After yesterday’s train wreck for this hashtag thingy we are back for more. It’s just hard to turn away. We’ve got to see where this thing is going. No matter how ugly it gets.

So let’s get on with this mess…

Once our group starts up our campaign again after it’s 18 month plus hiatus due to world events shutting it down. After what I’m sure will be an over long catch up with each other, and finally a strong restart (step 4 of the way of the lazy DM) to the campaign, the party will have to navigate a wilderness to find a lost Dwarven mine.

I haven’t settled on a way to handle wilderness travel that I’m happy with yet.

In the DMG there are a couple of suggestions for handling it. Those being the travel montage or hour by hour. Neither grabs me.

So far I’ve tried a version of wilderness travel that is based on how it is handled in The One Ring. Which was fine but a bit of work is required in prep before hand.

I adapted what is basically a hex crawl from the WotC D&D published campaign The Tomb of Annihilation for sea travel. Which is basically wilderness but with lots of water. And that was ok too. But again I was not entirely happy with it.

I have two options I want to try for wilderness travel next.

The first is treating wilderness travel as a skill challenge. The idea for this came from a D&D Beyond scenario they did as part of the Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus series called Encounter of the Week: Detour Past Dragonspear.

The other approach I want to try is Pointcrawls. Which I first found out about from the legend that is Sly Flourish who talked about it in his Icewind Dale prep videos. Which then got it’s own video and blog post discussing in more detail what they were and how to create them.

Although the rules in the Dungeon Master’s Screen Wilderness Kit for journeys and chases look worth a try as well. I’m particularly drawn to the chase rules that look very combat like. I want to run a chase at some point (story allowing).

I’m not convinced I will ever find a way to handle wilderness travel that I’m entirely happy with. I’ll probably end up choosing one of the methods from above during the prep for a session, never doing the same one twice in a row. Although that list may be whittled down based on feedback from the group. After all they may not like one or more of the approaches.