I am currently GMing my first game. At this point on the story arch, the PCs are beginning to embark on their tour of the continent to reassemble the McGuffin. One issue that I'm having though is what to do with the PCs while they are between dungeons etc.
I was hoping to get some feed back from other DMs on how to fill in the big gaps on the Map (using homebrew setting). Do you tend to just fast forward, "You have traveled the road for 3 weeks and now you are where you were going." Do you have random encounters? Do you try to fill in the gaps with minor activities like encountering a group that wants help or stumbling upon a one shot tomb or cave for a lark.
Any suggestions would be helpful. Just for reference the PCs are currently 4th level, I expect them to be level 5 in the next 3 or 4 sessions. And I level them at plot points not via exp, so no concern of leveling too fast.
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One issue that I'm having though is what to do with the PCs while they are between dungeons etc.
I've been GMing a few sessions of the Jade Regent campaing - lots of overland travel in there.
What I did was, for each leg of the travel, interleave one session of encounters on the road. Either random encounters, patrols, bandits, other travellers, other (evil) travellers, snake oil sellers, very small side quests, natural disasters (forest fires), and whatnot.
I highly suggest you do the same: 3 weeks of overland travel should equal one session of "road encounters". Less, and the players won't have the feeling of "we've been travelling for quite some time"; more, and the players will bore to death on the road.
Furthermore, by syncing the start and end of the travels with your sessions, adding or removing characters from the party becomes easier. Don't fret if some of your travel encounters don't fit in a session.
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It depends...
If you have barbarians, rangers, druids, etc that rarely get to shine with their nature/survival skills, you may want to draw things out a bit traveling overland so they get a chance to shine.
If everyone at your table gets annoyed at traveling, wandering monsters, etc, then you may want to hand wave and say "okay three weeks passed and you are there."
Typically, I go for a middle ground if the party is traveling from point A to point B without a lot of side trekking. I usually design up some specific encounters that happen at certain times and places. I also write up some color/flavor text that lets the players know what is happening in the wild as they travel and what sort of environment(s) they are passing through, with perhaps a clue or two for later adventures ("you notice the ruins of a castle in the distance" or "you see a huge dragon flying above the mountains to the north of your group").
I almost always try to mix in some NPC, fey, or other social type encounters so that travel is not always about "sleep and slaughter". Sometimes they just notice strange tracks or hear weird noises.
There was also a very cool breakdown of typical traveling task and their time requirement here for people who wanted to play out every day, say if the party is traveling a shorter distance or is exploring. It was called the Overland Round rules and I think it was posted in the Kingmaker or Rise of the Runelords section. I will link it if I can find it. Here it is: Overland Round House rules
Plot device...erm.. a Pathfinder Wizard by the name of Mouse. He's porting the party around if i don't have any "local color" planned for the group.
At low-levels, I use horses and mules, sometimes carts as well. As the character's progress through the levels and if a magic user is present, then Teleport and Dimension Door get used quite often. Eventually, overland travel gives way to the Magic Carpet airline.
It depends...
If you have barbarians, rangers, druids, etc that rarely get to shine with their nature/survival skills, you may want to draw things out a bit traveling overland so they get a chance to shine.
If everyone at your table gets annoyed at traveling, wandering monsters, etc, then you may want to hand wave and say "okay three weeks passed and you are there."
Typically, I go for a middle ground if the party is traveling from point A to point B without a lot of side trekking. I usually design up some specific encounters that happen at certain times and places. I also write up some color/flavor text that lets the players know what is happening in the wild as they travel and what sort of environment(s) they are passing through, with perhaps a clue or two for later adventures ("you notice the ruins of a castle in the distance" or "you see a huge dragon flying above the mountains to the north of your group").
I almost always try to mix in some NPC, fey, or other social type encounters so that travel is not always about "sleep and slaughter". Sometimes they just notice strange tracks or hear weird noises.
There was also a very cool breakdown of typical traveling task and their time requirement here for people who wanted to play out every day, say if the party is traveling a shorter distance or is exploring. It was called the Overland Round rules and I think it was posted in the Kingmaker or Rise of the Runelords section. I will link it if I can find it. Here it is: Overland Round House rules
I do have a barbarian in the party so I don't want to just avoid all travel, but I also have a Rogue and Enchanter, so they are significantly less useful in the wild. One problem that we are having is that out only healer in the group quit so they are in some bad shape.
I was thinking of maybe having them encounter a tribe of Centaur as an NPC encounter instead of a hack and slash one.
I love the Overland Round system there, but my players refused to learn it.
I used to just use the random encounter table, checking once for day and once for night like usual, but those are really small chances of anything happening. So, I remembered to use the environment chapter of the books, the random weather chart, rolling up an appropriate environmental hazard, either on its own for a bit of flavor, or to spice up an otherwise boring encounter. That made things much more fun for me and my players.
Other than that, you can run any sort of adventure you want while on the road. Work up a few hooks, and fish with them until one is taken, then let that lead them into your scene or module. It depends how important you want the travel time to be compared to any main plot that you have.
On the road is a good way to have episodic adventures that don't necessarily have to tie in together, or to use foreshadowing/flavor to bring their otherwise random one shots under the umbrella of an overarching plot.
If roadtrip adventures aren't your thing, just let them know how much downtime they have while travelling so they can let you know what they're doing or the gist thereof, and just narrate a blurb or two about the journey instead of bogging it down.
In any case, I like to emphasize the effects of spending long periods of time with the same people: watch schedules, camp duties, weather stoppages with close quarters and/or story hours, etc. I find it helps build PC camaraderie.