Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 EhtoZed Aug 20, 2010 14:27:10	Here's something I've struggled with, especially with Dark Sun; making the long dangerous treks through the desert interesting and not letting it devolve into a boring series of endurance and nature checks. Between Bloodsand Arena, the Campaign Guide and the new adventure in Dungeon I've got three examples of desert travel skill challenges. I think the one in The Vault of Darom Madar is the best so far, and that mainly because it comes with some more-or-less-random encounters as a consequence of failure. That's good I think, but I'd like to have some options that aren't straight out fights. The three carnivorous plant hazards from Dragon 364 are a good start. The introductory adventure from the original boxed set had some more encounter ideas, dangerous plant life, a short exploration of a wezer colony, non-combat NPC encounter and a poisoned oasis. All those helped to make travel more exciting. Another encounter type I haven't found any good examples of is the environment itself. Hazards like rock slides in rocky badlands, dust storms in the sandy wastes or obstacles like having to find a way across a small silt estuary. Eventually I'd like to put together a binder with a collection of random (level appropriate) encounters, including combat, non combat, weather, environment and natural hazards and maybe even some small side-trek adventures to throw in and make every trip into the wastes exciting. So what ideas have the rest of you come up with? Do you remember any examples from old 2E products of interesting travel adventures? I think Dragon's Crown had a whole section on different random encounters to throw in every once in awhile.
#2 sariyel Aug 20, 2010 16:54:48	I'm using (gasp) random encounters.  Most of my encounters are with people doing things.  One construction I'm planning to use is [Random Roll] being menaced by [Random Roll]; the obvious 'caravan menaced by gith' falls out of that, but so does something weird like 'silk worm menaced by escaped slaves', which suggests a very different kind of encounter. Most of my encounters aren't combat, either (unless the players decide that every caravan needs to be robbed, which is entirely possible).  Since I've got a fair idea what every caravan is doing (and, in most cases, what goods they're carrying, which can be extrapolated from some of the stuff in the athas.org material), players can easily get involved in a caravan encounter on a variety of levels. And every escaped-slave encounter is a chance to recruit hirelings and more people for the village.