include natural and supernatural environmental hazards--either as random encounters or as planned encounters to throw at them when they've reached a certain stage of the journey or you need to make things exciting. DMG has basic ones. Frostburn has all kinds of stuff like faerie frost that you can throw at your party crossing the tundra. Storms appropriate to the local environment work here. Also, things you wouldn't ordinarily think about--the mosquitoes kept you up all night and you're fatigued the next day, or a tick crawled into your pants and bit you--you extracted it but need to make a save against some unpleasant disease after a 2 week incubation period. A porcupine chewed through your packstrap (yum, salt!), now you need to fix your backpack somehow. (This really happened to us once on a hiking trip--the porcupine also crawled into someone's pants (lying on ground next to sleeping bag), leaving a surprise present (ouch!). Mundane bothers can add realism and humor, if not overdone.
If the party has a nature-oriented character, have them observe unfamiliar but mundane wildlife to remind them that they're no longer on home turf. "As you climb into the mountains from the desert floor, you see a strange little bird watching you from a pine branch. It has a three-pointed topknot with red and green plumage. It makes a strange call that sounds like a child's laughter, then flits away into the sage brush. [The local druids call this creature a "jesterbird"--your character may have heard of it before (knowledge nature DC 15) but this is the first time you've seen one]"
Make sure you think about the seasonal weather in the region. you can make up charts, but you can also just decide to have three days of warm sunny weather followed by two days of rain, or hit them on the third day out with a freak thunderstorm that forces them to find a spot that will be safe from the lightning and the grapefruit-sized hailstones. In some climates, at some seasons, the weather is usually nice and can be ignored, but usually there is some inconvenient feature--whether constant or occasional--heat, precipitation, wind, cold, annoying insects, or whatever.
I like coffee table books of nature photography - because I can generally reference the terrain I want in large photos.
I also like certain artists - bev doolittle for example for more magical looking terrain.
Travel books are good too and often include maps.