A Guide to Travel and Survival Encounters in D&D

What’s that old adage? Life is about the journey, not the destination. Well, the same can be said about your Dungeons & Dragons campaign. And no situation in the game makes that more abundantly clear than when your players are on the road between one city, village, or town to the next.

Unlike our roadtrips in cars, munching on snackies, sippin’ on soadies, listening to our favorite tunes or podcasts for a few hours between cities, or states, or countries (lookin’ at you Europe), travel in most D&D campaigns is often filled with dangerous or even deadly perils and countless surprises. Whether traversing treacherous mountains, dense forests, or arid deserts, the path to adventure is rarely smooth.

Because of this, travel and survival encounters provide a wealth of opportunities to engage players, test their skills, and immerse them in the world you've crafted. They can also feel a bit daunting as a Dungeon Master as you try to balance encounter types, roleplaying opportunities, exploration prompts, and unique mechanics, all while pushing the narrative forward and tying it all to the overarching campaign. But, with the right approach, they can become some of the most memorable and rewarding experiences for players.

While we’ve already covered creating unforgettable encounters as a whole; in this guide, we'll delve into the art of crafting compelling travel and survival encounters and adventures, equipping you with the tools and techniques to make your sojourns into the wild a ride to remember.

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The Importance of Travel and Survival Encounters:

It can be easy to skip past travel scenes and simply use a paragraph or two of dialogue to describe how your party got from one place to the next. In my opinion, that’s a mistake. Incorporating travel and survival elements into your campaigns can significantly enhance the overall experience. These encounters serve several crucial purposes:

Break Up Monotony: Travel and survival encounters provide a welcome change of pace. While exploring cities and towns and interacting with the denizens of these areas is always important, and where the bulk of your campaign will typically take place, there is a whole world out there to explore. It allows for more diversity in the types of encounters and adventures you can throw at your players and also allows for you to make this world you’re creating feel more lived in, vibrant, and visceral.

Highlight Character Skills: These encounters bring in many of your players typically less-used skills such as Survival, Nature, and Animal Handling, encouraging creative problem-solving and forward thinking. With this it can really allow those high -Wisdom characters to shine, like Druids and Rangers.

Immerse Players in the World: Exploration becomes the key ingredient during these adventures, which give you as a DM the chance to let all that good lore take center stage. Be thinking about the places your characters will be able to explore and the beings they can meet that will give hints to the world at large its history. Use this time to foster a deeper connection to the game world.

Encourage Banter: They’re on the road, spending days on end with few other people, make them talk. Get them to engage with one another and connect. Get them to share backstories and memories. There is no better chance to bring your characters together and get them to know one another than when they’re traveling, stopping in inns and taverns, or sitting around a fire at a campsite. Play these scenes out. It may be a bit uncomfortable at first for those who aren’t used to roleplay, but if they open up, it can lead your campaign to places it hasn’t been before.

Crafting Memorable Travel and Survival Encounters

While these adventures are important, the only way they work is if you take the time to craft them in creative and thoughtful ways. To create truly memorable travel and survival encounters, consider these key elements:

Vary the Encounters: Avoid repetition by incorporating a diverse range of challenges. Travel shouldn’t just be, wake up, hit the road, reach next destination, small encounter at new destination, rinse, repeat. Each day of travel should have a mix of encounters such as navigating treacherous terrain, encountering hostile wildlife, or facing unexpected weather conditions.

Encounter types:

• Dangerous Terrain

The terrain through which your adventurers journey plays a crucial role in shaping their travel experience. Whether they're traversing tangled forests, navigating unyielding mountains, or braving vast, scorched deserts, the environment should present unique challenges and opportunities. This should include things like incorporating difficult terrain, levels of exhaustion from exposure, and routine navigation checks to avoid getting lost.

• Weather Hazards

Along with terrain, weather can add an extra layer of unpredictability and excitement to your encounters. A sudden downpour can turn a simple path into a treacherous obstacle course, a blinding hot sun can lead to dehydration and exhaustion, an avalanche can lead to a deadly race to free trapped members from their icy tombs.

• Skill Challenges

Throwing various skill challenges at players will test their abilities and force them to use teamwork to overcome obstacles. These can be as simple as foraging for food in a barren wasteland or tracking animal footprints to find a water source in a desert to navigating a climbing expedition up the side of a cliff or dashing to safety through a collapsing cave. These will allow different players to take the lead using their best skills.

• Environmental Puzzles

While I strongly suggest using puzzles infrequently, as they can be tough to incorporate in a way that is satisfying and often end up becoming frustrating for players. Environmental puzzles can integrate seamlessly into your travel encounters, challenging your players to use their wit and problem-solving skills. A hidden cave entrance that can only be seen by ingesting mind-altering mushrooms, an ancient artifact that can only be grasped once the players have crafted and ingested a potion using ingredients found in various parts of the woods, or something as straightforward as a cryptic riddle could all serve as compelling puzzles.

• Traps and Hazards

Your players are walking through a forest when fhwip one of them falls through what looked like fallen leaves and sticks into a hidden pit. They’re trudging through a desert and glrrp their feet start sinking as they fight to free themselves from quicksand. They’re navigating a narrow mountain pass, all tethered together when slllp one of them loses their footing on some loose rocks, falling over the side, dangling from the ropes, moments away from death. Utilizing traps and hazards that fit the environment can add an element of danger and excitement to your encounters, and can also lead players to possibly wanting to roll perception checks too often, so use them sparingly.

• Social Encounters

Just like everywhere in your world, your players should be running into memorable NPCs while on the road. While the most obvious ones will be innkeepers, traveling merchants, and hostile bandits, make sure and think about more unique options like guides to aid in traversing dangerous environments, awakened animals to offer information about a certain area, or possibly gods or goddesses of the wilds.

• Resource Management

Part of travel and survival is making sure you are smart with the supplies you have on hand. In harsh environments, your players may need to manage their resources carefully, such as food, water, and ammunition. This not only adds a layer of realism and challenge to your survival encounters, but also a chance for some downtime activities to add in such as hunting, fishing, foraging, or crafting ammunition.

• Long-Term Effects

This is one more way to add some realism into this type of adventure, make the consequences of travel and survival extend beyond the immediate challenge. As your players brave the wilds and the forces of nature, there will be chances for injuries, diseases, exhaustion, and more. While D&D has plenty of spells and potions to counteract some of these things, during grueling travel sequences maybe these setbacks are longer lasting than usual. A lack of good rest can easily begin to hinder physical and magical abilities while resources will start to dwindle leading players to tough choices.

• Random Encounters

While random encounter tables are something I typically steer clear of as I like each piece of my campaign to build toward the meta-narrative. I do find that random encounter tables can be useful while doing travel and survival adventures. While there are literally thousands of these o be found all over the internet and in most sourcebooks, I personally like to scour a handful or more and think of ways to tailor them to the campaign I’m running. Instead of having a group of Gnolls attack your players, instead they simply hunt them and using barks and howls push them toward a bigger threat or an area where your players will find some of the main lore necessary for the upcoming arc of your campaign. Your players come across a person stuck in a trap. They were traveling through the area with a guide and they were attacked by (insert monsters), the guide was taken prisoner. If your players follow this they get some lore, an added companion, and ostensibly, a guide. You can use random encounters, just make sure they count.

Tailor Encounters to the Characters: While using a good blend of any of the various encounter types above is a surefire way to make sure the adventure stays exciting and engaging. Make sure you consider the strengths and weaknesses of your players' characters when designing encounters. This ensures that the challenges are intriguing for all of the players and appropriate for their skill levels.

Reward Clever Play: Along these same lines, make sure that you recognize when your players rise to the challenge in ways that you maybe never even imagined. If your players are using their skills and abilities in innovative ways reward that behavior which will encourage more creative problem-solving from everyone at the table.

Tips for Managing Travel and Survival Encounters

Even if you’ve been DMing for a while now, this type of adventure offers its own set of unique problems. Unless you are set to run a pure sandbox campaign there are some things to take into account to make sure, while you’re not railroading, you don’t stray too far from the tracks.

Set Clear Goals: This is important in most any encounter, but it is overly important when traveling. If you are one of the best DMs in the world, you may be able to run an open-world RPG. But, it is no easy task. When you are describing the situation at hand to the players, clearly define the objectives of each encounter. Whether it's reaching a specific destination, overcoming an obstacle, or gathering resources, if they know what it is they are supposed to do they will likely not stray too far from the path that you have written in your notes and swimming around in your noodle.

Pace the Encounters: Balance the pace of travel to make sure that players don’t get overwhelmed, or use up all of their resources. Make sure that they have a nights rest every session or two, even if it is a poor night of rest because of the hazards you are throwing at them. While it can be fun to add some realism into the campaign, nothing is more boring, especially for magic users, than playing multiple sessions with nothing but cantrips. Remember, even when the going gets tough for the party, the whole point of this is to have fun.

Tie It to the Story: Sure, you may not be running into the BBEG on the road or in the woods and there may not be major points of intrigue pushing the overarching plot forward, make sure not to lose the meta-narrative during the in-between times. This is why dropping lore and adding in interesting locations and NPCs is so important when running this style of adventure. In most table settings, if you’re not continuing to build toward the main storyline, players will get bored and even more likely, will lose the plot.

That’s it. We’ve come to the end of the road. Travel and survival encounters are an invaluable tool for Dungeon Masters and can add so much depth and variety to your campaign. By incorporating these encounters purposefully and thoughtfully into your D&D campaigns, you can take what could be a cut scene and turn it into some of the most memorable and challenging parts of your time at the table. Happy adventuring!

Creating Unforgettable D&D Encounters: 9 Critical Tips

Today, it’s time to roll for initiative. Crafting challenging and engaging D&D encounters is not as simple as it may seem. As a New DM it is easy to fall into the pit trap of making your first few encounters fall flat because you simply find a monster you’re stoked to unleash upon your PCs and that is as far in the planning as you get. While it will still be fun, I’ll tell you, from personal experience (whoops) that no matter how badass your monster might be, it takes much more thought and prep to craft a solid encounter that your players will remember, and if you do it right that battle against a dozen gnomes can be more fun, and dynamic than going toe to toe with a Tarrasque. So, here’s nine ways to transform your encounters from bad to rad!

Strike a Balance: Like a skilled bard crafting the perfect melody, finding the right balance in your encounters is crucial. In order to do this, you must first have a solid knowledge of your players’ abilities. By knowing what each Player Character (PC) can do, you can tailor the challenges to, well, challenge them. You want to be able to keep them on their toes with foes that exploit their weaknesses while allowing them to also utilize their strengths.

This means, if you have a villain who is attempting to escape, you make sure you pick something with high wisdom so your sorcerer’s Hold Person spell doesn’t immediately end the chase while making sure it has a lower intelligence so her Tasha’s Mind Whip can lash out 90 feet and deal some serious damage.

By balancing in this way, you will keep them fully engaged and feel rewarded when they eventually leave initiative. Remember, a well-balanced encounter is the foundation of an epic tale, and that’s what we’re all trying to craft as DMs.

Craft Dynamic Battles: There are few things more boring than a battle encounter that is purely hack-and-slash until all the baddies are dead. When crafting a fight, it is important to make sure that there is more for your players to do than just fight, another goal, or obstacle.

Maybe one of your PCs’ friends or family members is being held captive and they have to focus on saving them while also dealing with attackers, and, if they don’t save them in a particular amount of time things get more dire. Or they’ve been tasked with recovering an object, but if they kill the big bad of the week before they recover it it is lost forever.

Having secondary goals will make the battles dynamic and will avoid that terrible feeling when your players pull out their phones until it’s their turn to swing a sword or cast a spell. 

Build Purposeful Encounters: This ties directly to dynamic encounters; your encounters should not be mere obstacles to overcome. Infuse them with purpose and meaning, they should always be driving the story forward or dropping a little bit of world-building knowledge that the players can extract later.

Each battle should leave a mark on your players' journey, propelling them forward or revealing hidden truths that shape their destiny. That secret wooden shrine to a group of druids where they battled a group of dryads and blights, well, that wood is a unique wood that they find they need two sessions later, and those druids, if they find them, hold the cure to an illness that is ravaging the countryside 10 sessions from now.

Use your encounters to expand your world, add hints to future missions, and tie in your PCs’ backstories to keep them invested and intrigued. 

Mix It Up: Variety is the spice of … adventure! Your encounters should be as diverse as the landscapes they unfold in and the characters that take part in them. Not every encounter needs to be a fight, sure, D&D mechanics lean a little battle-heavy, but there is so much more that you can do in this game.

Thrilling combat is a good mainstay, but alternate in some other options that fit you and your players. Build in some mind-bending puzzles, put those high Charisma PCs in the driver’s seat with diplomatic negotiations, and test those other epic skills with unique, skill-based challenges. Give your players a taste of different flavors, leaving them hungry for more.

Give Your Enemies Personalities: No more one-dimensional foes! Can it be fun to go through and lay waste to a horde of nameless goblins, sure. And that will never stop being fun. But, there needs to be at least one goblin, or their bugbear leader, that your players can interact with. It will seriously up your encounter if you make your baddies as dynamic and interesting as your player characters.

Think about their backgrounds, what drives them, and what makes them tick. Infuse them with real motivations that go beyond just being obstacles to overcome. How about adding some twists during the battle? Maybe they reveal some hidden secrets that surprise your players? Maybe they aren’t that loyal to their cause and they will aid your players if they let them live?

Let your enemies be more than just cannon fodder – make them memorable, and your players will remember the epic clashes for sessions to come.

*A treasure trove of info on this topic can be found over at the wonderful blog by Keith Amman, The Monsters Know What They’re Doing. I highly suggest keeping it in your bookmarks as a regular DM tool.

Be Descriptive: As a Dungeon Master, you are partially a storyteller. A surefire way to have dull encounters is: “Does an 18 hit? It does. Nice. You take 7 piercing damage. Next in initiative is …” It’s easy to be this DM and I’ll admit I have fallen to it myself, especially in battles with tons going on.

Don’t make that mistake. While it may not come naturally to you, a skill you can hone to bring the battlefield to life and watch as your players become fully engrossed in the world you've created is being descriptive. Enhance your encounters with vivid descriptions, immersive details, and atmospheric cues. “That’s an 18 to hit. Fwip! Fwip! Two crossbow bolts soar through the air, and wham! pierce your armor, sending searing pain through your right arm. You take 7 points of piercing damage and look into the tree above to see a shadowy figure reloading. Next up is…”

So much better. And it paints a picture for your players, pulling them, and yourself, deeper into the encounter. I know it’s easier said than done, but with enough experience, your storytelling modifier will increase sooner than you think.

Embrace the Unexpected: Never forget that mischievous third party that accompanies most every TTRPG campaign, the dice. All the planning in the world can’t take into account how those little devils will be rolling on any given day and so when they throw a wrench in your works be ready to capitalize on that unforeseen event.

Your players will demolish your session’s main villain before they get to do anything cool, a nat 20 investigation roll or insight check will let them figure out your big mystery, they’ll walk right past that big encounter you spent hours planning, it’s going to happen. So, be prepared to adapt and improvise as the dice roll, for the most memorable encounters often arise from the unlikeliest of situations.

Build the Stakes: The DMG and Monster Manual have encounter ratings and monster ratings, and when I started out I followed them. I threw some easy and medium-difficulty encounters their way and that was nearly a waste, I did zero damage to anyone in our first encounter and barely any more in our next few.

My suggestion, even if it sounds a bit scary for those of us who don’t want Total Party Kills, is always, always go Deadly. Unless your party is rolling atrociously and/or playing stupidly, they will make it through, and yet, maybe one, maybe two go down and have to be healed during the battle.

And those death saving throws, those, in the end, are what we want. Aren’t they? We want this game to be exhilarating, to give us an adventure that we can’t have in real life, to make us feel alive in a way that life somehow can’t (and if life does get to feeling that way, well, that’s all too terrifying in itself). We want stakes, and nowhere else in this game is it easier, or more fun as a DM to give your players stakes and let them feel the glory of victory once they beat them. 

Seize the Drama: On a similar note to raising the stakes, this is what D&D is all about, making moments to remember. Every campaign has its defining moments, those heart-pounding, hair-raising instances that resonate with players long after the session ends. Craft your encounters in ways to make it possible for your characters to seek out and capitalize on these moments. Epic showdowns, character-defining choices, and unexpected alliances can create cinematic scenes that your players will cherish for years to come.

There you have it, New DMs! With these nine guiding principles, you are now armed with the knowledge to craft encounters that will leave your players awestruck and thirsting for more. May your campaigns be legendary and your encounters truly unforgettable! If you have any suggestions on ways to up your encounters or just want to share some of your most epic encounters, drop a line in the comments or email me directly at cmthenewdm@gmail.com.