Make Travel Engaging: 6 Essential Tips for DMing and Storytelling in D&D Travel

Running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that involves travel can be an exciting way to explore diverse settings and keep your players engaged. Here are seven tips on how to effectively DM and tell a compelling story through travel in your D&D campaign:

1. Create Vivid Descriptions:

If you put in effort to prepping travel your players will get something out of it. Immerse your players in the world by providing rich and detailed descriptions of the landscapes, environments, and cultures they encounter during their travels. Use all the senses – sight, sound, smell, and touch – to make the experience more vivid. Describe the towering mountains, the bustling marketplaces, or the mysterious noises echoing through the dense forest.

2. Incorporate Random Encounters:

Obviously, but be creative about it. Maybe a wolf pack is stalking them or an owlbear is making sure they don’t get to close to a treasure they are protecting. Introduce variety and unpredictability by including random encounters during travel. I often try and work in an encounter where the right decision is to avoid that encounter. My players need to feel like they can lose or fail and I try to make sure they make decisions accordingly.

3. Establish a Sense of Time:

I start every morning with, “based on your character who gets up first and what do you do?” Give your players a sense of the passage of time during their travels. Mention the changing phases of the moon, the shifting weather patterns, or the subtle alterations in the landscape. This not only adds realism but also creates a dynamic world that evolves as the party moves through it.

4. Encourage/Require Player Interactions

The thing that gets me most about DND is that we all accept that we know nothing about the random characters we are traveling with, so I force them to interact and learn about each other. This for me creates wonderful moments where they are driving a richer narrative than I ever could. During my prep for the campaign and after characters submit their backstory and character sheet I meddle and add connections to their background that don’t mess with their intentions but adds to their experience when meeting NPCs they have connections to or motivations that the others are unaware of.

For example, I gave one character a motivation to try and kidnap an NPC for the organization they are affiliated with.

Or another was that 2 characters were researching the same lost treasure but didn’t know it until they uncovered a clue that made them both stop in their tracks. They both knew some of the same and different information, and traveling gave us a chance for them to talk about that connection.

5. Incorporate Travel Challenges:

Skills challenges are just as fun and important for the game. We don’t rely solely on our fighting skills. Make the journey itself a challenge by introducing obstacles or dilemmas. It could be navigating treacherous terrain, crossing a hazardous river, or dealing with unexpected disruptions like a broken wagon wheel or a missing guide. Overcoming these challenges fosters teamwork and problem-solving among the party members.

6. Foreshadow and Build Suspense:

Use travel as an opportunity to foreshadow upcoming events or plot developments. It is ok to “cut away” from what they are doing to describe a situation unfolding in another part of the world. Infiltrate their dreams to describe a vision of the big bad or a secret. They need to know that events are happening while they are going about their day. This creates urgency and helps keep the party focused on the storyline. Additionally, you can keep note of time passing and be sure the next town they visit they hear the news of what happened.

Often with travel we rely in theater of the mind as it is difficult to have a map for every situation. I suggest having a world map with a party token that helps not only them realize the journey, but help you describe the landscape around, ahead, and behind them.

Remember, the key to successful storytelling through travel in D&D is to maintain a balance between engaging descriptions, meaningful encounters, and player agency. Adapt to your players' choices, let them shape the narrative, and enjoy the collaborative experience of exploring a fantastical world together.