Sand Storm
Make either a peception, nature or endurance check. Failure means they get lost or stuck in the storm and costs the players a survival day each.
Oasis
A succes in the travel skill challenge might allow the players to find a small oasis in the desert granting them each an extra survival day.
Sink Hole
Travel in the mudflats, sandy wastes or a salt marsh could find the players stumbling into a sink hole. Anyone failing an acrobatics check falls 10-20 feet.
Rockslide
Traveling in the rocky badlands, moutains or boulder fields the players set off a rockslide. Faling an acrobatics or athletics check might mean the character is carried away by the slide (falling damage) or gets stuck under fallen debris.
Dying Traveler
Someone not as lucky as the PCs hasn't fared as well in the desert. They might have run out of water or succumbed to an attack. The players can help and maybe be rewarded or they can finish the job and rob the traveler blind.
Large Caravan
The player's come across a large carvan. They might be able to barter for passage or supplies.
Cactus Field
A small patch of vegetation could provide sustenance but sometimes on Athas the plants bite back. Dragon 364 had three Athasian plants, there's probably a lot more examples in the old 2E stuff.
Wild Kanks
The players see a herd of wild kank in the distance. Maybe they can catch a couple to use as mounts. If nothing else they might be able to find some honey.
Well, that's all I've come up with for now. I'll post more if I think of them.
- Supplies go missing or get spoiled: I'm pretty sure I saw this event somewhere else but I'm not entirely sure where. If the players are travelling with others (such as merchants) then perhaps some of them stole the players supplies. Alternatively the players could go to drink from their waterskin only to find it crawling with insects that have drunk all the water.
- Ruins/abandoned village: The players come across some ruins or an abandoned village in their travels. Ruins could be used as a place to take shelter for the night (or to explore for treasure!) An abandoned village can also be used for shelter but perhaps the players want to investigate why its abandoned (raiders, slavers, monsters, disease)?
- Humanoids: I was going to list these events individually but they are all very similar. The players could meet some herders, travellers (adventurers), escaped slaves, slavers, raiders, or even a hermit.
- Losing the Road: This should only be used if the players are travelling along a road. In essence, they lose the road, perhaps because it was recently covered by sand in a sand storm. They must either find it again or get lost in the deserts of Athas.
- Ruined Caravan: The players come across a ruined merchant caravan. They can search for loot, help survivors, steal from survivors or investigate what happened.
I was able to come up with some more minor events though they might not be what you're looking for, I'll post them anyway.
- Corpses in the Sand: The players come across a couple of dead people buried in the sand that have had their flesh picked at by (enter appropriate animal here). This kind of event would be boring unless the corpses had something interesting on them (maybe a treasure map, the map to an oasis, just some treasure, a mysterious letter, etc.)
- Noises in the Night/Hearing Voices: This is really just to make the players nervous. Maybe they hear howling or whispering voices at night. Maybe one of them is starting to go a little bit crazy from dehydration and is seeing/hearing things. Maybe this is their imagination playing tricks on them. Maybe something is coming to eat them...
I like all of the ideas you came up with. The cactus field could also be a cactus forest (which is difficult to navigate through) and of course wild kanks could also be wild erdlus, crodlus etc. If anyone else has been able to come up with any events for Dark Sun travel then please share them with us! :D
Or maybe not? A dust devil looks like a small tornado.
Quicksand
Not sure if this is the same as a sink hole in your eyes but to me a sink hole is rather large, so to could quicksand be large but a sink hole, if remember right, does not suck you down. Quicksand can be found around an Oasis.
I'm using a skill challenge in my campaign to simulate the harsh desert travel. I took ideas from the Dungeon Magazine adventure and changed just a few things in the challenge to have it make more sense for my adventure. One thing I changed was the use of the Endurance skill. For some reason, even if you have enough survival days you still have to make Endurance checks to avoid Sun Sickness. That doesn't make much sense to me and gives no incentive to purchase survival days since it gives no relief from Sun Sickness. You'll see the change I made below.
To set this up for you, my players are aboard a small caravan leaving the City-State of Draj and are traveling to the village of Breakshore (on the silt shores directly south of the Right Gauntlet Mts.). The caravan is attacked by the Elven raiding tribe known as "The Silt Stalkers." It's apparent the caravan will be overrun and they must escape in to the wastes of Athas and continue on to Breakshore. They have time to pick up some survival days but maybe not enough time to get a sufficient amount for the 5 day hike. That's where this daily skill challenge comes in. They're level 1 at this time of the adventure.
Skill Challenge: Navigating the Wastes
Encounter Level 1 (100 XP)
Complexity 1 (requires 4 success's before 3 failures)
Setup
While the PC's have enough Survival Days worth of supplies for each character, they have only to successfully complete this skill challenge to find their way to the port village of Breakshore. It takes a total of five days to travel to Breakshore on foot. Every success get's them one step closer to their destination, and every failure adds a day to the trip. This skill check is required each day of travel while navigating the wastes of Athas to Breakshore.
These skills can be used at any point during the challenge, unless otherwise noted.
Primary Skills: Athletics, Endurance, Perception, Stealth.
Athletics (DC 10, group check; 1 success): The character climbs ledges, leaps across chasms, or trudges through silt, helping the party bypass rough terrain.
Endurance (DC 10, group check; 1 success): Your group is tough enough to survive even the relentless heat of the Athasian sun.
Perception (DC 10, group check; 1 success): Keen eyes and direction sense keep you headed in the right direction.
Stealth (DC 15, group check; 1 success): Dangers abound in the Athasian wilderness, but they can be avoided if your group is quick and quiet.
Secondary Skills: Acrobatics, Bluff, Heal, Nature
Acrobatics (DC 10; 0 successes, 1 attempt per primary skill group check): You see your comrade struggle with the terrain and you're able to assist them through the tougher segments and at times you're able to keep them from causing injury to themselves. Convert a single characters failed Athletics check to a success.
Bluff (DC 15; 0 successes, 1 attempt per primary skill group check): By creating a diversion that keeps hostile humanoids and monsters from noticing your group, you convert a single character's failed Stealth check into a success as part of the Stealth primary group skill check.
Heal (DC 10; 0 successes, 1 attempt per primary skill group check): By treating the emerging symptoms of heat exhaustion and sun sickness before they become debilitating, you convert a single character's failed Endurance check into a success as part of the Endurance primary group skill check.
Nature (DC 15; 0 successes, 1 attempt per primary skill group check): By carefully navigating the harsh Athasian wilderness and avoiding its worst flora and fauna, you convert a single character's failed Perception check into a success as part of the Perception primary group skill check.
Success: The characters reach the next encounter unharmed and intact. They have had ample time to rest and have maximum hit points and all powers available to them.
Failure: Group failure (not individual failure) at a primary skill check has the following results.
Athletics: Each time the group as a whole fails at this skill check, every character who failed the Athletics check individually loses two healing surges for the next encounter.
Endurance: Each time the group as a whole fails at this skill check, every character who failed the Endurance check individually is exposed to Sun Sickness (Dark Sun Campaign Setting page 199). Special: If each character has an available survival day for the day of this check, a group failure only adds 1 day of travel to the trip and no attack from Sun Sickness occures to those who individually failed the check.
Perception: Each time the group as a whole fails at this skill check, every character who failed the Perception check individually gains a cumulative -1 penalty to all subsequent Perception checks made as part of this skill challenge.
Stealth: If the group as a whole fails at this skill check, they have a combat encounter with one of the desert's many dangerous inhabitants. Choose and run one of the follwing optional encounters.
(Then I wrote in some optional encounters which I won't share here.)
For some reason, even if you have enough survival days you still have to make Endurance checks to avoid Sun Sickness.
I was under the impression that if you had survival days then you didn't have to make the Endurance checks to avoid Sun Sickness (due to lotions or something). I don't have the Dark Sun books on hand though at the moment to verify this claim.
I tried to make a similar skill challenge to the one you've just posted but for travel along roads. It ended up not being a skill challenge but rather a string of random events (like the ones posted above - some of which were skill challenges).
For some reason, even if you have enough survival days you still have to make Endurance checks to avoid Sun Sickness.
I was under the impression that if you had survival days then you didn't have to make the Endurance checks to avoid Sun Sickness (due to lotions or something). I don't have the Dark Sun books on hand though at the moment to verify this claim.
I tried to make a similar skill challenge to the one you've just posted but for travel along roads. It ended up not being a skill challenge but rather a string of random events (like the ones posted above - some of which were skill challenges).
I agree with your conclusion of not having a skill challenge while traveling on the roads. If my players have enough survival days and they're traveling on a road, no checks will be necessary in my opinion. However if they're short survival days, then yes they'll have to make endurance checks. The skill challenge I presented is them trying to navigate the wastes off the road. They can get lost which could lead to a lack of supplies which could lead to death, and then lead to new characters. lol...hence the skill challenge.
