Advise for a wilderness adventure

[Spinachcat]

1) Terrain
What's the terrain like between Point A and Point B? What's it look like? What odd sights will they see along the way. Since it's PF, is there some weird ruin or magical effect left over from some ancient forgotten war?

2) Weather
What time of year are they travelling? What effect will bad weather have on the roads they are taking? What is the condition of the road?

3) Sideroads
Are there forks in the road leading to other odd places? Could they be lured to take a few detours?

4) Who to meet?
Who will they meet on the road? This is a good time to introduce some odd NPCs who just want to talk or trade. This is a chance to set up a relationship web that may not pay off for many further adventures.

Let's say they meet a merchant from Town B. He's just had a squabble with the local lords. He tells the players that he fears Town B is falling under the evil of a cult run by the local lords who hate goodness. He warns them that the lords are pure evil. In reality, all they did was raise the taxes, but now the PCs are walking around with a false impression that could be fun to play with once they enter Town B.

[Killer Cyborg]

Spinachcat has good answers, but I'll add to them.

A. Encumberance
Take it into account and keep track of it.
Make sure that they specify what they're taking, where they're keeping it, how much it weighs, etc.

B. Food
Either they're taking food with them (see encumberance) or they're going to scavenge along the way with hunting and foraging, or both.
This can be a good opportunity for characters to use their skills, and for players to use their brains.


I suggest you track down a copy of Orgeon Trail II and play it a bit, you could get all sorts of ideas.



Edit:
Oh, and if you're going to focus on walking, the PCs are going to need some good boots/shoes; keep track of who has what.
And read up a bit on hiking (google around, if nothing else), and/or read Stephen King's The Long Walk.

[bigbobsr6000]

All good stuff. I'll add;

Water, don't foget one can get awful thirsty on the trail.

[lather]

Depends on the road and their familiarity with it.

There could be bandits imposing tolls without any official sanction but no one really around to do anything about it. Perhaps it passes through a village which is either friendly, indifferent, or evil - like a float trip through the hills.

A busy road or a popular trade route would have some interesting encounters, too, including bullying guards trying to make way for a VIP coming through.

Getting lost. This fork in the road isn't on the map, if they have a map at all, perhaps they were just given word of mouth directions and have no map. Of course, if they have made the journey recently this isn't really an option.

[CyCo]

Instead of 'random encounters', make them a scripted part of the adventure.

Assuming you have time well before the session, work out how long it will take them to complete each stage of the trek. Then get out your dice, and determine if they have an encounter. When they do, either randomly pick a critter, or choose one. Work out what time of day the encounter happens. Roll up the stats of the critter(s). Including any items/weapons/booty they may be carrying.

When that it done draw up a quick map. It doesn't have to be great, but at least you then know what the immediate terrain is. This, along with the time of day, can help you work out how the encounter may start.

Then tactics. Will it be an ambush, or a random crossing of paths? Maybe they'll be jumped in the middle of the night, and you can immediately work out who will have a chance of detecting the ambush (or did the guard fall asleep!!). Maybe there's a corpse of trees that the critters will jump down from, or a ledge on the cliff the party can use to gain the high ground. Or a hidden path into the barrows the critters will use if they're getting beaten. Maybe the critters are only carrying raiding gear (armour/weapons/shackles), and the rest of their booty is in a hidden cave some miles from the ambush site. If the party kill all the critters, then how will they get the loot?

I've done this with published adventures. Sometimes that was all I did to modify the adventure. But it helps to stamp your own mark on published adventures, and also makes a 'random xp & booty' encounter more meaningful.

8]

[Noon]

Well, lord of the rings was epic because the hero's
A: Feared for their lives from the stuff in between them and where they are headed, and
B: Went against their fear and went there anyway

But that only works in roleplay if the person playing the character really can decide their character would go. If you railroad it or force them to go, there is no story.

[GA]

You should probably have a list of possible encounters. At least 20 or so per session. The best way would be to have some sort of rough map with a few main trails, or 1 main trail and some minor ones a ranger could find and navigate, or trailblaze. The point is it has to be somewhat limited. Like for instance when Strider and the Hobbits travelled from Bree to Rivendell they had to go through the marshes then steer for weathertop then sort of come down the trollshaws (in a sort of U-turn cause Rivendell is hard to find even for a ranger like Strider who has been there before lots of times) then they had to have Frodo beat the nazgul at the Ford.

Ok, there may have been more but that's all I remember from the top of my head. So using this you can use several elements.

The Chase:
The Chase element is a very good element to add in. If you use it the NPCs definitely have to be MUCH stronger than the PCs or there have to be so many of them that the PCs cannot beat them all in a fair combat. If they are dumb enough to try you can wound them seriously(Like Frodo at Weathertop). Although I would somehow save themwith a powerful ally of some sort. He has to be powerful enough to drive some of the band away but not strong enough to beat them all. Again liken this to Gandalf at Weathertop when he took on 4 of the Nazgul or Strider and the hobbits when they took on five. If they insist on fighting again i would kill them off. The chase isn't necessary but its a good element to throw in.

A variant on this theme is the enemy has invaded and the characters are suddenly caught behind enemy lines. There isn't an active search for the PCs, but survivors are on the hit parade. This works real good in a Wolfen Eastern territories campaing where the wolfen (or eastern territories) have finally invaded. In this scenario you have to get from the home village to a major city safely. You can throw batlles and skirmishes that perhaps the PCs participate in, but still have to escape from.

The Stops.
There should be at least 3 or 4 major obstacles the PCs have to overcome on the journey. Just picking some examples I would probably use crossing a river, a haunted graveyard, an enemy patrol, and a major opposing force guarding where you are trying to get to. (The Nazgul at the Ford). In addition to the obstacles there should be about as many or half as many havens where the players can regroup and heal for a small amount of time. Friendly forces may be here. This could be a military camp or outpost or a monastery or something. They should be able to perform minor healing here, get info, or all of the above.

The minor obstacles:
This should make up the majority of the story. If it was in the wilderness I would put rather mundane creatures in it fitting with the region (I would use monster and animals to populate the forest with critters.) Bears come to mind. So do other more serious monsters. Boundaries of some kind should be setup to discourage the PLayers from wandering on the outsets of the map. A great chasm or canyon. Troll lands. Mountains infested with orcs. Ghouls, etc. I mean the players can go that way if they want....but you should be ready to kill them if they do. I mean the fellowship could have went through rohan or the empty lands on the way to Gondor but they didn't have the time, and Saruman was waitng for them so they went to Moria. Put an obstacle such as time and an enemy force in the way to discourage them from not going through Moria.
Other than that give them a relative free reign on how they get to each Stop. But they should have to make those 3 or 4 stops. They may be able to skip one, but it should be much more difficult for them if they do. A good way of doing this is if there's only one bridge on the way past a river to wide or swift to cross otherwise. Another would be a mountain pass. another might be some road the enemy has not reached yet, at least according to friendly sources. That sort of thing.

The minor obstacles should include mundane wilderness creatures, rough terrain,(possibly quicksand), a cliff they may need to rappell down, forest faeiries. Unexpected people like Danzi showing up or forest elves, or possibly human settlers This is where your map and terrain should come into play. If you have enough creatures and people you don't need to railroad you can say these people live here if they players come this way this will happen to them and it gives the game a much more organic feel.

Like I will draw a forest and write Danzi Forest on it, then have a river with a little tributaires off it and have small family settlements along it and on the other side will eb a foret that is haunted or perhaps relatively uninhabitable and on the river there is a bridge that is manned by the local force a good place for a battle or skirmish. Then on the other side some mountains with dwarves or orcs or both, and maybe some abandoned mines by it and an old miner town. I mean your brain can flesh that sort of thing out fairly easily.

Well hope it helped.

[Gallahan]

Wanna have fun? Make random tables with all sorts of different things to encounter. Take your favorite items from any/all Palladium random tables (there are many out there).

Roll for each hour of travel. If nothing interesting comes up, fudge it. It's your world, after all.

[wolfsgrin]

CSI: players encounter a particularly (or not) gruesome/intriguing corpse or recent battle site. Something in the evidence there is connected to the bigger adventure, or leads into an interesting tangent. " what are the ogres doing this far south....?" " I thought wyvern were exterminated from this area 100 years ago...?" " The protection wards on this horse drawn buggy/container/outhouse were never activated, was it an inside job, magic users,demons?

i love this idea! CSI: Timro. Just give Caruso some magic specs and some elfish ears, you got the next big hit. lol